I'm writing this as a way to, I guess, journal my thoughts but also share my experience, here's hoping it makes an interesting read. Sorry in advance if this feels disjointed or disorganized, I'm writing as I go.

So for those of you that don't know, today there was a massive blackout in Iberia and some regions of France, and it was a total blackout. Over 60 million people were affected.

The causes are still unclear, but it appears that it was due to a rare meteorological event that took out a high voltage line. This line distabilized all of the grid and took out the power. As far as we know, there was no cyber attack or anything of the sort.

Anyway, here's how things went down for me.

Today I woke up at 8:00 in the morning, went to work as usual. In my office, we had a completely normal morning as usual. But then, around 11:30, power goes out. Our monitors stopped working, lights shut down, ventilation system turned off, the whole shebang.

I thought, "just another blackout, should come back any moment". But then, my colleague sitting on my side, was on a call with someone in Porto - we were in another city - and that the power there was also out. (our wifi had UPS, so we had internet for a while).

While very rare, it actually wasn't the first time that this happened. Last year we had an outage that took out several regions in Portugal. So I thought, "again? Weird."

People started talking to each other, calling friends and family to ask them if they also had the outage. And sure enough, all of them did. Soon enough we started to find out that even Lisbon and Algarve were missing power, so it was a national outage.

Cellular data still worked, I started refreshing all the news websites that I knew of and checking r/portugal on reddit. These moments were... Not unnerving per se, but worrisome. Never in my life I experienced something like this.

Some news started coming in, but none of them mentioned anything that we already didn't know. Just that there was a outage and that there wasn't a lot of information about it.

Comments on reddit started saying that this outage was also international, that regions in Spain were affected. Soon after, also France. Then some also said that it happened in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and Italy.

Soon after, it dropped, and I paraphrase the title of the news: "Outage in Europe. Military personnel summoned".

My dudes, the brainstorm and red flags that went in my head at this moment...... I kept my cool and tried to stay calm, but internally I was going at 300 km/h. The only logical conclusion at this time was "Russia is f*cking invading us".

Didn't help that, at this time, there still wasn't any confirmations if it was a cyber attack or not, so all the possibilities were on the table as far as I was concerned.

I kept refreshing, waiting for the page to update with more information, while hanging out with my colleagues. After a short while, around 12:30 - I think - there were confirmations that it wasn't a cyber attack, but instead a technical incident. The comments and reports were all over the place, some said it was a fire in France, then an airplane that crashed, then it was something in Spain, etc etc. So I decided to tune everything out and only use that page as SSOT.

Glad I did that because, we all decided to go for lunch, and people were all talking about what happened. And some, started saying that russian submarines were spotted along the coast, that they saw it on Facebook. Misinformation on social today must have been on an all time high.

Our company decided to let us go home, so I got into my car and went home. While traveling, I turned on the radio to "Antena 1", a national radio station that kept giving us information about what was happening.

So for starters, yes, the military was summoned but it was to help with all the problems that we were facing. People got stuck in metro stations and elevators. Traffic lights weren't working so there were accidents. People panicked and started buying anything and everything on the supermarkets and stores. Some gas stations closed.

Some supermarkets and stores were closed due to them not being able to process the purchases. The only one that remained open were the ones with generators.

Pharmacies were also facing issues since they couldn't connect to their centralized databases (from what I understood), but there were also worries if their generators would last long enough to keep the medications in low temperatures.

As I was driving, it was also confirmed that general power would return between 6 to 10 hours, but at most it could take 72. General power should be stabilized in a week.

Once I got home, I found my old radio, that has at least 20 years, put some batteries in it and synced to Antena 1, and listened to it throughout the whole day. We're talking about an analogue radio, the kind that you have to rotate the wheel to set the frequency.

One thing that I started to appreciate, is how my iphone 12 pro max, a technological marvel, became basically unusable. While this simple piece of plastic that my parents bought for maybe 5 euros just worked. The cellular towers started to fail throughout the country, as they themselves started to run out of power (I assume they had generators). Meanwhile, this radio, it just worked.

I spent the whole day listening to it, and took the chance to watch Chainsaw man, that I had downloaded on my phone.

It was.... I don't really know how to describe it, but the fact that I could keep up with what was happening was good. The idea of just waiting without knowing what was happening is stressful. This tiny radio was my only source of information, at this point I had no internet, no TV, no calls, no text messages, no nothing, just the radio.

I know that right now it feels like I'm praising the hell out of that radio, but that's because it really did feel like the only connection I had to the outside the world, not counting my neighbours of course.

As for food and water, thankfully I was fine. But there were people that didn't have much at hand and - understandably - were scared that they wouldn't have enough for the next days.

Thankfully though, the guys over at the power plants did an excelent job and power started returning in several regions, one at a time, now at night. I got power a while back.

So... Other than the existencial dread that I got in the morning, it was fine for me personally. Although I can't imagine those that got stuck in metros and elevators and trains.

I got humbled today. We take the internet, TV, power, calls and messages for granted, but today I didn't have access to any of them, and for a while not having them for a few days was a real possibility.

In terms of food and water, I was fine, but I think I'm really going to get one of those survival kits after all, just in case. Hopefully I'll never need it but better prepared than sorry.

The Issue

I'm streaming games from a desktop PC hardwired into my router (running Sunshine) to a laptop wirelessly (using Moonlight). It works beautifully.

Except, every five minutes, the stream chugs: my framerate drops precipitously, and Moonlight gives me a warning telling me I should lower my bitrate. This happens for only a few seconds, before it resolves and goes back to normal.

I timed the interval between the chugs several times and got approximately 5:07 between each slowdown. It is remarkably consistent.

Because it's so consistent, I assume there's some scheduled task or something running every five minutes that's causing it to chug. Dropping the bitrate makes the chugging less noticeable, but it still happens.

Ruling Things Out

I think it's safe to rule out the idea that it's my router or the host PC.

I have a smaller 13" laptop that I used to stream to, and I just recently bought a 17" to replace it. The five-minute issue only happens on the 17", even with identical stream settings (same resolution, FPS, and bitrate).

The computers are obviously different hardware, but they're also running two different linux distros.

The 13" Laptop is running MX Linux 23.5 (KDE). This is the one that works.

System:
  Kernel: 6.1.0-32-amd64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 12.2.0
    Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 5.27.5 Distro: MX-23.5_KDE_x64 Libretto September 15
    2024 base: Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Dell product: Latitude 7370 v: N/A
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: Dell model: 0XFY7T v: A00 serial: <superuser required> UEFI: Dell
    v: 1.28.3 date: 02/07/2022
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 12.6 Wh (62.1%) condition: 20.3/34.0 Wh (59.6%)
    volts: 8.1 min: 7.6 model: SMP DELL WY7CG58 status: charging
CPU:
  Info: dual core model: Intel Core m5-6Y57 bits: 64 type: MT MCP
    arch: Skylake rev: 3 cache: L1: 128 KiB L2: 512 KiB L3: 4 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 2496 high: 2758 min/max: 400/2800 cores: 1: 2400 2: 2758
    3: 2400 4: 2429 bogomips: 11999
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel HD Graphics 515 vendor: Dell driver: i915 v: kernel
    arch: Gen-9 bus-ID: 00:02.0
  Device-2: Realtek Integrated_Webcam_HD type: USB driver: uvcvideo
    bus-ID: 1-9:5
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 1.21.1.7 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.9 driver: X:
    loaded: modesetting unloaded: fbdev,vesa dri: iris gpu: i915
    resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 Mesa 24.2.8-1mx23ahs renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics
    515 (SKL GT2) direct-render: Yes
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel
    v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1f.3
  API: ALSA v: k6.1.0-32-amd64 status: kernel-api
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.0 status: active
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Wireless 8260 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel bus-ID: 6c:00.0
  IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel Bluetooth wireless interface type: USB driver: btusb v: 0.8
    bus-ID: 1-2:2
  Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 1 state: up address: <filter> bt-v: 2.1
    lmp-v: 4.2
RAID:
  Hardware-1: Intel 82801 Mobile SATA Controller [RAID mode] driver: ahci
    v: 3.0 bus-ID: 00:17.0
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 238.47 GiB used: 31.99 GiB (13.4%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Toshiba model: KSG60ZMV256G M.2 2280 256GB
    size: 238.47 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 232.43 GiB used: 31.47 GiB (13.5%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-0
    mapped: luks-a8eaaa90-b4ba-4943-8c1d-ddace5892f40
  ID-2: /boot size: 973.4 MiB used: 524.1 MiB (53.8%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/sda2
  ID-3: /boot/efi size: 252 MiB used: 274 KiB (0.1%) fs: vfat dev: /dev/sda1
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: file size: 3 GiB used: 3.8 MiB (0.1%) file: /swap/swap
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 80.0 C pch: 68.0 C mobo: 48.0 C
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
  Processes: 251 Uptime: 33m Memory: 7.65 GiB used: 3.56 GiB (46.6%)
  Init: SysVinit runlevel: 5 Compilers: gcc: 12.2.0 Packages: 2789 Shell: Bash
  v: 5.2.15 inxi: 3.3.26

17 *    * * *   root    cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly
25 6    * * *   root    test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || { cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily; }
47 6    * * 7   root    test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || { cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly; }
52 6    1 * *   root    test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || { cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.monthly; }

The 17" Laptop is running Linux Mint 22.1 (Cinnamon). This is the one that has the five minute chugs.

System:
  Kernel: 6.8.0-58-generic arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 13.3.0
  Desktop: Cinnamon v: 6.4.8 Distro: Linux Mint 22.1 Xia
    base: Ubuntu 24.04 noble
Machine:
  Type: Laptop System: Dell product: Inspiron 7773 v: N/A
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: Dell model: 0R58C3 v: A00 serial: <superuser required> UEFI: Dell
    v: 1.19.0 date: 12/15/2021
Battery:
  ID-1: BAT0 charge: 34.9 Wh (97.5%) condition: 35.8/56.0 Wh (63.9%)
    volts: 16.0 min: 15.2 model: Samsung SDI DELL W7NKD7B status: discharging
CPU:
  Info: quad core model: Intel Core i7-8550U bits: 64 type: MT MCP
    arch: Coffee Lake rev: A cache: L1: 256 KiB L2: 1024 KiB L3: 8 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 658 high: 867 min/max: 400/4000 cores: 1: 400 2: 800
    3: 400 4: 400 5: 800 6: 800 7: 867 8: 800 bogomips: 31999
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel UHD Graphics 620 vendor: Dell driver: i915 v: kernel
    arch: Gen-9.5 bus-ID: 00:02.0
  Device-2: NVIDIA GP108M [GeForce MX150] vendor: Dell driver: nvidia
    v: 550.120 arch: Maxwell bus-ID: 01:00.0
  Device-3: Realtek Integrated_Webcam_HD driver: uvcvideo type: USB
    bus-ID: 1-5:2
  Display: x11 server: X.Org v: 21.1.11 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.6 driver: X:
    loaded: modesetting,nvidia unloaded: fbdev,nouveau,vesa dri: iris gpu: i915
    resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
  API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: iris,nvidia,swrast platforms:
    active: gbm,x11,surfaceless,device inactive: wayland,device-2
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6.0 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: intel mesa
    v: 24.2.8-1ubuntu1~24.04.1 glx-v: 1.4 direct-render: yes renderer: Mesa
    Intel UHD Graphics 620 (KBL GT2)
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel Sunrise Point-LP HD Audio vendor: Dell driver: snd_hda_intel
    v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1f.3
  API: ALSA v: k6.8.0-58-generic status: kernel-api
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 1.0.5 status: active
Network:
  Device-1: Intel Wireless 3165 driver: iwlwifi v: kernel bus-ID: 02:00.0
  IF: wlp2s0 state: up mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Intel Bluetooth wireless interface driver: btusb v: 0.8 type: USB
    bus-ID: 1-7:3
  Report: hciconfig ID: hci0 rfk-id: 4 state: up address: <filter> bt-v: 4.2
    lmp-v: 8
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 238.47 GiB used: 36.5 GiB (15.3%)
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Samsung model: MZVLB256HBHQ-000H1
    size: 238.47 GiB temp: 25.9 C
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 229.63 GiB used: 36.21 GiB (15.8%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/dm-1
    mapped: vgmint-root
  ID-2: /boot size: 1.61 GiB used: 291.7 MiB (17.7%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p2
  ID-3: /boot/efi size: 511 MiB used: 6.1 MiB (1.2%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/nvme0n1p1
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: partition size: 1.91 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%)
    dev: /dev/dm-2 mapped: vgmint-swap_1
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 30.0 C pch: 32.5 C mobo: N/A
  Fan Speeds (rpm): N/A
Info:
  Memory: total: 16 GiB available: 15.36 GiB used: 1.82 GiB (11.9%)
  Processes: 338 Uptime: 2h 38m Init: systemd target: graphical (5)
  Packages: 1996 Compilers: gcc: 13.3.0 Shell: Bash v: 5.2.21 inxi: 3.3.34

17 *	* * *	root	cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.hourly
25 6	* * *	root	test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || { cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily; }
47 6	* * 7	root	test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || { cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly; }
52 6	1 * *	root	test -x /usr/sbin/anacron || { cd / && run-parts --report /etc/cron.monthly; }

Help Request

Anyone have any ideas for tracking down what might be causing this? I was going to just wipe the machine and replace Linux Mint with MX Linux to rule that out, but I figured I'd ask here before doing that, especially because it could be the hardware and not the distro that's causing the issue.

Having received a jury summons, and with my mental health being how it is, I recently took a bus to the nearby used bookstore. The rule of buying secondhand books is this: You must pretend, while in the store, that your phone doesn’t exist; you must not come in looking for anything in particular; you must let yourself be guided by the titles and covers and the blurbs alone. So I followed my nose over to the “poetry and art criticism” shelf of the store (which, I am convinced, is to blame for my poor performance at parties) and started browsing.

There I found Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games and immediately developed a crush. Maybe it was the title, which seemed carefully engineered not to appeal to the general public. Or maybe it was the editor, Carmen Maria Machado, whose short story collection Her Body and Other Parties is a personal favourite. Either way, the anthology of nineteen pieces from nineteen authors about approximately nineteen games was in excellent condition, and had been marked down to eight dollars, so I added it to my little stack of purchases and wandered over to the checkout.

Like all anthologies, Critical Hits varies widely in quality across its component essays (and one comic). It starts strong: its introduction is a delight, with some of the best footnotes I’ve ever enjoyed. Likewise its first essay, Elissa Washuta’s “I Struggled a Long Time with Surviving,” an exploration of her experience with The Last of Us, pandemic, and intractable illness was deeply impactful and genuinely changed how I looked at the game. But this is par for the course with anthologies (at least, well-compiled ones) which know to dazzle you off the bat with their best material, so that you’re willing to endure their worst. Here, in my estimation, the worst is Anders Morson’s “The Cocoon,” which cites Brian Tomasik (one of those insufferable San Fransisco Rationalists) to argue that, in aggregate, it’s unethical to kill video game NPCs. Morson then goes on to list every Aliens game ever released, for six pages, with dazzling insights like “Aliens: Colonial Marines for PS3 Xbox (2013) is definitely an Aliens-y FPS.”

In aggregate, though, the anthology is more good than bad. Apart from “The Cocoon,” the worst essays here are mostly just mediocre, or meandering. And there are some true standouts here: Jamil Jan Kochai’s “Cathartic Warfare,” nat steele’s “I Was a Teenage Transgender Supersoldier.” And the reason I’m here, writing this essay of my own: Larissa Pham’s “Status Effect,” an exploration of depression, damage-over-time, and Genshin Impact.

Released globally in 2020 for PC and mobile devices, Genshin Impact is an action-adventure game which sees players assemble a four-person team from its extensive cast of characters and then wander out into its expansive open world to complete monsters, open quests, and kill chests (something like that, anyway). A live-service game, Genshin has seen regular map expansions and a remarkably stable playerbase for the last five years, and, like WoW before it, has spawned a wave of copycats hoping to take a bite out of the aging titan’s colossal corpus. Larissa Pham and I would have started playing Genshin at around the same time – she describes becoming obsessed with the game in the winter of 2020-2021; I first launched the game in February of 2021, in the icy depths of the pandemic, shortly after failing to kill myself, as something to do while waiting for the hospital bills to pour in.

In Status Effect, Pham recounts a minor controversy from the fall of 2021. Genshin’s meta had stagnated: a year into its lifespan, no one wanted to include healers on their team, when shielders were proactive and dodging was free. So the developers implemented a damage-over-time status effect called corrosion, inflicted by certain enemies and in certain phases of endgame content, which ignored shields and would wipe the whole team if not healed through. Genshin’s community was and is large enough that any kind of meta shift (however necessary) will spark outcry, controversy, and apocalypse prophets heralding doom (I was one of them: “What, am I just not supposed to use my Zhongli? No one’s gonna pull for fucking Kokomi”), but for Pham, that debuff gave her the language to think and speak about her depression more concretely.

Genshin has never given me the language I needed to think or speak about anything. Frankly, I don’t think the game’s story, which is consistently a mediocre slog (with a few bright spots) is capable at this point of doing anything interesting or novel. Even in Pham’s case, Genshin’s “corrosion” debuff might have been fungible with any damage-over-time debuff in any game – Pham just happened to be playing Genshin at the time when she needed it. But even saying this, even speaking as someone who cares about a game’s story more than any other element, I think Genshin is a fantastic game, in at least one major aspect: its exploration and world design.

Upon its announcement, Genshin was panned as “anime Breath of the Wild” a comparison enabled by its gliding and climbing and stamina meter and early-game monster designs and the shade of its grass. But cosmetic similarities aside, Genshin is actually doing something very different – very unique, I think. Genshin presents the player with an extremely large, colorful, and ever-expanding world, peppered with a truly mind-boggling amount of chests, environmental puzzles, and enemy camps. From any given point in the world, you can probably see several little leads to follow: a locked chest in a monster den; a blue faerie waiting to lead you to its court; a movement time trial; a floating elemental oculus. And once you pick one of those, and figure it out, you’ll once again be able to look around and see more chests to open, more stuff to collect, more things to do. So the world is incredibly dense with collectibles, but traversing it is surprisingly weighty. Climbing, gliding, running; all of these are either slow, or stamina-intensive, so you’ll move through the world at a light jog much of the time. This means that you can often see and plan a route to many different puzzle or collectibles before getting to them; it means that, instead of a constant stream of opening chests, each little dopamine hit is separated by a long breath, where you can appreciate the absolutely gorgeous world, and its stirring, melancholy music. And often, quests and puzzles and chests and collectibles will be laid out in a remarkably subtle web, designed to tug the player off the beaten path, towards some of the game’s most gorgeous sights, its most scenic vistas (of which there are plenty).

So maybe in terms of its exploration philosophy Genshin is an open-world collect-a-thon, more similar to a Super Mario Odyssey than a Breath of the Wild. But really, it’s nothing like either game, or anything else I’ve played; so much could be said about the game’s combat, its world quests, its approach to rewards, the way the game’s levelling systems encourage diverse engagement with the open world. I’ll instead conclude with this: Genshin Impact has my favourite exploration experience of any game I’ve ever played, and nothing else really even comes close.

Early in the game’s lifespan (December 2020), the developers added the new Dragonspine region: a frozen mountain, home to the bones of dragons and the ruins of an ancient civilization, introducing lethal new mechanics as a way to shake up exploration. Arguably a precursor to corrosion, while in Dragonspine, a status effect called “sheer cold” would accumulate and, once maxed, drain your health at such a high rate that no shielding or healing could keep up. Getting wet would accelerate cold accumulation; eating hot foods, lighting fires, or standing near heat sources would slow or reverse it. It encouraged a different playstyle; beyond keeping a fire character on your team, sheer cold also encouraged players to explore more deliberately; to stay close to heat sources and not stray too far from the path.

In Dragonspine, the main plot involves restoring an ancient relic called the Skyfrost Nail – an enormous pillar, shattered. Beginning at a base camp at Dragonspine’s foot, you slowly ascend the mountain, fighting monsters, exploring ancient, sealed laboratories, and maybe getting distracted to grab a chest here or a crimson agate there. On the way up, you learn fragments of the story of the ancient civilization that dwelt on Dragonspine, before it froze over; you hear of their research in alchemy, and the celestial nail that was flung down by the gods – to stop their research, before they climbed too high? It was this nail that froze Dragonspine, and somehow corrupted it; it is this nail that you find in broken fragments at Dragonspine’s peak. Beset by truly diabolical monster encounters designed to freeze you fast and absolutely ruin your afternoon, you thaw these fragments and watch as they ascend, reforming the nail, the enormous pillar hanging high above Dragonspine, ready to fall once more. You can, at last, ride the wind currents all the way up to stand on the head of the nail, at what was at the time the highest point in all of Tevyat, to gaze at the world around. All the lands accessible: Liyue and its harbor; Mondstadt and its cathedral, and beyond them, those inaccessible, not yet implemented into the game, represent as abstract hills, mountain, and sea, rolling endlessly into the distant grey fog.

It was February of 2021, and I had failed to die. Had been released from the hospital into the slushy, wet aftermath of a winter storm, with enough medication to last two more weeks and (though I didn’t know it at the time) enough debt to last through to this very day – if only because I stubbornly refuse to pay it. I returned to my on-campus apartment to discover that I had no heating, no power. Hot water, at least, for tea and baths and thin, meatless soups. According to the thermostat, my poorly-insulated home was hovering around 51°F, so I dragged my mattress off the bedframe, into the corner where it was warmer, sealed myself under a mountain of blankets, and opened my laptop.

I had meant to start drafting emails to professors, to explain my weeks-long absence and ask for extensions, grace, and leniency (all would eventually give it, and I didn’t even have to use the s-word, or show the doctors’ notes I had so dutifully accumulated). But in that moment, my hands were shaking from the cold and the anxiety: the knowledge that my life could be ruined, my academic scholarship lost, if any of them declined. So instead, I opened the app store, downloaded Genshin Impact, and, after a couple days of sleepless, bloodshot gaming sessions, climbed the Skyfrost Nail in Dragonspine.

Genshin might not have been capable of giving me the language to understand my experience with depression, dysphoria, and suicide, but it was certainly there when I needed it – the unique, frictional experience it provided offering a strange resonance with my own. And I kept playing it for a long time, perpetually enchanted by its world, its music, the waves of nostalgia and grief that would wash over me at the strangest times.

In the summer of 2021, I wrote a poem, for a poetry class, which began with the lines, “The economy being how it is / Instead of finishing school / I took a job this autumn at the Indiana Dunes.” It was a narrative poem, the only type of poem I’ve ever been able to write. In it, the speaker wanders around on the sandy shores of Lake Michigan in the aftermath of a heavy storm, picking their way around shredded volleyball nets and desolate lounge chairs, all half-buried under wet, sandy drifts. They’re looking for their phone, probably hopelessly lost amidst the dunes, but in the end, climbing Mt. Baldy (a very tall dune; not actually a mountain), they find that what they were searching for was not actually their phone – was, instead, perspective. A broader view of the world’s beauty. “On a clear day, from there, you can see all the way to Chicago,” they think, before beginning the climb. But in the end, reaching the top, the day is not clear, so they are left to “feast [their] eyes on the endless expanse of grey water.”

I must apologize for exposing you to my immature poetry, but the fact that I remember so many lines from that tiny, throwaway piece, from one of my least notable college classes, has always been suspicious to me. I suspect that it contains some sort of heartbreaking insight into my mindset at the time – a tragic longing for the picturesque (to quote a book I haven’t read). I played games where you climbed a mountain, wrote poems where the speaker climbed a dune; some nights, I walked a quarter mile to the parking garage near my apartment and climbed to the top level and leaned on the concrete railing and stared out through life-affirming chicken wire. I wanted to see in color, I suppose; to recapture the vividity of a world that I found increasingly exhausting, but mostly saw only greys: grey distance fog, grey water, and the grey existence of a college-town suburb, shining dully under the light-polluted grey sky.

In November of 2022, Genshin Impact released its 3.2 update “Akasha Pulses, the Kalpa Flame Rises,” which didn’t add any new regions to the map. Instead, it contained the concluding act of the Sumeru region’s main story quest, where the player teams up with a god, a couple academics, a dancer and a cop to fight the evils of the censored internet. For Genshin, this quest (and its preceding acts) were well above par, featuring (among other strengths) actual themes, and a plot that went beyond its gnostic inspirations. So, sure, 3.2 was a timely, relatively compelling update. It was also the update where I quit playing Genshin Impact – for good, I thought. There is simply only so much exploration, questing and combat that can be done in the same world, structure and systems before a work of art overstays its welcome. It wasn’t with any malice that I quit Genshin – I had simply had enough, and that was that.

My life had changed a great deal in the intervening period. I had finished college, moved cities, learned to cook, become a woman. Gotten a second dose of the COVID vaccine, the day before the move, and spent the entire ride to my new home feeling miserably ill because of it.

Around the same time, Carmen Maria Machado and J. Robert Lennon, compilers for Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games would have been working on their collection. It’s a collection that lives in the shadow of COVID-19 – almost every piece here, you can detect the pandemic’s penumbra (if it isn’t explicitly mentioned). For a lot of people, the pandemic was isolating, lonely, cold. For writers, it might have been that too, but we are solitary creatures, and the thing it gave us was, most of all, time: to play games, to write or fail to write, to think, to spiral.

Perhaps to counteract this spiral, Graywolf Press, a Minnesota-based not-for-profit publishing house, spent the pandemic hosting “cute mental health cocktail hours.” Lennon was there, Machado was there (my beloved Her Body and Other Parties was published by Graywolf) and it was there that Critical Hits was conceptualized.

“What we wanted to do was have a really diverse group of writers to provide a very diverse perspective of gaming, by writing about games however they want. We sort of gave them free rein,” Machado says, in an interview she and Lennon gave to Dazed Digital. “It was wild how people were like, ‘Oh my God, yes!’ Everything that came in was so good and so interesting and so different. It was a really extraordinary group of artists who had so many things to say.”

I don’t know how Larissa Pham, who wrote my favourite essay in the collection, first became attached to it. Shockingly, there aren’t that many interviews or monographs out there describing the creation process for Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games, a book with fewer than 500 ratings on Goodreads. Pham has written a smattering of fiction, nonfiction and creative nonfiction; essays, short stories, criticism. Avant-garde poetry, presented on an interactive github website. Kinky lesbian erotica. A cultural commentary about tradwives and baking. She also, at least for a while, played Genshin Impact, at the same time I and everyone else did. I am struck by the strange syzygy of our experiences. Pham graduated Yale; I went to a state school. She gets published; I post to Tildes. She teaches classes; I am constantly struck by how much I have to learn. But in the winter of 2020-2021, both of us, grappling with our respective illnesses, crossed paths with this game, and it was there for us when we needed it.

In January of 2025, I bought and read Critical Hits: Writers Playing Video Games. In early February, instilled with a sense of nostalgia for a game I hadn’t touched in years, and tired of playing Shadow of the Erdtree (another game with excellent exploration of a very different kind) I downloaded the HoyoPlay launcher and, with it, Genshin Impact.

Logging in, I was greeted with an embarrassment of little red exclamation marks, attached to almost every UI element, there to helpfully explain what I had missed, what was new, and all the crazy exciting retention-driving bonuses the game would give me to help me catch up. According to the huge new blank spaces on the map, I had many more regions to explore; according to the quest log, many more mediocre stories to sit through. According to my backpack, enough saved-up resources from before I had quit to immediately acquire and build the 5-star character Arlecchino, the only female character in the game – out of some sixty, now – who could plausibly be described as handsome (her vest buttons on the left). Perhaps I should have been overwhelmed. But sinking back into Genshin’s loop felt like coming home. Swimming through the new undersea regions, Fontaine and the Sea of Bygone Eras, offered a welcome twist to what was still a fundamentally fantastic exploration loop. Quests like “The Dirge of Bilquis” and “Masquerade of the Guilty” might not have been brilliant, but featured gorgeous locations, entertaining set pieces, and even an excellent VA performance or two.

Apparently, I was coming back at a bad time. Shortly before I collected my Arlecchino, a new character had been released: Mavuika. I never got around to playing the quests where she was featured, but apparently she was poorly written and presented a real problem for Genshin’s balance. Mavuika, you see, has a magical motorbike that a). Doesn’t really fit with Genshin’s usual magitech aesthetics and b). Removes all discernible friction from exploration, with its ability to drive super fast, climb walls, ride on water, and even, for a short time, fly. I was slightly scandalized when I heard about her, frankly.

“Sure,” I thought, “This doesn’t affect me, I’m never going to use her. But if a new player spends their limited resources to get Mavuika (a smart decision; she is, in addition to everything else, a very strong DPS, powercreeping Arlecchino) won’t that ruin the game for them? Won’t her ability to bypass all the exploration challenges in the game take away the one thing that makes it so special?” It felt like the game jumping the shark, releasing a broken character to make a quick buck at the expense of its long-term health. But truthfully, I was a tourist in Genshin this time, coming back to gawk at how it had changed after years of absence. I have no real stake in its balance. I don’t really recommend anyone play it. What happens to the meta and monetization of this game I once loved terribly is now water off a dyke’s back.

Things that I used to get very up-in-arms about no longer really bother me. I’m sometimes unsure whether that’s a result of healing or hypernormalisation.

I had jury duty at the Seattle Municipal Court that month, a boxy building downtown. Had to report in at nine in the morning, riding the bus, shaking slightly from the cold and the anxiety. Of course, it’s not yet illegal to be a transsexual in one of the most wonderfully LGBT-indifferent cities on the planet, but the current political climate lends itself to overthinking.

Potential jurors are to report to the eleventh floor, to an airy, high-ceilinged, window-walled space crammed with chairs and tables and an attached kitchenette – the vending machines offering instruction on how to contact the county for reimbursement. We were to be paid twenty-five dollars per day (plus transit and food costs, if applicable). We were to watch informational videos, fill out cursory forms, and read quietly until called. It was all terribly adolescent, terribly bland. I found myself ruminating on the abstract sculpture pieces hanging from the ceiling, wondering whether their creators had intended them for this space, or whether they had been sentenced to hang here – as a punishment for reckless driving, maybe? What kind of cases even get tried in municipal court? Eventually, I went out onto the rooftop terrace, with only my coffee to protect me from the chilly, cloudy February weather.

To the west, I could see out the Port of Seattle, its great cranes priestly in their red and white liveries, their still solemnity. A container ship lay still in the bay, making no progress to its destination. And nearer: a sliver of downtown. An empty pit, filled with the refuse of aborted construction, bags of trash, tiny blue dumpsters. Graffiti, content indiscernible. Brown brick buildings; a yellow taxi (!) threading between them. A whole city, half asleep, stirring amid the late morning fog. It started to rain, a miserable spitting drizzle, and I scurried inside to protect my book and my temperamental hair.

This February, on my last day playing Genshin Impact, I received a DM from a random, low-level stranger named Quentin. “HELP!!” it said. I joined his world in co-op mode.

Quentin was exploring Dragonspine. When I arrived, his shiny new (low-level) Mavuika was frozen solid by an ice mage, a couple steps away from drowning in a nearby pool, like my own characters had been four years ago. There are some challenges, it seems, that even the most broken character cannot bypass.

Quentin and I summited Dragonspine together. I was shocked to discover that, even after four years, I still remembered the climb almost perfectly. Still remembered the jagged ruins; the wind currents; the terrifying monsters that had killed me over and over again. I hadn’t resorted to messaging strangers to defeat them, but it’s pretty common to do so – new players almost always struggle with Dragonspine. And so there I was, the helpful stranger this time, jogging forward, activating waypoints, lighting fires, killing chunky minibosses with a single unbuffed normal attack while Quentin stood behind me and put motivational stickers in the chat (stickers are the de facto mode of communication in Genshin co-op, as it’s never a surety that any two players will share a language). Quentin was there – why else? – to repair the skyfrost nail. Sure, his Mavuika could motorbike faster than my characters could climb, but still he slowed down so that we could make the ascent side-by-side. And when he seemed to struggle with the light puzzling involved in thawing the nail fragments, I sat my Arlecchino down next to important clues that he was missing and posted slightly stern stickers until he noticed.

At the end of the cutscene where the pillar at last rises into the sky, Quentin and I climbed and ran and rode the wind currents up to stand on the head of the Skyfrost Nail. We couldn’t stay long; sheer cold accumulates fast up there, and neither Quentin nor I had brought a healer or a portable stove. But we still stayed, as long as we could, staring out over Teyvat.

Over the course of over four years of updates, scenery that had once been indistinct rolling hills and sea, fading into fog, had been replaced by new regions, sprawling far beyond our view. Quentin and I could just make out, in the distance, the towering Inazuman mountains, crested by the blossoming sacred sakuras of the Grand Narukami Shrine. The curving tree-city from which sprouts the Sumeru Akadeymia. The baroque arches and elevated crystalline waterways of the Court of Fontaine. And more besides – landmarks I had explored, that Quentin might one day explore: a view onto the entire world with all its colors and its vistas, chests and quests and every artifice of gameplay erased by distance.

Quentin teleported away to warmer pastures and I remained standing there, struck still and wordless, once again, by the syzygy.

He and I will never interact again (shortly, he would say, “Thank you Father” – a title often used for Arlecchino – and then kick me from the world). But for that brief moment, our experiences came into alignment with Genshin Impact, across time and very possibly national borders. I know even less about Quentin than I do Larissa Pham, but he and I at the very least got to share that moment of awe and wonder at the top of the world. I wonder what it meant to him.

In the prologue to Critical Hits, Carmen Maria Marchado writes about her experiences being introduced to new games by friends and partners: “As I keep writing I am struck… by the intimacy of the form; the way the experience of it is specific, even erotic. What did it mean to receive someone’s tutelage? To let yourself be watched? To open yourself up to new ways of understanding? To die over and over again?” Perhaps Critical Hits’ greatest strength, its most distinct quality as an art object, across almost every piece within, is that peculiar intimacy. To watch writers and critics open themselves up to games; then, through those games, open themselves up to you. In much the same way Quentin did by inviting me into his world, Pham and Villarreal and Adjei-Brenyah and Washuta and, yes, even Morson invite us into their worlds, show us how video games refracted their experiences to help them understand themselves with new vividity and clarity.

I feel a little guilty to have, once again, dedicated so much time and mental energy to Genshin Impact, a game which arguably does not deserve it. While playing it this year, and since then, I have played Signalis and Lies of P and 1000xResist and (fellow gacha game) Reverse:1999, have read Borges and Dillard and Ian Reid – artists and works that are considerably more unified and artistically compelling than Genshin. But none of them hit me quite as hard as this 2020 open-world live-service Chinese gacha game; none came at just the right moment, to connect with my particular experiences, my past; to color my vision.

My name didn't get called for jury duty, so at 3PM I rode the bus home (stopping briefly for bread and doughnuts at the bakery in order to earn the approval of the women I live with). Genshin Impact no longer lives on my computer. Once again, I got what I needed out of it, and then let it go. Having finished writing this piece, Critical Hits will be put on my bookshelf, probably never to be touched again. But as we move forward into an uncertain future, these small, impactful experiences, insignificant though they were, will continue to live with me. And if you read through this entire meandering essay, maybe some small fragment of them can live with you, too: proof of our shared essence, an invitation into my world.

Howdy hey folks, I've recently been trying out ProWritingAid (for the unfamiliar: a grammar/spell checker tool) specifically the premium version with the expanded tool set. And now I want to step onto the internet soapbox and talk about it. It's been.

Okay.

To preface, I've been writing (casually) for 'bout a decade, mainly short creative fiction. (And a few novel attempts. All of which are incomplete but I'm glad I did them) Throughout my time I've gone through a few tools, text editors and what-have-you-nots. With my ever so gleaming credentials established, let's get into the ramble.

Right out of the gate, automated grammar checkers and creative writing have a rather fun relationship. Half the suggestions are useful and the other half are useless. (This ratio can also tip forward and backward). They'll catch syntax errors, spelling mistakes, missing words or punctuation, all good things to fix.

It'll also flag intentional word choice, sentence structure and other creative decisions. Sometimes this can help but more often than not it'll be sucking the You out of your own words.

ProWritingAid (PWA) tries to sidestep this particular pitfall with Style Guides where it'll be more or less rigorous depending on the selected 'genre'. It's a mixed success. This flaw I don't think will ever be truly fixable given the inherent separation between Author and Tool. So we'll have to make do with clicking "ignore."

Now PWA does a bit more than just grammar check. During my time with it, I've currently used two versions. PWA Everywhere, and PWA Desktop. Everywhere is meant to integrate with your text editing software while Desktop is a contained application. They have similar feature-sets, but not identical. Specifically, Desktop has the Word Explorer feature: a tool that if you highlight a word it'll show some synonyms or you can dig deeper with alliteration, cliches, anagrams, rhymes, reverse dictionary and more. Pretty nifty. PWA Everywhere best to my knowledge and searching does not have this feature- which is disappointing.

Especially since everything else Desktop does, Everywhere does better. The UI alone is far more functional, without clipping or cramping. There's the convenience of direct integration. Some features like Single Chapter Critique (which I'll get into later, trust me) also blank screened in Desktop while working fine in Everywhere. Grand.

Besides the Word Explorer, PWA also gives you AI "Sparks" and Rephrases. I'll be entirely honest, I have these turned off (Which I am glad I was able to do). I don't have much to say here besides I like getting into the creative word weeds myself.

Alrighty, that then leaves me with two more things to discuss: Writing Reports and the Critique features.

Okay. The writing reports are useful. Able to be granular or extensive. They scan every selected element in the text and format the results into a nifty report (or in some modes, direct text highlighting) Having all that data visualized with tables, graphs and bars oh my, (with the occasional cross-work comparison) is a great look-at. Grammar-wise it'll run into the problems mentioned above, but otherwise, this has been the feature I've liked the most.

Finally I can get into the whole thing that inspired me to write this post. The Critique suite. Ohohoho, I have some thoughts about these. Human proofreaders are irreplaceable, just want to toss that out there (PWA also keeps that disclaimer in its header). My friends will never be escaping the random PDFs sent for their lovely review. I am ultimately writing for a human audience afterall. That in mind, I have run into a hilarious problem with the Single Chapter Critique.

Apparently I write too good to get use from it. Truly I am suffering here. In complete honesty, the actual point I'm trying to make is the AI is a kiss-ass sycophant. I fed five of my short stories from across the years into it, just to see what it'd say. It cannot be negative. In each and every one I was praised about various element of the stories. Glowing and gushing, could say no ill.

This is pretty useless. Sure it has the "Potential Improvements" section but it's... eh. In the name of curious study, I am having my non-writer friend compose a piece for me to feed to the machine spirit later. (I also only get three uses a day, compared to the unlimited reports with their nitty gritty)

Now, could this simulated praise be a sign I'm a genuinely good writer? Well I don't need the AI for that- I have friends zip-tied to chairs to feed my ego. (I forever cherish one of my close writing friends telling me: "You have a voice of a fantasy writer from the 70s with a thick series full of wondererous imagination written by a twice divorce middle aged man who is disgruntled with reality. It was never exactly reprinted as it was unknown, but the aging, withered pages hold such a gorgeous narrative that it sticks with you for the rest of your life.")

Back to the AI: Their shining critique falls apart when I look at the story myself and can point to several areas for improvement/refinement with a cursory reading. (Thank you creator's curse, you're my true reliable critic.)

Woe to me, I cannot escape personal proofreading. (Real talk: the hope was have it be able to do the cursory stuff so I could focus on the creative viscera. That's half the fun after all—)

There is two other Critique features, Full Manuscript Analysis and Virtual Beta Reader. I have used neither of these as I do not have any large manuscripts to toss into the jaws. To ensure jolly feelings, it's also a credit based system. So let's talk money.

Scrivener, a writing workhorse that even after years of using I still find new features and has long cemented itself as my text editor of choice, was $45 for a lifetime license. Fantastic software, it has earned its reputation.

ProWritingAid, a grammar and spellchecker was $115 (discounted price) for a year subscription. (Can I mention how idiosyncratic their tier system is? Free, Premium, Premium Pro? Why??? Just name it Free, Pro, Premium. Don't stack luxury words.) For $115, I get several features I don't even use, or aren't very useful. Oh, a discount for the aforementioned analysis credits. ($25 for 1, $70 for 3, $175 for 10. Full priced it's $50, $150, $500 respectively. Spend this money on an actual person please)

Now what's worst off is I wasn't even the one to spend the $115. That was someone else wanting to support me and my writing; an act I am quite grateful for and the meaning behind it. I feel bad complaining. I have hopes for PWA. Something that can act as a quick look proofreader would be wonderful. But perhaps I'm just asking for too much from what is again, a grammar and spellchecker.

So far, I don't know yet. I don't know if I'd call it good or bad. As I started with: it's okay?

Maybe I'll do a retrospective after a while once I've utilized it longer. Maybe features will be better fine tuned in the future.

And that leads me here. What have been y'all's experience with it, if any? Searching online has been miserable; I'd like to hear from other people.

[As a footnote, PWA was not used when writing this. Kinda forgot that I never set it up for browser. Tallyho]

I did a masters in data analytics, and then the niche I fell into in the working world was building dashboards, reports and spreadsheets of financial data for non-technical bureaucrats. Instead of ensuring data quality by technical means, my current company often just has me manually reviewing and checking financial data. This is pretty frustrating to me because I have no education in finance, and the things I miss or get wrong are so second nature to my boss that he doesn't even see them as something I should have been trained on. The only technologies I use are SQL server and excel. Any proactive steps I've made to automate processes has been discouraged as not worth the time.

I'm aware that most people spend years on tedious stuff before ever getting to work with more engaging technology, but honestly I'm starting to wonder if they've forgotten I'm not a finance guy. I want to move up in my career especially to escape my current role, but I'm feeling completely lost as to how. There's no obvious role in my company that could be a 'next rung of the ladder' to advance into, so there's nobody I can emulate to help chart a course. My boss had an unconventional path to his current role, and isn't really into manager stuff like career mentoring, so he's no help in that regard.

To anyone with experience in data science, what is the advancement supposed to look like? What are the key skills I should be developing? Am I being too averse to learning the subject matter of the data I'm working on? Any insight is appreciated!

I believe a few of us have Steam Decks, thus I wanted to do this kinda public announcement.

TL;DR

• If your Steam Deck reports low battery health (low % of original capacity) drain the battery until it shuts down and then fully charge and check again
• Use your Steam Deck until it shuts down from time to time (say once every 6 months?) to keep your battery level indicator (and remaining time) precise

Long version

I have my Steam Deck since May 2022 and I put certainly over 1000 hours in gaming on it. I would believe if it was even approaching 2000 hours.

Lately I played demanding game and battery was discharging rather fast with remaining time on full charge being under 1:30 hours, which I wasn't used to just a few months ago when it lasted over 2 hours even in demanding games (I limit to 30 fps and I also limit TDP/power). This weekend I jumped into desktop mode and checked the battery life which showed me what I feared - 65% of original capacity.

I went on iFixit page and the price for new one is hefty 95€, but since Steam Deck got me so much enjoyment, I was ready to pay for it - if it was in stock, that is. I'm glad it wasn't!

Since I have a bit of electronics and software background (hobby level), I realized that the charging chip (or whatever keeps the info about state of charge) was running since day 1 on relative data. What I mean: I have never discharged my Steam Deck lower than 10% and most of the times charging anywhere between 30-80%. And since the charging chip likely measures last fully charged capacity (and thus battery health) based on, well, how much it was charged and discharged all over again, it probably skewed its measurements in those three years.

So I went on a "quest" to play until dead. And I was surprised when Steam Deck reached 3% battery and kept running for another hour (ligthweight game) until it was finally dead. Then I fully charged it and voila - battery health 90%!

I have already said how it likely happened, but once more and in short: the charging chip needs to reach both limits, 0% and 100% of battery, from time to time = You have to let it drain fully here and there if you want your battery level indicator (and remaining time) to be precise or if you want to get the real state of your battery.

A bit offtopic: I've had laptop that had 50% of original capacity. I have changed the battery cells inside the battery and let it fully discharge and charge again but the vendor locked the chip from "learning" the real capacity making the new cells useless because the chip still reported 50% thus telling me when I booted it up that the battery has to be changed and also telling me non-relevant remaining time based on this 50% battery health... I'm glad that Steam Deck is capable of re-learning this data and not playing dumb.

This topic is for the Three Cheers for Tildes mobile app.

I'll summarize the major updates at the start of each similar topic, so people can read the updates and then hit Ignore if they don't care about more frequent updates and user feedback.

Recently:

[Android] Version 1.4.3 (Apr 30, 2025): Fixed a layout bug on topics.

[Android] Version 1.4.2 (Apr 11, 2025): Reduced highlighting when formatting markdown. Fixed minor text size bugs.

[iOS] Version 1.4.1 (Apr 11, 2025): Fixed a bunch of text size bugs reported through TestFlight, especially when rendering comments. Reduced highlighting when formatting markdown.

Version 1.4.0 (Apr 6, 2025):

• Added text size setting
• Fixed markdown formatting bar bugs

The text size setting for accessibility is long overdue. I've been feeling bad that some users couldn't even use the app because the text was too small.

This has been another large change where I had to go back and re-test screens throughout the entire app, and fix many layout bugs caused by the dynamic text size. It's been very tedious!

In fact, the iOS release is delayed because I found some last-minute bugs and have had to go back to figure out solutions. iOS is up on TestFlight!

Also I am aware that there are still bugs in some places when you set the text excessively large. It's not a priority for me to fix those, unless they make the app unusable.

Have been particularly busy so far this year and that will continue for a while, so I may be less responsive here, even though I likely will see your messages. Thanks for continuing to report issues; v1.4 fixes some bugs based on those reports.

Previous topic: February 2025

Where to get it

Android version on Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.talklittle.android.tildes

Or sideloadable APK at https://www.talklittle.com/three-cheers/

iOS version on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/three-cheers-for-tildes/id6470950557

Join TestFlight for iOS beta testing: https://testflight.apple.com/join/mpVk1qIy

I figure that for each new story that hits a site like Reuters, theres at least a few that don't get chosen, hitting the editing floor so to speak (like scenes of a film falling to the editing room floor). Doe anyone know where these might be reported?

Like, an rss feed of some editor somewhere that lists the stories they passed over.

Posting not a link as it's just a newsflash type thing. Translations with deepl. Edited some of the text myself to get rid of some redundant stuff.

Link

In March, sales of Jolly Cola increased at least 13-fold in Rema 1000 compared to the same period last year. Grocery chains Coop and Fleggaard have also seen significant increases. The Jolly Cola brewery also said earlier in March that they have never experienced anything like this.

Further context:

Link

Danes are bypassing American products, and chains are feeling it.

The boycott movement can be felt at the Danish fast food chain: ""We are clearly experiencing a growing interest. The fact that we are a Danish burger chain is an interesting alternative to the American chains for many Danes."

At a vintner, the anti-American movement is not a big issue, but the wine merchant has still received a “no thanks” from some customers when he has suggested an American wine: "Now that Trump has come to power, the demand is not as great as it used to be. Some people are simply opting out."

Even though consumers in Denmark want to send a signal and turn their backs on Trump and the US with their wallets, it could ultimately be a disservice to ourselves: "It should not become a joint boycott against the US, because we risk losing significantly more as a country than we gain from it. If the US suddenly says that it's time to stop buying Novo Nordisk medicines in the US, it will hit the Danish economy tenfold compared to the effect a consumer boycott has on the US economy,” he says. “There is no reason for us to provoke this trade war to become even fiercer than it already is."

Oh, and then there's also this:

Danish grocery chain to distinguish European from US goods.

More chains are joining in now: Coop to introduce labeling of American goods

My son loves reading time before bed, but he’s only 3.5 so the books have mostly been picture books until now. Lately though he’s been getting more into stories with plots and an extended narrative, but entirely in the form of movies. There aren’t a lot of kid’s books to go around with the sorts of dramatic stories he likes, they’re more like “caterpillar eats food” and “train engine climbs a hill with grit and determination” type stuff. And whenever I’ve tried to have him just lay down and listen to me read a story without any pictures to stare at he has absolutely no interest. He really likes having pretty visuals to look at.

I know when I was a small child these sorts of board/picture books weren’t really a thing in India. The pre-sleep ritual was usually “storytime” instead, where my parents would tell us stories. I’m a little bit concerned that my kid has been so accustomed to always having visual cues presented to him that it’s stunting his imagination a bit, like failing to exercise his capacity to visualize ideas and concepts for himself without being anchored by some artist’s depiction.

So I’m curious to hear from other parents or caregivers/educators (@kfwyre?). Did you find there was a natural transition point between going from picture books to telling/reading stories? Was there any sort of work you had to do to enable it? Are there “exercises” I can work on to help my son exercise his imagination? I have been working with him to have him tell me stories about his day, which he does pretty well. But his stories are always quite grounded and he’s usually telling me what he’s actually done and seen. When my nephews and nieces were his age they tended to spin out a lot of random stories that pretty obviously did not happen, and I assume this is because they had more experience being told stories themselves rather than just factual reporting about the happenings around them.

Hey Tildoes, my partner and I have been navigating a broad, government level health challenge and I was hoping to pick the hivemind for help on navigating it.

As some of you may have seen in articles posted here, there was a massive fire at the lithium ion battery plant in Moss Landing a few months ago. It ended up spewing a slough of nasty chemicals into the air, which inevitably landed in the surround agricultural fields and waterways. My partner was in Australia when the fire occured, thank god, but was still freaking out about downstream effects. There have been studies from a 3rd party group from UC Davis and San Jose State - that found elevated levels of heavy metals - however those have been downplayed by local agencies claiming there are not major impacts and that distribution was surface level. With everything we know about state and federal agencies oversight, sometimes they are less than transparent about reporting toxic impact factors - like what happened in Hinkley and was popularized by the movie Erin Brockovich. However today the California Certified Organic Farmers put out their own update and press release. They summarized what has happened and seem to be endorsing the safety of the farms they have certified in the area.

So here is the rub: Federal, state, county, and local agencies have determined there is not significant contamination, the CCOF has agreed with these agencies, and my partner is still uncomfortable eating local produce. It feels a bit like we're back in covid times, and she is looking for cherry picked studies to justify strict behavioral and consumption restrictions within our household. We have always agreed to "shift our risk tolerance according to data" and now - with the Trump administration and a general distrust of our fed/state agencies - she's advocating we continue to avoid these foods until there is "definitive proof" that the food is safe.

I'm kind of at a loss of what do to. On one hand, it's a minor thing to change where we get our food. Food systems are complex and we can kind of get it from anywhere. On the other hand, I love my time at our farmers markets, experimenting with new foods, and supporting our local community. I also think the more obscure the process from farm to shelf, the more possibility for health/employee/environmental shenanigans by the producers. To me buying broadly "American" or "Mexican" kale doesn't mean we aren't going to have similar or worse impacts to our food.

I'm trying to find a reasonable middle ground or a bellwether indicator we can use as a go/no-go, but every time I think we've agreed on one it feels like the goal posts have been moved. Do any of you have similar issues or possible navigated differences in risk tolerance during Covid well? If so, how did you do so? I know this is a bit of a random thread, but I'd love to hear what you think!

March 2025's Humble Choice is now available with the following games (2 EA, 6 Steam).

Does anyone have experience with any of the games and, if so, would you recommend them? Is there anything in here that you're particularly excited to play?

I recently was at a brunch with a friend and their friend. Their friend works at a startup who buys, very cheaply, pictures of mammograms from hospitals, something something AI anonymization, and resells the data to ‘researchers’. I asked several things, for example, what responsibility does her company have for breaches or failures to protect identity? Her response: we have reporting requirements.

In my mind, that something like this exists at all is a complete social failure and consequence of hypercapitalism. The goal of using hospital data for research is obviously a good one. But in my mind, that data should not exist in a non-anonymous way outside the control of the hospital, and, in its anonymous form, should be available to all researchers for free. It seems obvious to me the best way to innovate real solutions is to get as many smart people as possible researching the data, and not just those who can afford it. Less obvious, but still problematic: if we limit the availability of the data to those who can afford it, we are limiting the availability of the data to those whose primary incentive of research is profit, as opposed to public interests like health.

I’m very tired of pretending for the sake of equanimity that this work is somehow OK. But neither is it productive to be argumentative at brunch. I guess one approach is simply to say, gee that’s swell and move on to a different topic, or just not ask people about their work at all. But I’m a prophet, I feel compelled to tell the truth, and sometimes to an unhealthy degree make people feel uncomfortable.

I don’t know what the solution is, it’s one of the reasons I went to divinity school: to gain access to a potentially practical platform for advocating meaningful change. But the problem is so well integrated and so insidious. Am I doomed to always be in isolated despair?

Heretofore, I have held the idea that, 1)Russia is a despotic aggressor, 2)Ukraine is largely innocent holder of resources and land, and 3)Ukraine is largely winning due to a combination of pluck and western supplies.

But I heard a recent podcast, however, that caused me to question my line of thinking. The podcast was Chapo Trap House* and they had guest podcasts hosts War Nerd or something, who seem to have some expertise in the slavic world. And they presented a very different narrative. Namely, 1)Ukrainians really want the war to end, even if the country loses some land, 2)There’s tons of corruption in the military, as bad as leaders demanding payment from soldiers to avoid deployment to the front lines, 3)There are fascist units in the military, and they shake down the civilians, 4) Zelensky was of a mind to deal with Russia until Biden asked him not to, 5)Russias economy is very resilient and has adapted to sanctions, and 6)Russia has been very adept at neutralizing new western military tech, and 7) there is a conspiracy of silence about Ukrainian casualties. Side note, there may be problematic funding of all the open source intelligence arms, especially bellingcat, by US Governemtnt intelligence interests.

I managed to confirm at least partially one of the objections:

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/05/politics/russia-jamming-himars-rockets-ukraine/index.html

But some of the claims seem less strong:

https://kyivindependent.com/a-very-bloody-war-what-is-the-death-toll-of-russias-war-in-ukraine/

Mixed on some of the others:

https://theintercept.com/2024/06/22/ukraine-azov-battalion-us-training-ban/

The podcast was a useful reminder, at least, to retain a humility about my beliefs, and that news media is especially suspect in our present moment.

It’s not like I have any power to influence the outcome, but I do still buy into the myth that a responsible citizen retains some degree of information about events around them. My query to tildes is, what’s your narrative about the war, and what sources of information are you drawing upon?

*I’m vaguely aware that there’s somce controversy around these guys. I find the podcast entertaining, however, and they seem to share some of my values about how a sane society would function, and, like this report, they sometimes really challenge my understanding of what I think is going on.

Hello everyone! I have been currently debating switching email providers. I have been with Proton for a few years now (free user), but I have become increasingly disappointed. Firstly, I am not exactly a fan of the “we have apps for everything” model, particularly the integration of a password manager is just strange and the crypto wallet feels a bit nauseating, as I have my reservations about cryptocurrency. Consolidating all of my services in a company such as Proton feels misguided if the goal is to avoid walled gardens from the tech giants. There are also some other more recent things that have come up in relation to Proton that just make me question the legitimacy of Proton's “guiding moral imperative” as a privacy focussed company.

Moving on from that, I have mostly settled on two options due to their

• low cost
• generally adequate security (I understand email's limitations on this front, I just want something to be secure enough)
• transparency reports
• location of operation

The main thing I am struggling with here are the pros and cons between the two platforms.

Posteo seems to be less ideal of an email provider because they do not support ARC and lack a good DMARC policy. BUT they claim to support encryption with their calendars, but does this even matter if you are accessing the calendars with CalDAV (which I do not beliece is an E2EE connection)?

I think I trust Mailbox.org more when it comes to security, but I think their contacts / calendar situation is somewhat worse, and their French translation seems … lacking in spots (not that it matters to me much, but still is somewhat jarring for me).

I could just ignore the contacts/calendar problem, and use something like EteSync, but that would become just another thing to pay for, and another app to operate (if I need to use the WebDav bridge).

Any feedback on this would be greatly appreciated, I am really hoping this inspires some interesting conversations! And of course, feel free to tell me about better options if I have overlooked something. Have a lovely day :)

Or, let’s be honest, firstly as a novelty. I don't know anyone else personally who has bought, or would buy, a copy. I figured it would be interesting to see what it was like.

My wife and I stopped on Valentine’s day to buy a copy, and I think we were both surprised by the print. I knew Playboy magazines produced some notable interviews in the past, but a dozen important conversations over several decades isn’t exactly going to outweigh the sea of photographs they’re known for. The new edition was a surprising $20 in-person. It felt like a bit of a gamble, but I think it was worth it.

By the numbers, it’s ~125 pages long and features 3 pictorial photoshoots. Beyond a few pages of photos, the rest is basically all writing. There are a few ads, but nothing like the volume of ads in other magazines I’ve read recently. I figured the magazine would be full of risqué photos, but it’s more of a tasteful inclusion alongside other, more substantial discussion. It is essentially all writing, and it’s good writing.

From the outset, the Editor’s Letter (Mike Guy) sets the tone of the new printing:

Five years have passed since an issue of Playboy rolled off a printing press, and they have been strange years indeed. We’ve passed through the wreckage of a pandemic, sat on a violent political see-saw, and watched as discourse shrinks to tiny digital moments that explode into divisive range at precisely the time we need reason. Just as Playboy was frustrated with the conservative norms of the ‘50s, we want to challenge them now, too. This can mean just showing up, listening; it can mean choosing connecting and pleasure over sensation and isolation. It means rejecting poisonous, meme-driven narratives, as writer Magdalene Taylor urges in “The Rise of the Beta Male” …, her disturbing report from the front lines of our emerging dystopia about young men who have given up on sex. … The internet - OnlyFans, TikTok, and the rest - has stolen sexuality and fed it into the meat grinder of the attention economy. We’re doing our part to steal it back. As the poet Wallace Stevens wrote, “The greatest poverty is not to live in the physical world.”

I didn’t anticipate an article detailing a first-person investigation into the rise of anti-semitism, or an article about a far-out apocalyptic billionaire party, nor did I expect a humorous memoir about the rise of Nashville as the bachelorette party destination. But, these were funny, interesting pieces that spurred much discussion in my house. My wife and I have taken turns reading these long-form articles aloud each night. The article on an ultra-exclusive sex party in LA fell inline with the sort of topics I expected, but the writing and description of a beautiful spectacle made us pause and say, “that actually sounds like a fun time.”

It turns out you really can read Playboy for the articles, and more importantly resonate on the value of re-engaging human connection, disarming hate, building up our communities, and challenging our preconceived notions.

This topic is for the Three Cheers for Tildes mobile app.

I'll summarize the major updates at the start of each similar topic, so people can read the updates and then hit Ignore if they don't care about more frequent updates and user feedback.

Recently:

[Android] Version 1.3.6 (Feb 28, 2025): Fixed minor UI bugs.

[iOS] Version 1.3.1 (Feb 27, 2025): Fixed an annoying scroll bug when typing comments and posts.

[Android] Version 1.3.5 (Feb 19, 2025): Fixed keyboard and animation bugs.

[Android] Version 1.3.4 (Feb 12, 2025): Fixed keyboard and markdown bar bugs.

[Android] Version 1.3.3 (Feb 11, 2025): Fixed keyboard bugs. [Cancelled this release.]

[Android] Version 1.3.2 (Feb 11, 2025): Fixed bugs reported in comments.

Version 1.3.0 (Feb 9, 2025):

This is an Android-focused update. Android 15 makes apps edge-to-edge by default so it's time to move to edge-to-edge. I've enabled it on Android 11 and higher.

Edge-to-edge mostly means turning the system bars translucent, so you can see the content all the way to the edge, instead of a blank area. In practice, we still need to keep some translucent bars there, so status bar icons and the clock can still be distinguished from app content and not become a jumbled mess.

Implementing this was a gigantic pain (which is why Google received pushback from so many developers and added an opt-out). I had to redo many layouts and re-test every screen in the app multiple times, on different Android versions and different settings (portrait, landscape, single pane, dual pane). Hope it's well received by Three Cheers users! Personally it took me a day to get accustomed to it, but I've ended up liking the edge-to-edge style more. I probably won't add a setting to turn it off.

Screenshots of what it looks like on an Android 14 device as of v1.3.1:

• 3-button nav, edge-to-edge (new): https://postimg.cc/1nnc2rWG
• 3-button nav, old: https://postimg.cc/Hcq4g8Kf
• gesture nav, edge-to-edge (new): https://postimg.cc/ctf744G6
• gesture nav, edge-to-edge (v1.3.2): https://postimg.cc/TpwHPDYB
• gesture nav, old: https://postimg.cc/PNDQMKvh

Three Cheers for iOS v1.3.0 is only minor bugfixes. iPhone apps are already edge-to-edge, and this change is Google's way of copying/catching up to Apple.

Previous topic: November 2024

Where to get it

Android version on Google Play Store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.talklittle.android.tildes

Or sideloadable APK at https://www.talklittle.com/three-cheers/

iOS version on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/three-cheers-for-tildes/id6470950557

Join TestFlight for iOS beta testing: https://testflight.apple.com/join/mpVk1qIy