Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

If you're a native English speaker, you know what "tramp" means. If you're not, you can read the wikipedia article, but also look up "tramp stamp" to get a different, more contemporary meaning. Neither is particularly helpful here though.

If you're in Czechia or Slovakia, it means something else altogether. "Tramping" describes a hobby and an identity that strongly relates to woodcraft, Scouting and perhaps a romanticized version of the old-school hobo life. Basically tramps are a loose community of people who like to walk through the forests, sleep outside, sing songs around the fire, usually drink, all the while respecting the nature and each other.

The part that I want to write about, though, is more interesting: their camps. Semi- or entirely illegal hidden spots in the forest, built and maintained by volunteers and free for use by anybody who finds them and behaves.

The community has existed for over 100 years and what helped it quite bit were oppressive regimes - first Nazis and then especially communists. People liked to escape the everyday atmosphere of oppression in the towns and disconnect from it in the countryside, where they could feel truly free for a couple of days.

When you want to sleep in the forest, you can of course just use a tarp and a sleeping bag anywhere, but there's a much more comfortable way: tramp camps. Some are legalized, with private ownership, and these days often contain your standard countryside cottages. But the majority is not. Popular tramping areas are full of spots that range from just a campfire with a couple of logs to sit on, through many places that contain comfortable benches and a wooden sleeping platform with a tarp-covered roof, to full-on small log cabins.

Some of these, mostly the bare campfire spots, are easy to find and near main trails. Others, especially the log cabins, tend to be hidden. There are no public maps. The more hidden they are, the more helpful stuff they tend to contain: a saw for making firewood, various pots for cooking and also for carrying water to douse the fire, a fire grate, sometimes even shelf-stable condiments, books, more comfortable sleeping arrangements... And most have a visitor's logbook too.

The beauty here is that all of those are free to use for anyone who finds them, and many of them are also completely illegal. I'm not sure what the rules are specifically in standard forests (though as far as I know making a fire is illegal even in those), but many tramp camps are in protected forests as well. This may sound bad, and sometimes it is. But many of the camps existed for decades before the environmental protection was established, and the people using them tend to not cause issues, so they're usually tolerated.

A large group of people of all ages that isn't organized in any way and merely like doing what they do has spent countless hours working to build and maintain these spots - just to bring joy not only to themselves and their friends, but also to other people they've never met.

It all relies on two things. First, the locations of these spots will only be shared privately or found by people who care and make the minimal effort to find them, and therefore are unlikely to abuse them. Second, the authorities know this too and therefore have no reason to interfere even where law says they should.

I love these instances of systems that work entirely without the involvement of any official structures, based on trust among completely unknown people, only protected by minimal gatekeeping. What they're doing could be harmful to the environment if they were selfish or irresponsible, but they're neither, so it has worked for a century.

Their image has some specifics

Oh, and there's one more thing that may seem cute to people from north America. Tramp culture used to almost idolize some small parts of US and to a smaller degree Canadian history and culture. This was understandable - the freedom of living in the wilderness of old-timey North America or in the wild west as known from literature and Western films felt like the complete antithesis to living under the oppression of soviet-style communism. But it often brought things that in retrospect may seem cute, a bit silly or even wrong.

For example every legalized and permanent tramp village had a leader who would settle disputes etc., called a sheriff. Unfortunately, those people were often targets of the communist secret police, trying to break them to snitch on their friends. Many camps have vaguely foreign names, or names inspired by real places in the US or Canada. I remember a camp called "Ontarko", a diminutive of Ontario.

But aside from western symbols like clothes, cow skulls etc., sometimes some Native American imagery or military references (tramps to this day like older versions of US Army backpacks) you would also often see Confederate flags.

These days they're almost gone, but you may still encounter them among old tramps. In the pre-internet era, with heavily censored information coming from the west, they were often seen simply as a symbol of rebellion, freedom and independence. American Civil War was barely understood here, and almost nobody saw the negative connotations that many people in the West immediately perceive today.

Why am I writing this now?

One of the prime tramping locations is around the area where my parents live, and every time I visit I take a bike to ride into the hills and then walk around interesting potential spots - near streams and springs, on steep hill sides farther away from paths, behind unusually dense patches of forest etc. So far I have found around 7 of them nearby (and probably 10 others elsewhere). It's like a game of geocaching that, instead of just giving you a virtual point, grants you a new place you can grill sausages and then sleep in, often times quite beautiful too.

Unfortunately, the fact that many of the spots are on protected land and therefore illegal has one obvious downside: it would just take one person with a lot of time and energy to start pressuring the authorities to remove them, even if they don't want to.

Quite honestly, some of the camps are a bit much. Log cabins partially covered in creosote (preserves wood but is quite far from eco friendly), with store-bought doors, on protected land... Yeah. I can see why somebody would have a problem with that. This is a small minority though.

As often happens, the one person unfortunately eventually appeared and started pushing for the removal of all of those camps. He's a journalist known mainly for being contrarian and combative. There are some minor aspects of tramping that are clearly too much as mentioned above, and others that are clearly up for discussion, but this is not his approach: his work feels truly personal, fueled by hostility towards the whole subculture, ego, and an unwillingness to understand why these places matter to people.

His communication is spiteful, full of juvenile snark, including things like mockingly misspelling tramp slang. He (or possibly some accomplice) also uses dirty tactics like mapping the camps and then anonymously publishing the maps online and in smartphone apps, where the pretense is "democratizing access to the camps", but the real intent is to remove the gatekeeping so that people who do not care about nature start using the camps, leaving a mess and causing issues, which forces authorities to act.

Unfortunately it works. In the most popular protected area many of the camps have been removed, others are scheduled for removal. Just a few camps are planned to be legalized with some conditions, despite his demands, at least.

So far this only concerns the protected areas, the hills behind my parents' house should be safe for now. Most of the forests around there are privately owned, which may or may not help when he tries to target them in the future. I hope it does. The mapping of the area is already slowly starting though.

I'm giving you some crude phone photos of the camps I or other people have found. I really want you to imagine the feeling of walking around the beautiful temperate forests of central Europe and knowing that these places are probably somewhere around you and they are free for you to use and enjoy, if you just find them and leave them in the same state after using them. They're not alpine cabins intended for survival, they are purely for enjoyment with your friends, family or alone.

A couple examples

I wish I could share more, but I only started taking photos of them relatively recently, and there are a couple that I'm not comfortable sharing even anonymously here.

Here's a tiny gallery

And here's a video of my band playing a very old tramp song from 1939 (yeah, I know what I say below) in another one - a big campfire with a half-circle of benches around it, likely established by a local scout troop.

I am not a member of the subculture, I am not a tramp. I hate the music they traditionally play, I don't like cheap rum and I don't have that much in common with many of them. But I have a lot of respect for their traditions and the beauty of the whole concept is that I can experience some of it on my own terms.

I can only hope that in the future, when the one majorly disliked person pushing for their removal no longer has the strength to do what he does, the camps will gradually get rebuilt and the tradition will recover in some way.

(no, I will not address the clickbait elephant in the title)

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

Canadian Grand Prix
Circuit Gilles-Villeneuve
May 22-24, 2026

Next race:
Monaco Grand Prix
Circuit de Monaco
June 5-7, 2026

The survey has been closed and the results are in!

Thank you to all the 115 people that responded! Check out the dashboard for the full results! And the next four surveys we will do are:

1. In first place with 26 votes: What is your gender identity?
2. Second place with 25 votes: What's your favorite video game?
3. Third place 24 with votes: How optimistic are you about the future?
4. And fourth with 23 votes: How often do you visit/read Tildes?

• ZIP download of the data

Thank you all again for participating! Hope to see you in the next survey! :)

Question for those interested, what would be a good way to pose the next question "What is your gender identity?"

I have some ideas but I'd like to hear other people's thoughts too since I think historically this has been one of the more debated questions in the demographics surveys. And I think this one's an important one not to mess up. Let me know!

I work across the street from a high school football field and track. During practices and games, they play music at volumes that rattle the windows. Recently, I was in charge of running sound for an event on that same field, but I could barely get my music to play loud enough to be heard. For context, this is a sound system locked in a case so there's no possibility of adjusting levels. There's an RCA aux port with a haggard 3.5mm adapter cable and iPhone adapter. My devices are a chromebook and galaxy tablet. I eventually downloaded the sketchest sound booster app for the tablet which helped somewhat, but nowhere near as loud as what those kids get at their sports.

Does anyone have any idea what's going on here? Why don't my devices output enough? Is there a better remedy?

I’ve been taking a stack of meds for a couple years now and they work great for me. It’s Prozac, Wellbutrin, and Vyvanse.

But I’ve been feeling numb recently. I told my psych, and we’re going to trial letting go of the Prozac. What should I expect? I’d like to have food taste good again, but I also don’t want the depression to come back.

My psychiatrist says that I should reach out to her if I feel intense multiday sadness, but are there other signs I should be looking out for?

I guess I’m just trying hear more about other people’s experiences with quitting/tapering off antidepressants.

Taking it all into account - storyline, presentation, roster, gameplay, etc.

Not sure if there are too many fighting game enthusiasts on here, judging by the posts. I'm not exactly an aficionado myself, as I haven't really been into them since the Neo Geo and PS1 days. I'm probably only really qualified to say Samurai Shodown 4 is the best in the series, although it is remarkable how well Street Fighter 2 still holds up today. For Tekken, Soul Calibur, Marvel vs. Capcom, etc. I didn't play past the first couple entries.

Add awesome game deals to this topic as they come up over the course of the week!

Alternately, ask about a given game deal if you want the community’s opinions: e.g. “What games from this bundle are most worth my attention?”

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If posting a sale, it is strongly encouraged that you share why you think the available game/games are worthwhile.

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Art is an escape, an outlet for creativity. I tend to also view it becoming a burden as barriers to creation arise. Even moreso should the business and networking aspects of it be involved, however necessary an evil it may be.

I'm curious what the process is to enter your artwork into a local gallery or museum. Do you mingle during art gallery events? Perhaps you encountered a formal application, wait-list, maybe an interview?

For context, I wanted to submit a 15 minute surreal Dadaist recorded performance about modern technology and the current climate of refusing to engage in active listening.