Voting has closed for this week's topic.

The prompt is...

The Road Trip

Some questions to help you get started:

Who is the traveler?
Why are they traveling?
Where are they going? Are they going anywhere?

The questions are only meant to help you get started. Make it happy or sad, adventure or horror, romance or tragedy. Go where your imagination takes you. Don't feel constrained by what may seem to be the obvious response to the prompt.

Please keep your submissions between 1000-2000 words (for reference, this topic section is about 200 words), make sure to properly format to Tildes when submitting to the submission thread.

Submission thread will be created on Wednesday, Aug 29, EST.

Please feel free to use this thread to brainstorm or share ideas or post any other comments you have about the writing prompt group.

Have fun everyone! I can't want to see what you create!

Things I may change:

I may do away with topic voting if/until the group gets big enough, and I'll just post a weekly prompt.

Depending on the number of submissions, I may increase the max length.

Increasingly over time, I've been seeing reddit less and less like the cool startup I used to think it was and more like a business. Not a day goes by where I don't see a post breaking the site wide rules, but Reddit does nothing. And that's on top of other hate subreddits like r/The_Donald that break the rules every day. Occasionally you'll hear about subreddit mods getting PMed by admins asking them to control their users in the same way Winrar tells you your free trial is about to run out. The worst are when the admins are clearly only banning to appease their user base, like banning r/incels just for it to come back as r/braincels and the admins once again ignore it.

What artists that you know of were written off as one hit wonders or drifted into obscurity, despite them having great music and being talented musicians? I'd like to Nominate Better Than Ezra for this title. They're really only best known for Good off of the album Deluxe, but that whole album gives off a road trippy vibe that I haven't been able to find elsewhere. Also Barenaked Ladies, despite their goofy reputation, are great musicians and have a great vocalist. Conventioneers and The Night I Fell Asleep At The Wheel are both really good songs.

nowadays i dont
really feel alive
just blending day to day
fuck around to pass the time
sitting on my hands, eating
snacks watching tv.
waiting for a change
pray an angel comes to lift me
maybe this is penance
yeah, the cost of all the sinning
all pointing to the night
when you did some heavy drinking.
bottle to your lips
knife at the wrist
her essence in your head
you can't recall her voice
but you recant the promises

chant them like a cultist
while you watch the silver dance
and your press to the beat
of your alcoholic pants
sweat fills your hair
haze fills the mind
love, pain, and anger
made your soul unwind
now it lays there,
exposed to open air
only to be trampled on
by those who should be there
in a spot of rage you
threw the knife into the floor
rose from your chair and
opened up the closet door
only to write in red upon the white
"STOP ME" in bold, what foresight

you whip your head around
try to shake the thoughts out
you can't recall her face,
now an obscure grey cloud
that radiates depression
makes you feel alone
spent years with a person
they can't once pick up the phone
spent years with a person
yet you can't recall her voice
we said we loved us to death
i'm finding truth in that choice
you've suffered spring and summer
now you're heading for the fall
you look about your broken mind
god-damn it all
you thought you'd built a home
you were in it for the haul
appalled it's all dissolved
your heart it calls for more resolve
you miss her love, your home, your dog
you drove your car into a wall.

.

.

.

.

bones fractured top to bottom
are the mind manifest
codeine sponsored dreams of
laying your head on her chest
instead you feel a tightness on your neck
and this ringing in your head
you've got a neck brace, your mom's here,
you're in a hospital bed.
what's your name, and your birthday,
perfect sir, where are you at?
another nurse coming through
to make sure my mind is still intact
rib cracked, pelvic fracture, hooked
up to an iv and a piss-bag
you wore a seat belt and dont know
if that's something to thank god for
or be pissed at
isn't this the kind of story
that you wanted after all?
just to be so down and broken
hope someone saved you from the fall
have someone to hold you, stroke your hair
and tell you you can beat it all
needing that, having a lack thereof
you drove your car into a wall.

Sometimes I comment and I'm low effort and jokey or a thread develops that ends up unnecessary... And now we have a whole in joke (sorry Kat, I started it & you earned it!).

Anyway, perhaps it would be nice to add an option to set your own posts to default collapsed? We might also want an option to hide all collapsed in topic? Or do these features just encourage low effort fluff and I should just learn better self control?

Edit> OK This obviously isn't clear:
I was suggesting an option to set one of your comments & it's chain to collapsed for all other users by default.

The news: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-21/liberals-leadership-challenge-declared/10146574

A live feed: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-21/politics-live-malcolm-turnbull-in-partyroom-meeting/10146280

Some background: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-20/malcom-turnbull-leadership-crisis-explained/10139208

When I started working with development teams 3 years ago, I started learning all about agile and scrum. I'm currently a product manager working with two dev teams that loosely follow scrum. Since we don't have an official scrum master, I somewhat fill that role too. I've done my best to learn as much as I can about it and so far I'm a big fan. However I feel like most of the things I hear about it are from the scrum and agile community, which means I don't hear too many negatives. What's your experience with these been and if you were in the right position, how would you try to structure people to produce software?

I've got a K40 laser engraver that I've had a lot of fun getting up and running with K40 whisperer on a Raspberry pi, and lately I've been thinking about getting a cheap 3d printer. Does anyone have an entry level 3d printer they like and want to recommend? What kinds of projects do you like to make? Anybody have a desktop cnc or other fun toys? Let's hear about 'em.

I have been looking for some software where I can brain dump all the things I need to remember on a constant basis so I can easily find it again in the future. A personal wiki basically. I am wondering what any of you tilderians are using?

The things I am looking for:

Absolute requirements:

• Open Source: I want to be in control of the data myself, and I want to be able to hack on it myself as the need arises.
• Self Hostable: Goes hand-in-hand with with open sourceness, I want the data to live on the server in my apartment, under my own control.
• An API of some sort so I can programmatically add/read/modify data.

Nice to haves:

• Revision history of some sort.
• Common/simple data format for easy backup and longevity.
• Web interface, with mobile compatibility.
• Lightweight as possible, so I can run it on a low powered server.

Does anything know anything like that?

Options I have heard of:

• TiddlyWiki
• DokuWiki
• MediaWiki
• ZIM
• Emacs with Org Mode

Here is a previous discussion on the topic @ Lobste.rs