Having been on Android since day 1, I've had to pick up an iphone for work purposes recently. It's a great, high end one. The hardware is clearly fantastic.

But the software. How do people put up with this? I've been trying to get accustomed to it, but it's so clearly lackluster.

Aside from a plethora of minor issues I've been encountering, what's most unbelievable to me is how clear the lock-in is all over the place.

Things like the story about all browsers having to use the Safari view really seep out, for example I can't change the launcher/home screen to something that doesn't suck (lets me position things around and doesn't have the display density of a toddler's typewriter).

And then it was a chore to even figure out how to disable iMessage (unpopular in Europe) so I'm only sending sms via the .. sms app.

Incompatibilities all over the place. Hotspot sharing doesn't work across my 6T and iPhone, it looks like iOS hotspots are again some kind of proprietary crap. Pictures and videos being in not quite standard formats. AirPods sound quality only being decent in the Apple ecosystem as well; couldn't release an Android app to support whatever Bluetooth enhancements they're doing?

And of course, the Lightning connectors which only exist in the apple ecosystem. I agree they feel better than usb-c even, but, more of those same incompatibilities.

It almost feels like a parallel universe where everything works slightly differently, and doesn't quite have as many freedoms.

I can't deny there's some nice things in there. I actually like Safari's hold-preview for example. I also appreciate the very fine grained permission system and warnings such as "such and such app has been accessing location in the background a lot". And FaceID is really well built. But, whew, i do not know how so many people swear by it.

Some things are just different and that's okay, but some things are shockingly inferior and incompatible Just Because, and that feels super insulting 🙃

Thanks for hearing my rant.

By Bastian Berbner and John Goetz, published 1 September, 2021

The man who called himself "Mister X" in Guantánamo wore a balaclava and mirrored sunglasses when he tortured. The person he was torturing was not supposed to see his face. Now, 17 years later, Mister X is standing at a potter's wheel in his garage in Somewhere, America. A bald man with a greying beard, tattooed on the back of his neck. His hands, big and strong, mould a grey-brown lump of clay. The pot won't turn out very nice, you can already tell. He says that's the way it is with his art, he's more attracted to ugliness.

Mister X thought long and hard about whether he wanted to receive journalists and talk about what happened back then. It would be the first time that a Guantánamo torturer has spoken publicly about what he did. The meeting on this day in October 2020 was preceded by numerous emails. Now, finally, we are with him. An interview of several hours is already behind us, in which Mister X told us about his cruel work. We told him that the man he maltreated at that time would also like to talk to him. Mister X replied that on the one hand he had longed for such a conversation for 17 years - on the other hand he had dreaded it for 17 years. He asked for half an hour to think it over. He said he could think well while making pottery.

The man who would like to talk to him is called Mohamedou Ould Slahi. In the summer of 2003, he was considered the most important prisoner in the Guantánamo Bay camp. Of the almost 800 prisoners there, according to all that is known, no one was tortured as severely as he was.

There are events that determine a biography. Even if they do not last that long in terms of lifespan, in this case barely eight weeks, they unfold a power that makes everything before fade into oblivion and captivates everything after.

Back then, in the summer of 2003, Mister X was in his mid-thirties and an interrogator in the American army. He was part of the so-called Special Projects Team whose task was to break Slahi. The detainee had so far remained stubbornly silent, but the intelligence services were convinced that he possessed important information. Perhaps even information that could prevent the next major attack or lead to Osama bin Laden, who was then the world's most wanted terrorist: the leader of Al-Qaeda, the main perpetrator of the attacks of 11 September 2001.

The team's mission was to defeat evil. To achieve this, it opposed him with another evil.

Mister X always tortured at night. With each night that Slahi's silence lasted, he tried a new cruelty. He says torture is ultimately a creative process. Listening to Mister X describe what he did can leave you breathless, and sometimes Mister X seems to feel that way himself as he tells the story. Then he shakes his head. Pauses. Runs his hand through his beard. Fights back tears. He says, "Man, I can't believe this myself."

The way he speaks, you don't get the impression that it was all so long ago. In fact, it's not over at all. Mister X says there is hardly a day when he does not think about Slahi or when he does not haunt his dreams. Slahi was the case of his life, in the worst sense of the word.

There was a moment back then that not only burned itself into his memory, it also poisoned his soul, Mister X says. That night he went into the interrogation room where Slahi, small and emaciated, sat in his orange jumpsuit on a chair, chained to an eyelet in the floor. Mister X, tall and muscular, had thought of something new again. This time he pretended to go berserk. He screamed wildly, hurled chairs across the room, slammed his fist against the wall and threw papers in Slahi's face. Slahi was shaking all over.

Mister X says the reason he never got rid of that moment was not that he saw fear in Slahi's eyes, but that he, Mister X, enjoyed seeing that fear. Seeing the trembling Slahi, he says, felt like an orgasm.

Mohamedou Slahi is 50 years old today. In December 2020, two months after our visit to Mister X, he is standing on the Atlantic beach. In front of him the waves break on the Mauritanian coast, not far behind him begins the endless expanse of the Sahara. Slahi wears a Mauritanian robe and a turban, both in the bright blue of the sky above him. With narrowed eyes, he looks out to sea and says that if he were to sail off here on a steady westerly course, he would arrive where he was held for 14 years, at the south-eastern tip of Cuba.

Slahi has been free again for five years. But like Mister X, he too cannot shake off his time in Guantánamo. He now lives again in Nouakchott, the capital of Mauritania, on the edge of the desert, the place where the USA had him kidnapped a few weeks after 11 September 2001. Unlike then, he is now a celebrity. He is approached on the street, he zooms out of his house into universities and onto podiums around the world to denounce human rights abuses by the United States. He says that when he closes his eyes at night and sleep comes, sometimes the masked man comes again.

When one of the authors of this article first visited him in 2017, Slahi expressed a wish - he would like to find his torturers. At the time, he had already written a book about his time in Guantánamo. In the last sentence, he had invited the people who had tortured him to have tea with him: "My house is open."

The trauma of 11 September 2001

At that first meeting and again now, in December 2020, he says that during the torture period in Guantánamo he felt one thing above all: Hate. Again and again, he imagined the cruel way in which he would kill Mister X. He said that he had to kill him, his family and everyone else. Him, his family and everyone who meant something to him. But then, in the solitude of his cell, while thinking, praying and writing, he realised that revenge was not the answer. So he decided to try something else: Forgiveness.

In the silence of his cell, he forced himself to think that this big, strong man, Mister X, was in fact a small, weak child. A child to whom he, Mohamedou Slahi, patted his head and said: What you did is bad, but I forgive you. The process of re-educating himself took several years. But at some point, still sitting in his cell in Guantánamo, he had managed to convince himself so much of the sincerity of this thought that he really felt the need to want to forgive.

When Slahi expressed a desire to speak to Mister X, he said he hoped it would bring peace to his still troubled soul. In the best case scenario, he could replace the old, painful memories of that time with new, good memories.

Thus began our search for Mister X.

How must one imagine a man torturing another? In American files, for example in a Senate investigation report, there is a list of what Mister X did. They are descriptions of the crudest psychological and sometimes physical violence.

When you meet him, something strange happens: you don't connect the image that all the reports have created in your head with the man sitting in front of you. We know for sure that he is Mister X. Former colleagues of his have confirmed his identity to us. But the Mister X we meet is: a subtle art lover. An educated man interested in history. All in all, a pretty nice guy. After spending several days with him, one cannot escape the impression that he is apparently also a very empathetic person.

Mister X tells us that he occasionally invites homeless people to the restaurant, also that it happens that he cries in front of the TV when he sees reports from disaster areas. It is precisely because he can empathise so well that he has been so good as an interrogator, as a torturer. You have to put yourself in the other person's shoes. What causes him even greater pain? What could make him feel even more insecure? Where is his weak point? But precisely because of empathy, he says, he was also broken by what he had done at the time.

Shortly after he left Guantánamo in the winter of 2003, Mister X began to drink. It was not unusual for him to drink three bottles of red wine a night. He spent more and more time in bed and spoke less and less with his wife and children. He hardly found any sleep any more. He toyed with the idea of killing himself, he says. A doctor diagnosed him with severe post-traumatic stress disorder. The torturer, of all people, had suffered the kind of trauma one would expect to find in his victim.

There are many studies on the psychological suffering of torture victims. War refugees from Syria, refugees who were mistreated in Libyan camps, Uighur prisoners from China - in such people, depression, addictions, concentration problems, sleeping problems and suicidal thoughts are increasingly observed.

Mister X also suffered from all these symptoms.

One could see the distraught Mister X as the personification of the trauma that has gripped the entire United States since 11 September 2001. After that primal experience, the country that wanted to defend the values of the West in the fight against terror betrayed precisely those values. Rule of law. Justice. Democracy. And since that primordial experience, the country has been ravaged more than ever by an omnipresent violence perpetrated by broken people. Spree killings, assassinations, hate crimes. Maybe the whole US has some kind of post-traumatic stress syndrome?

For 17 years, Mister X says, he has been working through the guilt he has brought upon himself. He has taken medication, undergone therapy and looked for a new job. For 17 years he has been trying to make up for his mistake. A few things have helped him. A little. But not really. Maybe also because he had secretly known all these years that in order to really come clean with himself, he would have to do one thing urgently. "The decent thing to do would be to tell Slahi to his face that I regret what I did to him. That it was wrong."

In that sense, Slahi's offer to talk to us reporters is a gift. An opportunity to draw a line under the matter. But there's a thought that's been troubling Mister X and making it difficult for him to accept the offer.

Mister X still thinks Mohamedou Slahi is a terrorist. And for one of the most brilliant in recent history. A charismatic. A manipulator. A gifted communicator who already spoke four languages, Arabic, French, German and English, and taught himself a fifth, Spanish, in Guantánamo.

Slahi was probably the smartest person he had ever met, Mister X says. So smart that Slahi managed to fool his interrogators, just as he now manages to make millions of people around the world believe he is innocent. Mister X says he knows this person's psyche better than that of his own wife. For weeks he did nothing but put himself in this man's shoes and one thing was clear: Slahi was a brilliant liar.

He looks his tormentor in the face

In 2010, a US federal judge ruled that Slahi must be released because the US government's alleged evidence against him was just that, not evidence: Evidence. The government appeals.

In 2015, the book Slahi wrote in prison is published: Guantánamo Diary. It is extensively redacted, but the message is clear: the US tortured an innocent man. The book becomes a bestseller.

In 2016, Slahi is released, after 14 years without charges. In Mauritania, he is received like a hero.

In 2019, it is announced that Guantánamo Diary will be made into a film. Jodie Foster and Benedict Cumberbatch will star, and Oscar-winner Kevin Macdonald will direct.

In 2020, the Guardian's website will publish the trailer for a documentary in which one of Slahi's guards travels to Mauritania and former enemies become friends.

Apparent friends, says Mister X. He doesn't buy any of this "forgiveness stuff" from Slahi. The film scenes - the walk in the Sahara sand, Slahi laughing and helping his guard into a Mauritanian robe - , Slahi has really staged all that masterfully. Slahi who generously forgives, the decent David who rises above the corrupt Goliath - the narrative of a hero.

That is what makes Mister X hesitate for so long: Slahi, he fears, could also use him for his production. He could show the whole world: Look, now not only an insignificant guard apologises, but also my torturer, and I forgive him too! Slahi would become an even greater hero.

Is Mister X's urge to face his victim stronger than his fear of being instrumentalised?

Mister X has made a small, ugly potty. It must now dry. He puts it aside, wipes his hands on a towel and looks serious. He is silent for a long time and then says, "I'm going through with this now. Oh God."

The picture jerks, the sound wobbles, and for a brief moment hope is written on Mister X's face that technology will save him from his courage. Then the face he knows so well appears before him on the computer screen - narrow as ever, but aged. The man on the screen, unlike Slahi in 2003, has hardly any hair left. And Slahi now wears glasses, with black rims.

It is late in Mauritania, almost midnight, but Mohamedou Slahi has stayed awake. He also has a visit from a member of our team. By phone, we have been keeping Slahi updated from the US for the past few hours: There is a delay; Mister X needs a little more time.

Now a picture is also building up on the monitor in Mauritania. The greying beard, the bald head, the tattoos on the back of his neck.

Mohamedou Slahi looks his tormentor in the face. No mask, no sunglasses.

Mister X: Mister Slahi. How are you doing?

Mohamedou Slahi: How are you, sir?

Mister X: Not bad, and you?

Mohamedou Slahi: I am very well.

Mister X: That's good.

Mohamedou Slahi: Thank you for asking.

Mister X: Yes, sir. I was extremely hesitant to make this call. But let me explain a few things to you.

The first time Mister X saw him was on 22 May 2003. Mister X was standing in an observation room in Guantánamo, looking through a pane of glass that was a mirror from the other side. There, in the interrogation room, Slahi was being questioned by two FBI agents. For half a year they had spoken to him almost every day - without the slightest success. In a few days, it had already been decided, the military would take over, Mister X and his colleagues.

There was a table in the middle of the room, on one side the agents, on the other Slahi. The FBI had brought cakes. One of them, blond and tall, obviously the boss, was leafing through a Koran and saying something about a passage. Then Slahi stood up. He wore no handcuffs, no chains. He walked around the table, took the Koran from the agent's hand and said, no, no, he got it wrong, he had to see it this way and that way. In the end, Mister X watched as the agents hugged Slahi like a friend. "I couldn't believe it," he says.

The FBI agent who leafed through the Koran is Rob Zydlow. We spoke to him as well. He lives in California, he retired a few months ago. He thinks failure is a harsh word. But, yes, in Slahi's case, his plan didn't work. He tried the nice way, but no matter whether he brought home-made cakes, as he did that day, or burgers from McDonald's, whether he watched animal documentaries with Slahi or let him teach him Arabic, Slahi just didn't talk. He would always just say, "I'm innocent."

Slahi, on the other hand, says today that the FBI cake tasted good, that he liked the documentary about the Australian desert best, and that Rob Zydlow's attempt to learn Arabic was simply ridiculous. It was true that the FBI people had been reasonably nice to him for months, but he did not owe those agents any answers. On the other hand, they owed him answers. Why had the US had him kidnapped?

Slahi did not know that on that day, behind the glass, the man he would meet a little later as Mister X was watching. He did not know that in the Pentagon a document was just being passed from one office to the next, signature by signature, all the way to Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, giving examples of what methods this man could use to get the prisoner Mohamedou Slahi to talk. It was a paper that provided a framework, but still left the torture team plenty of room to come up with their own ideas.

Rob Zydlow says he sensed a real hunting fever in the army people who took over.

Mister X says he went to the army shop and bought a bluesuit. Slahi was a man-catcher, as his dealings with the FBI agents proved. So, that was the logic, Slahi would now not be dealing with a human being, but with a figure from a horror film.

"What we did to you was wrong".

In high school, Mister X was in the drama club. Even today he plays Dungeons & Dragons, a board game with elves, orcs and dragons, he reads comics and loves science fiction. While some of his colleagues were boring in their interrogation methods back then - question, question, question - he really immersed himself in the roles.

On the evening of 8 July 2003, Mister X put on his overalls, black military boots, black gloves and a black balaclava, along with mirrored sunglasses. He had Slahi brought into the interrogation room and hooked to the eyelet in the floor, but the chain was so short that Slahi could only stand bent over. Then Mister X switched on a CD player and heavy metal music filled the room, deafeningly loud.

Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor
Let the bodies hit the floor

Mister X put the song on continuous loop, turned off the lights, turned on a strobe light that emitted bright white flashes, and left the room. For a while, he says, he watched from the next room. But the music was so loud that he couldn't think. So he went outside for a smoke.

Slahi says he tried to pray, to take refuge in his own thoughts. He did not talk.

Mister X was trying out new songs. The American national anthem. A commercial for cat food that consisted only of the word "meow". Mister X turned up the air conditioning until Slahi was shaking all over. Mister X turned up the heating until Slahi had sweated through his clothes. Mister X put his feet up on the table in front of Slahi and told him that he had had a dream. In it, a pine coffin had been lowered into the ground in Guantánamo. There had been a number on the coffin. 760, Slahi's prisoner number. Then there was his outburst, which he could not get rid of later.

No matter what he did, Slahi remained silent.

Mister X: It is difficult for me to have this conversation because I am not convinced of your innocence. I still believe that you are an enemy of the United States. But what we did to you was wrong, no question about it. Nobody deserves something like that.

Mohamedou Slahi: I can assure you that I have never been an enemy of your country. I have never harmed any American. In fact, I have never harmed anyone at all. Never.

Whether Mohamedou Slahi was a terrorist, as Mister X thinks, or completely innocent, as Slahi himself claims, will probably never be clarified. Perhaps he was something in between, a sympathiser. In the search for concrete criminal acts, for terrorist actions by Mohamedou Slahi, we have spoken to many people who were close to him or who know his case well. There were constitutional protectors in Germany, where Slahi lived for eleven years, intelligence officers in Mauritania and the USA, investigators and several members of the Special Projects Team. We read German and American files. After years of research, we found - nothing.

Mohamedou Slahi grew up two hours' drive from Nouakchott, in the sandy foothills of the Sahara. His father tended the camels, his mother the twelve children. He was an exceptionally good student - just like his cousin Mahfouz, who was the same age. As teenagers, in the mid-eighties, the cousins shared a room. Late into the night, they read books about Islam and longed to join the thousands of young men from all over the Islamic world and travel to Afghanistan to fight the infidel Soviet occupiers. But they were too poor to make such a journey. Then Slahi got a scholarship to study in Germany.

In 1990, at the age of 19, he enrolled in electrical engineering in Duisburg. Five years later, now a graduate engineer, he started a job at the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronics. He now built microchips for the renowned German research institution, earning 4000 marks a month.

That was one life of Mohamedou Slahi. The other had begun during his studies.

1990: Stay in an Al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan. Weapons training, oath of allegiance to Emir Osama bin Laden.

1992: second trip to Afghanistan, where the Islamists were on the verge of overthrowing the Afghan government. Slahi was deployed in an artillery unit. After two months, he returned to Germany, allegedly, as he would later say, because the Islamists had disappointed him with their fighting among themselves - it was not at all the paradisiacal reign of God on earth that he had imagined.

At that time, there was still a kind of community of interest between Al-Qaida and the West; after all, Bin Laden's people had helped to drive the Soviet occupiers out of Afghanistan.

If you ask Slahi what his relationship with Al-Qaeda was like in 1992 after his return to Germany, he says: "That chapter of my life was closed. I cut all ties. I stopped reading the magazines, stopped informing myself about Al-Qaeda's activities, had no more friends in the organisation, no more contacts, with anyone, no phone calls, nothing."

If this were true, Slahi would have turned her back on the organisation before turning against the US.

But it isn't true. Slahi kept in touch: with his cousin, with whom he used to share a room and who had since become a confidant of Osama bin Laden under the name Abu Hafs al-Mauritani - once the cousin even called him on bin Laden's satellite phone; with a friend in Duisburg who was involved in the attack on the synagogue on Djerba in April 2002; with another friend who was later convicted of planning an attack on La Réunion. And Slahi, in Duisburg in October 1999, had three overnight guests, one of whom was Ramzi Binalshibh, who would later become one of the key planners of 9/11. Binalshibh later told his American interrogators that the other two visitors were two of the hijackers. At the meeting in Duisburg, Slahi advised them to travel to Afghanistan.

Slahi's involvement with Al-Qaeda

Slahi did not break off all contacts. On the contrary, the list of his friends and acquaintances reads like an extract from Al-Qaeda's Who's Who.

If you ask Slahi about these contacts, he confirms everything, but acts as if it is an insult that you bring up these little things at all. These were his friends, and what his friends believed or did had nothing to do with him.

All those contacts and friendships - it is not hard to imagine that hunting fever broke out among Mister X and his colleagues. It's hard to imagine what Slahi might know. Even if he himself was perhaps hardly involved.

Perhaps he would lead the investigators to his cousin, bin Laden's confidant. It was suspected that the cousin and Bin Laden were on the run together.

I wonder how many lives could be saved if only he finally came clean?

Mister X says that as a team they felt they were fighting on the front line of the war on terror. He says he was aware that if he got anything of significance out of Slahi, President George W. Bush would be informed personally.

For weeks, Mister X worked his way around Slahi. To no avail. Then he got a new boss, a man called Richard Zuley, known as Dick.

Mister X says of him today, "Dick is a diabolical motherfucker."

Richard Zuley himself says, "All Mister X got out of Slahi was petty stuff. Slahi had everything under control, we had to change that."

Zuley now lives in a row house on Chicago's north side. For years he worked here as a police officer; now, in retirement, he spends a lot of time at the airfield where his small plane is parked. When Zuley talks about how he took over Slahi's interrogations, he smiles. "There was then no question about who was in charge."

Zuley suggested to Slahi that the latter's mother could be raped if he didn't talk. And under Zuley's command, Slahi was beaten half to death. That was one day in late August 2003. When Mister X saw Slahi's bloody and swollen face, he says, he was shocked. For him, this raw physical violence went far beyond the limits of what was permissible and was also not compatible with Rumsfeld's list. Mister X confronted his boss - and was taken off the case the same day.

When asked why, Zuley replies, "I used people who were effective." One senses no sense of injustice, only pride that he managed to break Slahi.

Slahi was moved to a new cell that evening. "There was nothing in the cell," Slahi remembers, "no window. No clock. Nothing on the wall that I could look at. It was pure loneliness. I don't know how long it lasted, I didn't even know when it was day and night, but eventually I knocked and said I was ready to talk."

After months of silence, Slahi was now talking so much that Zuley had paper and pens brought to him, and later a computer. Slahi wrote that he had planned an attack on the CN Tower in Toronto. He listed accomplices. He drew organigrams of terror cells in Europe. Slahi says it was all made up.

In fact, intelligence agencies soon raised doubts about the veracity of the information Zuley's team passed on to them. In November 2003, Zuley ordered a lie detector test on Mohamedou Slahi. The latter recanted his confession and the machine failed.

Mohamedou Slahi: You know so little about me. Obviously your government has given you very little information ...

Mister X: Let me make something clear.

Mohamedou Slahi: May I please finish my sentence?

Mister X: Excuse me, please continue.

Mohamedou Slahi: The military prosecutor who was going to charge me, Stuart Couch, was going to ask for the death penalty at the beginning, but then he realised that I am innocent.

Stuart Couch is now 56 years old and a judge. An accurately dressed man with a military short haircut and a fierce southern accent. On a Sunday morning in January 2021, we have an appointment at a hotel in Charlottesville, Virginia. Couch talks about his Christian family and his time as a soldier in the Marines, which shaped him. He paints a picture of himself as a man who was shaped by a strong belief in values and rules. Rules that demanded a lot of him when he had to make the most difficult decision of his career in spring 2004.

The US government had given him, the military prosecutor, the task of indicting the most important prisoner in Guantánamo Bay, Mohamedou Ould Slahi. Of course, this was a potential death penalty case, says Couch. After all, it had to be assumed that Slahi had recruited the later hijackers for al-Qaida - at the meeting in the Duisburg flat.

There was a lot of circumstantial evidence for Slahi's involvement with Al-Qaeda, namely the many friendships and contacts. Couch assumed that with all the smoke, it was a matter of time before the fire was encountered. "My grandfather used to say, 'If you lie down with the dogs, you'll get fleas.' And man, Slahi must have lain with a lot of dogs."

But Couch found no fire - not a shred of evidence. Instead, he found something else. On a site visit to Guantánamo, he heard loud music blaring from an interrogation room in a hallway. Let the Bodies hit the floor. Through the crack in the door he saw bright flashes of light. Inside, a detainee was chained to the floor in front of two speakers.

"What I did was torture. No doubt about it"

The scene repelled him as a human being and as a Christian, he says. As a prosecutor, he immediately understood: if they did the same to Slahi, he had a huge problem. What he had said or would still say would have no relevance in court. "Under torture, people tell everything, whether it is true or not, the main thing is that the torture stops," says Couch.

He began investigating what was going on at Guantánamo. Shortly after Slahi's confession reached him, he had certainty: it was worth nothing.

Stuart Couch says he wrestled with himself for days. Not pressing charges would mean possibly letting a terrorist get away with it. He consulted with his priest. Then he told his superior that he was withdrawing from the case.

The case never went to trial. Nevertheless, Slahi remained in prison for another twelve years. Only in October 2016 was he released, one of the last decisions of the Obama administration.

Asked today if Stuart Couch believes Slahi was a terrorist then, he replies, "I don't know."

Mister X says he is sure. All you have to do is look at the way Slahi communicates. He plays games - no innocent man does that.

In fact, watching Slahi talk to Mister X, one sometimes gets the impression of watching a shrewd politician. Mister X says a total of six times that the torture should not have happened. Slahi never responds to this. Instead, he talks about other things - his innocence, criticism of America. Once he starts talking about Chalid Sheikh Mohammed, the chief planner of 9/11, who is still in Guantánamo. Another time about the US war in Afghanistan.

Mister X: I won't say anything about Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, nor about politics. I can only talk about the techniques I used. That they were wrong and I should never have done it. They should never have been abused. They should never have been beaten. That's not who we are. That's not who I am.

Mister X tells Slahi that he painted him, six years after that August day in 2003. Bleeding Slahi in oil with a busted lip and a swollen eye. Now, during the conversation, he asks us reporters to send a photo of the painting to Mauritania via WhatsApp.

Mohamedou Slahi: Ah, wow. This prisoner in the picture looks much better than the real prisoner back then. (Slahi laughs)

Mister X: You actually didn't look very good that day. And this painting is not meant to ... it's to reflect what happened to you that day.

Mister X painted the picture when he had just resigned from the army. His post-traumatic stress disorder had become so bad that he could no longer work. The alcohol had stopped helping, the medication was no longer working either. So now painting. He says he had hoped that the artistic confrontation would trigger a catharsis. But it only brought pain. So he destroyed the painting again. Only the photo is still there.

Mister X: I have to live with this shame. Maybe this is a small victory for you, that I have to live with my behaviour.

Mohamedou Slahi: Um, I don't know ... I always had the impression that you were an intelligent person. And it was hard for me to understand how you could do such a thing to me.

Slahi asks exactly the question that determines Mister X's life. After art failed to give him an answer, he tried science. He enrolled in Creative Studies at university. He studied how creativity is used for evil purposes, for cigarette advertising, weapons of mass destruction, torture. He read study after study in search of an explanation for why he was capable of so much cruelty. From all that reading, he took away: The tendency to cruelty is in all human beings. It asserts itself when the circumstances allow it. The circumstances in his case were: a country that craved revenge. A president who demanded success. A superior who spurred on the interrogators.

"My country made me do some pretty shitty things, and I did them," says Mister X. "I hate myself for it. And I hate my country for making me this monster." He speaks out, "What I did was torture. One hundred percent. No doubt about it."

The few studies that exist on people who have tortured suggest that there are two types of torturers. The ones who live on afterwards as if nothing had happened. And the others who break. Scientists suspect that it is the worldview of the torturer that determines which category he or she will fall into.

For example, if a person tortures, like Richard Zuley, in the belief that it is morally right to torture one individual in order to possibly save thousands, then he is more likely to escape unscathed.

If, like Mister X, he tortures in contradiction to his own humanism, then shame and guilt are more likely to trigger trauma. The symptoms then often resemble those of torture victims, only one thing is sometimes added: a deep mistrust in institutions. Those who have been forced to do abysmal things in the name of a system, an ideology, a country, their trust in this system, this ideology, this country is sometimes shaken by this.

Can there ever be reconciliation?

Mohamedou Slahi, the victim, on the other hand, has managed something that therapists very rarely see. Victims are often stuck in a situation of helplessness and hopelessness. Slahi has broken out of this helplessness. He has made himself an actor.

You can watch numerous videos of Slahi's performances on the net. The audience is often visibly moved when he talks about how he received his guard in Mauritania. Actress Jodie Foster, who won a Golden Globe for her role as Slahi's lawyer in the film The Mauritanian, said of him in a statement at the awards ceremony: "You taught us so much: what it means to be human. Joyful of life. Loving. Forgiving. We love you, Mohamedou Ould Slahi!"

It is always this one thing that touches people, what they admire him for: that he is willing and able to forgive.

In a way, Slahi says in one of our interviews in Mauritania, forgiveness is also a form of revenge for him. He is taking revenge on his tormentors and all the people who fought the American war on terror for 20 years: before the eyes of the world public, he exposes the actions of those who thought they were the good guys as evil. And he stylises himself, the supposedly so evil, as the good guy.

Mohamedou Slahi: I want to tell you: I forgive you, just as I forgive all those who have caused me pain. I forgive the Americans ...

Mister X: Yeah ...

Mohamedou Slahi: ... With all my heart. I want to live in peace with you.

Mister X: It is important for me to clarify that I did not ask for your forgiveness. I have to forgive myself.

It doesn't work for Mister X, he rebuffs Slahi. The two do not find each other. One last try: Slahi tries another subject.

Mohamedou Slahi: How are you today? Are you married? Do you have children?

Mister X: I'm not going to talk about my family or where I live, what I do or don't do. That's how it is, mate.

The conversation lasts 18 minutes and 46 seconds and ends with frustration on both sides.

Mohamedou Slahi: Anyway, I wish you all the best.
Mister X: You too.
Mohamedou Slahi: I think you are what you do. I forgive you with all my heart, even if you don't ask me to.
Mister X: It's okay. I have nothing more to say. Goodbye, Mister Slahi.
Mohamedou Slahi: Bye.
When the video link ends, the two are left unreconciled, the weak, self-doubting perpetrator, and the strong victim.
When one person tortures another, it's quite intimate. Tears. Screams. Pain. Fear. Nudity. A torturer sees things that otherwise only the partner sees, if at all. Mister X and Mohamedou Slahi are familiar with each other and strangers at the same time. They know everything about each other - and nothing. In this conversation, in which there seems to be nothing in common, it becomes clear that there is one thing they do share: Eight weeks in Guantánamo in the summer of 2003 have made them who they are today.
Mohamedou Slahi lives largely from his story, from what was done to him. His suffering has brought him not only pain and nightmares, but also wealth and prestige. He married a human rights lawyer who worked in Guantánamo and had a child with her. He has turned his destiny around.
In Mister X's life, almost everything has turned into its opposite. He no longer votes for the Republicans, as he used to, but for the Democrats. He is no longer for the death penalty, but against it. He is no longer sure he wants to continue living in the USA, but is thinking of emigrating.

For several years, Mister X has been teaching young soldiers and FBI agents interrogation techniques. At the beginning of the course, there are always people who say: torture should be allowed. He then says, no, absolutely not. Torture exacts a high price. Not only of the person who suffers it. But also on the one who commits it. Sometimes he talks about himself.

Source: https://www.zeit.de/2021/36/folter-guantanamo-mohamedou-ould-slahi-gefangener-folterer-gespraech-terrorismus/komplettansicht

Translated with DeepL: https://www.deepl.com/

Sometimes I write an introduction to an article and add relevant tags, and then discover it is a repost when I hit post. I know I should use the search function, but since there's an automatic anti respost feature already, could it maybe be made available sooner? Maybe others would find this useful as well. Thanks!

I'm 21 years old. I'm studying for a bachelor's degree at a very selective institution. I have a high-paying job lined up after I graduate in the spring. I'm physically active and in good health. I see my friends and family regularly. I'm able to do most of my hobbies often, and I enjoy them. I've been in therapy for a long time for no specific reason and making little specific progress.

I apologize if this is in the wrong section. I've been unable to stop writing for the past several hours and I must stop. This is where I feel it belongs the most.

When I was 18, I noticed that I was going out of my way to make female friends, but not male friends. It may have been because I thought women were more attractive or likable, but my college dorm was mostly full of women, so maybe it was just statistics. In either case, my best friends were all men. We liked to do manly things, like drinking hard liquor, lifting heavy weights, and beating each other in wrestling matches. Over the next few years, I developed a very masculine, muscular body, which I took pride in both aesthetically and sexually. Women validated my physicality and spirit in speech and action. Acquaintances referred to me as a paragon of non-toxic masculinity.

But I felt increasingly uncomfortable in male-dominated spaces, and I remember wishing that I could introduce myself as (she/her) rather than (he/him), even though that didn't really match who I was or how I felt. I enjoyed participating in activities that were full of women. I read Judith Butler and attended feminist lectures. I even took some classes at a women's college by way of a consortium. I did not cross-dress. I did not take hormones. I did not reject my identity as a man. I couldn't; I was and am decidedly male. I was reluctant to associate with men not because I felt disparate from the male psyche, but because I did not like men.

The incongruity of my supposedly virtuous masculinity and my disdain for men is striking.

When I was 19, I fell hopelessly in love with a girl at school. We discovered by chance that we very much enjoyed each other's company. We spent a great deal of time together. One evening she invited me to her bedroom to study. I had a lot of work. I painstakingly notated Hume for three hours. At midnight, as I stood in the doorway to leave, she asked me if I wanted to stay for the evening. Par for the course. I did, but I couldn't say it. I became extremely conscious of the over-neutrality of my facial expression. It turned into something approaching a pained grimace. My core contracted intensely and I spoke slowly: "I'd really like to, but I can't." I left.

We saw each other the next day. I stayed over this time. We did not have sex, but I did kiss her.

Another day passed. I invited her over this time. We tried to have sex. It didn't work.

Some number of weeks passed. We saw each other occasionally. She'd lost interest in me. I was absolutely head over heels.

Some number of months passed as we went home for the winter. I thought about her every single day. I struggled to sleep. I was listless and anxious.

We reunited in February. She was taken with me. I'd stopped thinking about her constantly, just often. We spent more time together. She would brush up against me as we walked. She would speak to me with interest and excitement. We would dance at parties. We would look into each other's eyes and smile. My affection toward her grew beyond the realm of friendship again. Then a virus struck the Eastern Seaboard with a ferocity I'd never have expected within my lifetime. Our school announced its closure. We met the night before departing to say goodbye. I wanted desperately for her to stay with me forever. As she stood up to leave, I pulled her into an embrace and, my eyes tearing up and my voice nearly breaking, whispered, "I don't want you to go." She left.

We texted over the next few months. We grew very close; closer than we'd been in person. My life was comprised of misery, separation, and apathy. I couldn't stand to be in my home any longer. I couldn't stand to be in my city any longer; I found it endlessly oppressive. I did not like being observed. I was always, always being observed. I wanted to be alone. I was never truly alone. I wanted to be with one person. I was never with her. I could not work. I could not sleep. I could not socialize. I could not breathe.

The virus found its way to her. I was very concerned. She was fine. She could not smell. She was in good spirits. I escaped. I traveled to her. We met in a hotel. We spent several days together. I returned to my prison. I stepped foot inside and fell back into the crater I'd carved for myself.

Some number of months passed. I had to see her again. I scrambled out of my crater and broke free of the cell. We met in another hotel. We spent several days together. We went on an adventure. I became lost within myself. I needed to be near her. I could barely speak to her. She wanted me to leave. She would not say it. I could see it. I could read it. I did read it. In the middle of the night, I felt an overpowering, overwhelming, push to GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT. It put the fear of God into my soul. I could not disobey, or I would die. I tried not to wake her. She heard me putting on my boots. She asked where I was going. I said that I needed to take a walk. I left as fast as my body allowed. I went out and forward. I had no destination; I just needed to depart immediately. I found a lake. It had a path nearby. The path continued into the woods, away from the water, windy and very dark. I walked along it for hours, hours, hours, hours, hours. The air was freezing. I was walking so vigorously that I had to take off my jacket. I could see the outlines of houses at some places along the path. The windows were dark. There were cars in the driveways. I intended to walk until I reached a town. I would look for a church, or a bar. Anywhere that would take me. It was cold again. I continued walking. There was no town. I continued walking. There was still no town. I continued walking. I saw lights in the distance. I continued walking. There was a lake. I approached. It was the lake I had found before. I halted and stood in place for ten minutes. I did not understand how this had happened or could happen. I sat down on a bench. I looked at the water. Across the lake, I saw a man walking alone. He took that path I had taken and disappeared into the darkness. I sat still for a very long time. Thoughts raced through my mind. I decided what I had to say to her. I went inside. A woman or man stood in the lobby. They took the elevator upstairs with me. I asked what floor. They gave some sort of answer. I pressed the button. We reached the floor I'd selected. They did not get out. I asked if this was their floor. They said no. I waited for the doors to close. We stood there in silence. The elevator brought us to our floor. I walked out. They followed me. They asked for a cigarette. I did not have any. I explained that I had to go to sleep. I walked quickly to my room. I entered. I closed the door behind me. I walked past the bed. She was awake. She asked how my walk was. I did not say anything. I could not look at her. I undressed and got into the bed. She made further conversation. I did not know what to say. She asked if I was feeling alright. I said that I was not. She asked why. My face tightened. My core tightened. I could not speak. I said, "My mind often takes me places." I paused for a long moment. "It gets anxious about people. Because I've been with you all this time, it's getting anxious about you." She said that that sounded like "normal social anxiety." I said, "No, it's..." I did not finish. I did not know how.

We have not spoken in months. I think about her every day. At many moments I feel as though I have never wanted to see someone again more. At other moments I forget her completely, if only briefly. Then the loneliness comes back.

Some weeks ago, I found myself in a distant place full of strangers. I made the acquaintance of a woman there. I liked her. She was older than me. She was very beautiful. She looked much younger than she really was. We drank wine and danced romantically at a party. Tango, waltz; whatever we could manage. She was the most attractive person there, and everyone knew it. She moved with a special mastery of her own body that I rarely saw in anyone. She was funny, and she could make really good drinks. Her friends commented on her beauty with pangs of jealousy. My heart fluttered when she entered the room, and I was drawn toward her. We spent more time together. People observed, but did not pry. She was confused or insecure about why I liked her. I offered kisses and flattery. The feeling was genuine; she had beauty beyond measure, and I felt remarkably comfortable in her presence. We had sex five times. We parted ways with a very heartfelt kiss. My mind returns now, uncontrollably, to two women.

The incongruity of the deep affection I feel and my inability to express it is striking.

TW. When I was 20, I lived far away from my friends. I spoke to my acquaintances cordially. Many of them looked up to me. I drank far too much alcohol. I saw a counselor. She spoke to me very candidly. I felt less alone.

A girl down the hall, fresh out of high school, begged me to take her virginity. She was very intoxicated. I refused. She sat on my lap and kissed me. I froze. I thought of my woman from before. She put her hand on my crotch. I gently moved her off. She asked me again. I said no. I couldn't bear to have anyone witness this. I took her outside. We walked along the road, into the darkness. She asked if we could do it tomorrow instead, and I said no again. I explained that I could not sleep with her. She did not understand. We sat down on a bench. I was exasperated. She sat on my lap and kissed me again. She asked me to squeeze her ass. I resisted. She begged. I gave up for a moment and complied, and she tried to pull me in closer. I moved her off me and stood up. We walked back home. I made sure she went to her room. I turned to go to bed. I could hear her crying through her door.

I felt that I had to leave that space. I could not. I lived there for six more months. I told no one. I avoided the girl down the hall. She and her friends always ate in the room near mine. It was hard for me to leave without being seen. I could say nothing. I pretended as though all was well with my other acquaintances. When I saw my friends, I did not tell them either. I distracted myself and moved on.

The incongruity of my unbelievable narcissism and my pitifully diffident response to unconsensual sexual acts is striking.

I'm 21 years old. Good or bad, all of that is behind me now. But it really isn't. I'm left with impressions in my mind that cannot be removed. I will never, ever forget these people; not by choice, but by imposition. I must accept this reality. In doing so I will allow myself to forget the worst parts, and so diminish the accursed reminders I presently face.

If you read all of this, thank you.

I'm in the market for a house, been looking pretty seriously for the past week or so. I've got two pre-approvals for mortgages, and I think I'll probably look for at least two more for fee comparison purposes. I have yet to actually see a house unfortunately, since every house we try to view gets sold that very same day :/ Hopefully the streak is broken, since we have an appointment with another house today!

Anyway, who here has advice for (any part of the process of) buying a house? Things to look for when viewing a house, things to consider that the common person might not, tips for making offers, tips for not giving up because of the market, etc.

I'll lead with some tidbits that I've gained from asking around friends and family that have already bought places recently.

1. Apparently, sending a personal letter to the owners with the offer letter has gotten multiple people a house even when their offer wasn't the highest. For example, my sisters friend knew the owners had a cat, and has cats herself. So in the letter she wrote, she mentioned how happy her cats would be laying on the windows and running around in all the new space and such.... and she got it! The owners realtor was kinda pissed.

2. Try to find out the reason the owners are moving out. My sister and her husbands realtor asked around, and they were able to close on their house because the owner needed a quick turnaround to get out as fast as possible. They got the house for 60K under asking price because they were able to sweeten the deal to suit the owner.

3. Location is (generally) more important than furnishings. You can add or remove things from a house, but you can't move it once you buy it.

4. Once you make an offer on a house and the owner accepts, make sure the contract includes the following two parts that are (apparently) very important:

   • House must appraise for at least the same value you've agreed to buy it at
   • Inspection must show no more than $buyer_defined_value dollars of necessary repairs, otherwise the deal should be re-negotiated or considered void.

5. Always leave enough money in your savings account to pay for any extras (because there are always extras) after the house is yours. New furniture, carpets, smaller repairs, paint, etc. You don't want to drain your account for the house only to find out you can't do anything afterwards.

I'm very excited (and exhausted already), but I want to make sure I'm as thorough as possible since I'll be spending the next several years of my life in it!

Forgot to mention(Thanks @Thra11), this is the US East Coast.

I've spoken about my personal journey over the past six months in comments a few times, but I felt the need to make a post about it, mostly as catharsis for myself, but if it helps other people out, that would be cool too. Also, I may be doxxing myself a bit here, which is a little unavoidable if I want to tell this story accurately. I'd appreciate not being stalked.

I'd like to detail my journey of what is, so far, the most difficult time in my life, what I've been doing to cope, how I'm doing now, and what the future may hold for me. This may be a little long and detailed, but I'll try to hit the high points.
Lets start at the beginning here.
I'm a 34 year old part time military officer in the US. I met my ex wife years ago, in high school originally. We were casual acquaintances back then. We had a couple of classes together, and I would tease her a little bit (I was immature when I was young, and totally unable to communicate well with girls). We went to prom together, but mostly lost touch after high school.

After college, I came back to my home town, started developing my career in IT, hanging out with friends and coworkers. One of the people I worked with happened to be dating a girl who was good friends with my ex wife, and we started all hanging out, and reconnecting. My ex confessed that she always had a crush on me, and started actively perusing me. It started out as a casual relationship that I didn't see going anywhere, but it lasted. Eventually, I fell deeply in love with her, and we moved in together a short while later.

I was so devoted to this woman. We were so alike in so many ways. We shared the same interests, the same type of humor, we developed our own language and style of communication. I had never really seriously considered wanting kids, and over time and a bunch of thought, I decided that I didn't really agree with the institution of marriage. In my mind, when two people love each other, that should be enough, and either party should be free to walk away at any time without any legal burdens or extra hoops to jump through, because I wouldn't want someone to be obligated to stay with me for even one minute.

Both things were really important to her however, and we almost broke up over it. Eventually, after spending time with kids, and some deep introspection on my own part, I came around on kids, and coming around on kids almost necessitates coming around on marriage. You don't need to be married to have kids, of course, but it certainly provides a more stable environment and smooths out a lot of practical, logistical concerns. I asked her to marry me shortly after that, after five years together, in 2016.

What followed were the happiest couple of years of my life. My wife had worked her way up in an accounting firm, she was managing a department, on track to become a partner in a few years. She had so much determination, ambition, and grit. It made me glassy eyed to think about how proud I was of her, all the personal growth and progress she'd made since I knew that girl in high school. I was developing a successful career in network engineering as well, and frequently flying out for short stints and conferences and design meetings. We were still best friends, and always wondered about people in unhappy marriages. Why couldn't they just be like us? Why were we so good at this?

We took trips together, we watched shows together on the couch, I couldn't get enough of her.

Her job had always been stressful, but some time around 2018, the stress had come to a head. She was frequently working until 10pm on week nights during her busy season, then she'd come home, down a few glasses of wine, go to bed after me, and wake up far too late, continuing the cycle of stress. This continued on for a few months. I tried to be there for her, prepare meals, support her however I could, but to little avail. She was angry, stressed out, upset all the time. She'd cry from the stress frequently, and was totally unable to cope.

One day, she came to me with a proposal. She would quit her job and start her own business. I always knew that she wanted to do that eventually, but I had hoped it would be after she had amassed significant savings to do it. Her business idea was to start a tabletop gaming cafe. We had gotten pretty deep into board games and TTRPGs, and she thought that with her business sense and accounting knowledge, she'd be a perfect fit to do this job. I agreed with her, but a significant part of me thought that it was a massive risk, and financially, we were on the cusp of being truly independent. This would set us back a few years in the best possible scenario. She was my wife though, and I saw what this job was doing to her, so I agreed.
She would work six more months while planning, save her money, and then quit to start this venture.

As everyone told us it would, it did not exactly go according to plan. Securing a location and funding was far more difficult than she anticipated. She was stuck waiting for 8 months for a location that didn't pan out. She wasn't used to having to push people and follow up and annoy people to get them to do what they'd say they did, all of that was new for her. No one would extend a small business loan to an unproven entrepreneur with a fairly novel business plan. All in all, between the location, and the build out, and delays with licensing and permits, she mostly waited around for two years. In this time, I could see she was spiraling. She'd wake up at noon and do puzzles or binge watch tv all day. At night, she would go out drinking with her friends. I would join sometimes, but I couldn't, and didn't want to most of the time because I was just exhausted from work.

Around this time, I discussed with my ex wife, and took a new position in the military, and got word that I would be deploying in 2020. I'm a leader of about 150 people, and preparing for this kind of thing is extremely involved, so I was working a lot. Meanwhile, my ex wife was going out constantly, 3-4 times a week, and coming home absolutely wasted. Sometimes she ubered, but other times she drove. In late 2019, I told her that I was concerned about how much she was drinking, that I thought it was unsafe. This was a bit of a wakeup call for her, as she had struggles with alcoholism in the past. She told me she was going to stop drinking and start going back to AA. I told her that if she thought that was what she needed to do, I would support her. She started her sobriety journey, and things started improving. She still was in limbo with her business, but construction was at least starting, she could see the light at the end of the tunnel.

In spring of 2020, I left for my deployment in the middle east, hopeful and optimistic. Her business was coming along nicely, I was taking this fairly prestigious position, and I was excited. We were sad to be apart, and it was heartbreaking to say good bye, but I'd see her again in ten short months.

The deployment was stressful, but rewarding. I accomplished a lot of things I'm very proud of while I was out there, and about halfway through, my wife finally opened her business! This is where things started taking a turn. She was unable to secure funding still, so she basically dumped all of her debts on my lap. She never directly asked me for the money, but she worded it in such a way that I couldn't really refused. "Hey... so the contractors are asking for their 60k... I don't have any way to pay them... so... I need to figure something out". Of course, she was my wife, I had the money, why would I say no? I had always been very good at saving, and had a decent amount in investments. All in all, I spent about $160k directly funding her business. It was an emotional, somewhat sickening feeling parting with that much money. My life savings more or less. This wasn't part of the plan, and I was upset at her for putting me in this position.
I told myself that it was ok. This was an investment in us. She'd make that back eventually, and what's hers is mine and what's mine is hers. Besides, this was my wife, and above all else, I wanted her to be happy. I stuffed those feelings of pain and resentment down, and continued with the deployment.

During the whole time I was gone, I would get messages from her about how hard it was being alone, how difficult taking care of the dog and business was, how lonely she felt, how much she missed me and she couldn't bare it anymore. I felt truly awful, but there was very little I could do 10,000 miles away. I texted with her often (the signal wasn't so good for live video or audio calls). We would sext a bit, exchange nudes to try to tide each other over, but I could tell she was struggling in that area as well.
About five months in, that kind of thing abruptly stopped. At the time, I thought she was learning coping strategies and adjusting to life with me gone. How little did I know.
This winter, I came home finally. Stepping off that plane into the terminal, a few hundred yards away from my wife was the most excited I've ever been in my life. I was giddy, there was a huge smile on my face as I walked down the concourse in my uniform, and the first glimpse I got of her standing there, my god, it was like being in the desert and stumbling upon a pristine oasis. She had requested that my parents not be there, so against my better judgement, I told them that they were not to come, but I didn't think about that at all. She was standing there in a ratty sweatshirt and jeans, but she was still the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. I went up and hugged her tightly, kissed her, and told her how much I loved her. Having her in my arms after so long was just such an amazing feeling.
We went back to her car, and things quickly became much more... 'clinical', I'd say. Instead of feeling like we hadn't seen each other for ten months, it was like we were just hanging out on the couch after a long weekend, talking about practical things very quickly. It didn't really strike me as odd at the time, only now looking back on it.

We went home, had sex, I got a burger, we were content. The next week or so, that same 'clinical' feeling persisted. She took one day off of work, then went back, saying that because the business was so new she couldn't take much time off. Fine. I stopped by the shop often, but every time I was there, I got a cold feeling from her and her employees, like I wasn't truly welcome. She would come home late each night and we'd watch something or have sex, but I didn't really see her much. I really wanted to go do a trip together, spend some quality time together, but it didn't pan out. I spent my time fixing up the house which she'd let fall into disrepair or playing video games to relax.

One night, a week later (February 9th), I'm up late waiting for her to get home. 12:30 rolls around, no word from her. 1:00, nothing. Finally I message her, ask her when she's going to be home. She said she got caught up at work, and would be staying over her friends house for the night. A bit odd as her friend lives maybe 1/2 mile down the road, but whatever, she told me she'd been staying with this friend a lot while I was gone to stave off loneliness, so maybe she just misses that. I go to bed alone disappointed.

The next day, she comes home at 10, I'm on the computer. She sits down on the couch, and doesn't say anything. I can tell she's upset, so I ask her what's wrong. No answer. I turn the computer off and walk over, and ask her again.

She blurts it out. "I want a divorce".

This didn't even register for me. I didn't even hear her at first. After a few seconds, I just immediately assumed she was joking. It was a frequent joke of ours "You don't like this movie? We're getting a divorce!" it was one of many things we did to mess around.
I smiled a little, then it vanished. "Wait... you're serious?"

My head fell into my hands. "I don't understand... why?"

The reasons she gave me made no sense. I wasn't affectionate enough. I wasn't outgoing or social enough. She didn't like the nicknames I gave her. Stuff that had never come up before, and besides, I'd just been gone for close to a year, why are these suddenly issues now?

I thought, easy, I can fix all of that stuff no problem. We'll go to couples counseling. No, I'm tired of counseling (We never did any form of counseling together).

Okay, lets take that trip, lets work on the marriage. No, I'm tired of fighting.

None of it made any sense. She had to run some errands, I asked if I could come, I just needed to spend time with her and get to the bottom of this. She went to work. I stopped by, tried to get some clarity. She reiterated the same points, said that we don't communicate well. Referenced a fight we had at a party 3 years ago where we didn't talk for a day. I barely even remember what the argument was about. I hugged her, whispered to her that I can't lose her. She responded "Wellllll.....". That night, she told me she was staying at her mom's.

I talked to a friend of mine who is a divorce attorney a couple of days later. He told me that he hates to bring this up, but 99% of the time in situations like this, the wife is cheating. I hadn't done any snooping until then, but she had an old phone at the house. I opened it up. There it was in black and white. She'd been having an affair with one of the regular customers at her store for six months. "I love you baby" "I can't wait for us to be together" "You make me so happy".

I wanted to vomit. I wanted to break things. I wanted to murder this guy. I wanted my wife back. I felt so much rage, confusion, sadness, worthlessness. I couldn't bring myself to be mad at her though. When I read it, I was on the phone on my friend, and exclaimed "That fucking BITCH!", but I didn't really mean it. Not my beautiful wife. It was the guy's fault. He corrupted her. He was insistent and wore her defenses down. He turned my wife against me.

I contacted a divorce attorney that day. The marriage was over, I knew that now. What followed were the worst two months of my life. So much self loathing and depression. Anxiety. Panic attacks. How could I have not seen this? Where did I go wrong? Why did I go on that deployment? Why didn't I call and text my wife more? What did this guy have that I didn't? My friends and family helped, but some advice was better than others. "Just don't think about her" is not good advice, FYI.

I enrolled in therapy for the first time in my life. It helped a little, not a lot though. I kept up with my gym routine, which did help. I spent a lot of time walking my dog.

Eventually, I called my ex, and I told her "I want to do this quickly and with as little emotion as possible. I have a lot of things I'm feeling right now but I'm not going to bring them up because I want this to go smoothly." I never told her that I knew about the affair. My lawyer said it could only hurt things. Eventually we came to a settlement. I'd keep the house, my dog, my investments, etc. She'd keep her business, including the bulk of the capital I'd spent on it. The lawyer said this was a good deal. I still felt like I was getting fucked. I gave her that money less than a month before she started cheating on me. It was a complete slap in the face.

I spent a lot of time curled up in a ball crying. Prior to this, I hadn't cried in fifteen years. Little things would trigger me. A text from her about finances. Someone telling me about her shop. A smell that reminded me of her.

Two months after our separation, I started dating again. I met a wonderful woman, she sold exotic plants for a living. Empathetic, kind, beautiful, smart. It didn't work out. She needed someone in a more stable place. Looking back it was too soon.

I kept up with therapy and the gym, they both helped a little. I've gone on a couple more dates since then, nothing has really stuck. I'm still struggling with feelings of self confidence/attractiveness.

All in all, I DO feel better than I did, but I still don't feel great. I've been trying to expand my hobbies, I'm playing kickball now, I've picked up surfing. I'm trying to force myself to be a little more outgoing and social. I'd like to make new friends also, but not a ton of luck there yet. I do still cry sometimes. The other day, I was driving home from a bar, taking a route I used to take with my ex when we came from the movies. I remembered how happy I was with her by my side back then and started crying on the way home. I really hope that happens less. It's really unpleasant.

I have lately been feeling like I'm in a little bit of a rut. It's been six months and each week flies by with me doing much of the same thing. Video games at night, work during the day, gym in the afternoon, maybe a date here or there. I wouldn't mind maybe moving to a new city, but the thought of that and all the work that's involved, and having no friends is frankly terrifying to me. I do know that I don't want to live life like groundhog day. I want to experience more new experiences.

As far as I know, my ex wife has gone public with her relationship with the guy she left me for. By all outside accounts she seems happy, but who knows, I don't really keep tabs on her much and only communicate with her regarding a payment she owes me from the marriage. I've come to redirect most of the anger I had towards the guy at her instead. I am extremely bitter towards her and what she did, and I probably always will be. I don't see forgiveness in my future any time soon. I wrote her a letter after the divorce was finalized detailing that I knew everything she'd been doing, and assuring her that what she did was irredeemable, and no matter how she justified it in her head, it was not ok. I don't know if she ever even read it. She's still never apologized for what she did, and I doubt she ever will.

As for me, I'd like to get to a place where I'm happy by myself. That'll be a long road I think, as even before I met my ex, I wasn't happy alone. I'd like to go amass new experiences; see the world, live in new places, do things I've never done before. I feel like I'm getting old, and I haven't done the things I want to do yet.

I'd also like to find someone to fall in love with again. I love having a partner around and I'd be sad if I couldn't find someone to connect with like that again. I've been doing online dating, but man, it's really rough out there. I far prefer meeting people the way I met my ex, but you can't force that.

I hope that I continue to get better. It feels like a kind of plateau right now. If I compare how I feel now to the happiest moments of my life with my ex as a 10, and the month right after the separation as a 1, I would say I'm at around a 5. Not horrible, but not very good either. I hope that number steadily increases, with or without another person.

One "gift" that this whole experience has given me is self awareness of my emotional state. I feel a lot more in tune with the way I feel. I know when I'm having a bad day, and I usually know if I'm feeling bad just because I'm tired, or because I haven't had caffeine, or because something triggered me.

I also feel a lot more deeply now. I cry during emotional scenes in TV shows, I have highs and lows, whereas before I remember even telling my ex that emotionally, I felt a little numb. That could be a good thing depending on how you look at it.

Anyway, I know it was a little long, and if you read it, thank you. If you've got any questions or comments, feel free to leave them, and if this is inappropriate for this board, please feel free to let me know and I'll remove it.

Hey All - Spending the month of July in New Orleans and it just occurred to me I could get some great rec's here. Anyone have any suggestions for places to eat/drink that aren't the usually touristy spots? We aren't afraid of spice, and love baked treats as well. Would welcome any recommendations. Thanks!

So my spouse is getting fed up with Facebook and would like to download all of her photos and ideally any photos others have taken that she’s tagged in. She’d like to do a single bulk download, but is having trouble navigating Facebook’s intentionally confusing settings to do this. I don’t have an account and have never used Facebook beyond reading the occasional post a friend has sent me, so I don’t really know how to help in this case.

This guide claims to be from 2021. Following the steps in section 3 we see something that looks very similar but not exactly the same under her settings. Where they have a list containing items like “Posts”, “Photos and videos”, “Comments”, etc. We see a different list and it doesn’t have any option for “Photos and Videos.” There is one section titled, “Short videos”, but nothing about photos at all. Has Facebook changed this recently, or does she have some weird setting that’s causing it not to show up? Or is the guide just wrong? (Or maybe they’re A/B testing something and that’s why she isn’t seeing it?)

Any help appreciated. Thanks!

EDIT: I think we figured it out. It looks like Posts and Photos have been combined into just "Posts" with no mention of photos whatsoever. When you get the resulting .zip file, it contains the photos, though. It's typically shitty of Facebook.

I just wanted to see what everyone else’s experience has been working with your ISP. I recently had a horrible experience and wanted to see if anyone else can relate and maybe just vent a little.

My recent experience: I moved to a new town, and I had been experiencing issues with my internet dropping out, as we all probably have had at some point, and I contacted Cox communications through their chat app. After multiple attempts to fix it, they finally sent a tech out to find that the coax connectors at the pole were rusted out. He replaced them but it wasn’t fixed completely. The tech dismissed it and said to just use it for now and I wouldn’t notice. So I did, and it wasn’t great at first, but it actually slowly got better and was good for a while until the last couple of weeks. This past week every single night it would drop out. I watched the connection drop while I was trying to watch mythic quest (great show btw) and every night for the past week the internet was unusable in the evenings. I then contacted Cox again multiple times, got a credit refunded back to my account and they wanted to do the whole reset modem thing again, so I did just to get to the next steps. Again they said use it and see if it improves, so I did, and it didn’t. I contacted them again, and again the modem reset, so I got fed up and filed a complaint with the FCC while I was chatting with this guy and he had the nerve to try and sell me home automation at the end of our chat!

The next day goes by, a woman from their escalation lines contacts me about my FCC complaint and they send a new tech out. Turns out Cox never buried my original line in conduit, so the line was probably damaged underground as it was sending a weak return signal. The tech ran a new drop from a different tap and used the thickest coax I’ve ever seen. So far it’s been good after the new drop, but it took multiple chats and calls with two different field technicians and an FCC complaint to get it fixed. The worst part about it is Cox Communications is the only broadband ISP in my area other than Starlink and I seriously considered Starlink. So if you read this far, thanks! Please share your experiences if you’d like, or if you want to vent that’s okay.

I am not a developer, but I do have interesting in learning.

A while ago I asked a question similar to that. I did not take any concrete action since then, and now have some new information to add.

The website shall be called myactualname.com, and will contain about/biography, and a few sections containing articles that I wish to write on different subjects.

That can probably be done without coding on one of the many free blogging platforms currently available, such as Medium, Wordpress, and Substack, but the lack of control is unfortunate.

At the same time, I wish for this website to last a long time, and to be reasonably independent of maintenance. With the Brazilian Real valued at less than one-fifth of the US dollar, hosting prices skyrocketed. Besides, I cannot always rely on my own ability to stay on top of that kind of thing, so it would be beneficial for my web presence to be more resilient than my bank account and mental state. I figure that hosting it on Github Pages, Gitlab Pages (or both) would be a good way to avoid ever going down (it looks like duplicate content is bad for search engines, though, so I might keep one of those private, just for backup reasons). And I could reserve the domain for two or three years in advance.

I really like simple text-focused personal websites like this one. They load fast and are easy to read, but are generally not very pretty or responsive. I have basic notions of HTML and CSS and intend to learn more.

In the previous post, someone suggested using Hugo, which seems like a good option. On the other hand, for something that simple, I wonder what would be the downside of simply coding it from scratch. One thing I know for sure is that I want this website to be rather permanent: whatever changes I ever do to its design should not impact accessibility to previous content (link rot). How can I achieve that? No idea.

Since I write in English and Portuguese, the website must be bilingual. I'm not sure how to implement or manage that, especially in regards to search engines.

I resumed the course on Free Code Camp, which I expect will help in achieving all that.

With that in mind, I reiterate my question: should I make my personal website? Should I just use a free blogging platform? Should I use Hugo or something similar? Any particular free CMS? Or maybe just use what I learn to code it from scratch?

Thanks!

I am just coming out of a lifetime of depression. I am 24 now, and I have no memories of an idyllic childhood, carefree adolescence or an exciting college life. Sure there were moments I enjoyed more than others, but all were consumed by that all encompassing grey void. The one that makes everything have a dreary sameness. The one that steals every good thing and every bad thing, and just makes them both nothing

I have been crawling out of my depression for the last 6 years. I made small steps through college, but due to a horrible junior year, I fell back a lot in my senior year and the year after that. I worked a horrible job as a phone support technician. However quitting that job was my first step of healing, so that was one good thing I got out of it. I have been unemployed for the last year and a half, which has been the most valuable period in my life. I could do nothing but look into my own pain, observe my own wounds. It fucking sucked. But sometimes the only way is through.

Being depressed all my life, I haven't really done anything. I am a virgin and I've never been in a romantic relationship; I still feel a bit ashamed and uncomfortable with this. I've only ever had a few friends, though me having any is a bit of surprise. I've never focused on something, worked on it day-in-day. Thinking of all the opportunities I've never had for friends, for quiet moments, for the nervous butterflies of just meeting someone you like, fills me with an overwhelming sense of anguish. It hurts so much to imagine all the possibilities that I could have had if I had escaped sooner. But dwelling on it doesn't help me at all, so I try and not think about it too much.

Now that I am not being crushed by depression, I am filled with so many conflicting emotions. I am impatient because now that I can experience some of life, I want it all now. I am terrified because I am, for all intents and purposes, a new person who has no experience in anything. I am excited because I have so many first times for so many different things. I am scared shit less because I am unemployed and I don't have a clear path to finding work. I am constantly stressed that everything will come crashing back down around me, and I will fall back into depression. I am happy because I am going to see my best friend soon, for the first time I am on this side.

I am writing this because I want to say it to people who know nothing about me. I want other people to acknowledge my pain. Its a bit selfish, I know, but I am okay with that. So if you read through all of this, thank you

And if you are going through depression or even just hard times, please feel free to message me. And no you won't be bothering me, no I dont have better things to do, no I won't judge you.

I’m writing the best man speech for my brother’s upcoming wedding. I haven’t been to many weddings so to be honest I’m not super familiar with the format of this speeches, or things I should be sure to mention (I.e. things like “be sure to thank xyz person”). I’m asking some family members but thought I should cast a wider net and ask here too. Any advice for writing this type of thing? Any memorable ones, good or bad, to emulate or avoid?

My Goal

I am applying to Canadian universities for fall admission as a CS major. This will be my second degree, and one of the requirements of getting admitted for a second degree is to show that you have a significant interest in the subject. My plan is to get online certificates to show that I am actually dedicated to learning CS and getting a job in the field. I am actually dedicated, I just need a way to show it on paper. I have some experience with software development (only the basics), but there aren't any records of it since it was just informal study.

My Problem

I can't decide which certificates I should pursue. I am torn between EdX and Udemy. I would Tilderinos' help in choosing between the two. I would also appreciate any general advice you may have.

Here are the courses I plan to take on EdX (prices in USD):

UBC's MicroMasters Program in
Software Development - $832

Harvard CS50's Web Programming with Python and JavaScript - $199

IBM's Professional Certificate in
Cloud Application Development Foundations - $169

Here are the courses I plan to take on Udemy:

The Ultimate 2021 Fullstack Web Development Bootcamp - $15

The Complete 2021 Web Development Bootcamp - $15

The Ultimate MySQL Bootcamp: Go from SQL Beginner to Expert - $30

Angular - The Complete Guide (2021 Edition) - $15

Comparisons

To reiterate, I have two goals going into this. One is to actually learn web development, since I would like to become a fullstack developer (but my options are semi-open). The other is to prove to the Canadian universities that I am dedicated to learning and to give myself an edge over applicants.

If I go with EdX, then I have to pay a much steeper price for the certificates. These courses also take a long time to get through and the projects don't seem as relevant to real word applications. But I will also be learning from established institutions like Harvard and UBC. EdX certificates also come with the distinct advantage that a human is checking the problem sets you submit. This will show the Canadian universities that I have actually spent the time and effort to go through the courses and pass them.

If I go with Udemy, I will get through the courses in less time and their projects seem more related to real world projects. If I go through the courses faster, I will also have more time to start on some personal projects, and I can show my dedication to learning through those projects. Personal projects and also volunteer work will also help establish a resumé for future work. The courses on Udemy are a lot cheaper too. But they don't have the same level of verification or prestige that EdX does.

So in summary, EdX has prestige and quality courses, but a steep prices and a huge time commitment. Udemy is cheaper and gives me more opportunities to do personal projects and volunteer work, but it's certificates aren't fully trustworthy from the Canadian universities' perspective.

Final Words

What do you think? Which path should I take?

For those of you wondering, why I am going to university instead of a bootcamp, it's because I plan to immigrate to Canada and becoming a student seems the straightest way of getting PR. I need to leave my third world country as soon as I can, for mental health and economic reasons. I have been mostly unemployed ever since the pandemic started so I can't get work in Canada (or the U.S.) on my first degree (a management degree). I already tried that route. I can't find proper work here either.

Also, I am sorry if I posted in the wrong group, or if I shouldn't have posted it anywhere at all. I desperately need advice on what to do and I don't have a trustworthy network here that can help me through this. I'm sorry and thank you for your help.

Speculative fiction contains elements that don't exist in reality. It includes genres such as science fiction, fantasy, and supernatural horror.

A producer friend is looking for stories with a focus on LGBT issues. As someone with a predilection for speculative fiction, it would be great to read/watch some speculative stories that deal with issues in that area. I am aware of some stories with LGBT characters, but gender and LGBT issues are generally not the main themes. I'd love to get suggestions for movies, TV shows, and books (especially short stories) that deal with those issues in a proper and inventive way.

As usual, Wikipedia has an extensive list on the subject, but I was hoping to get some more personal suggestions from the Tildes crowd.

Thanks!

Sometimes a comment thread is very very toxic/controversial and I would like to avoid getting sucked into it. Just because my decision-making is much better at 2pm than it is at 2am. I understand I can and should exercise self-control, and I'm working on it, I assure you! In the meantime, if at all possible, it would be nice to remove certain comments from my view, along with its children. Thanks!

For the past 3 years I haven't worked in any full-time job because I've been trying to sort my mental illness problems and I started a new Master's degree. Now that I am working on my thesis and my savings are running out, I want and need to find a job.

The problem is that my mental health still isn't where I wanted it to be. I don't think I can work 8h per day. For example right now I'm trying new medication and after around 3 hours of focused work I get tired and sleepy.

I've been applying to many jobs and I feel I'm close to getting one as I'm having multiple interviews per week. So far I've explained the gap in my resume as being severely I'll and needing time to get treatment. But I never tell interviewers exactly what my issues are or that I'm still figuring out how to be at the level of a normal person.

I've been hearing a podcast about a guy who faces the same issues as me and his strategy was to be upfront with his employer and tell them when he is entering a dark period and needs to work less. He works in the effective altruism industry which I think is very different from the rest. I think that if I am as upfront as he is I wouldn't get a single interview.

Tell me what you think. Thanks.

I once heard about a website that does this, but I cannot find it. You would give the website an RSS feed, and it would give you a new feed to subscribe to. It would then release “new” episodes on a set schedule. This way you could listen to, for example, a weekly podcast starting at the very beginning, released on a weekly schedule as if you were listening to it when it first released.

I hope one of you awesome tilderinos know a website that does this. Thanks in advance!

Note: this will be a noisy thread! If you would not like to see it in your feed, please use the ignore feature!

IMPORTANT UPDATE

This offer is no longer available. Thanks to those who participated!

Anyone here in the mood for a new Steam game this weekend?

Presumably you are, because you clicked this thread to read it! Welcome!

What is this?

It's a Steam game giveaway! I figured some of you might want a new game to play this weekend, and what's better than getting an awesome new game for free?!

What's the catch?

There isn't one! No gimmicks, and no strings attached!

How do I get my game?

Comment below with your choice, and I'll PM you the key. To keep the thread from being pure noise, I would also like you to, with your request, tell me about a favorite “hidden gem” game you’ve played. I love hearing about diamonds in the rough, so let me know about an underappreciated game you’ve loved (the more obscure/unknown the better).

Also, if you end up playing the game you get this weekend (you don’t have to — it’s a gift, not an obligation!), return to the thread to tell everyone about it!

Are there any restrictions?

Only one game per commenter please, but note that multiple people CAN request the same game! I will give out as many of each copy as is requested!

Why are you doing this?

My pageant answer is about doing something nice for an awesome community during some difficult times, but the real truth is that I've been drinking a bit, there’s a seriously good bundle on right now, and as I looked at the titles in it, it made me feel deep down in my bones the unshakeable sense that more people need to play Yoku's Island Express.

What's on offer?

Your choices are below. I haven't played all of these, but, based on the reviews, there's not a bad game in the bunch! There's also a wide amount of variety, so hopefully you can find something that speaks to your individual interests!

What do you recommend?

First of all, thank you for asking! That’s so thoughtful.

• Yoku's Island Express

MORE PEOPLE NEED TO PLAY THIS (thus sayeth the truth in my bones). The game is a delight. It's charming, novel, and very well-made. "Pinball metroidvania" isn't exactly a common genre or even one that makes sense on paper, but it's pulled off splendidly. It’s also thoroughly enjoyable even if you're a complete pinball novice like me. If in doubt about which game to pick, choose this one! If, after you play it, it turns out I’ve steered you wrong, you’re allowed to return to this thread and yell at me.

• Yooka-Laylee

I honestly think this is one of the most unfairly criticized games out there. I genuinely don't understand why so many people had very negative reactions to it. I don't normally finish games, but I full-on 100%ed this one! It has a couple of rough spots and edges, but on the whole I thought it was wonderful and deserved far better than the lukewarm-to-hostile response it got.

Can just ANYONE ask for a game?

Yes. PLEASE DO. Don’t wait around thinking someone else deserves it more or you don’t want to be a bother or you don’t want to put me out or you might not play it this weekend or you might look like a freeloader. I literally WANT to give this stuff away. Nothing would make me happier than to see this thread deluged with requests! If you're someone who might get enjoyment out of any of these games, then DO NOT HESITATE TO ASK FOR ONE!

IMPORTANT EDIT: I am handing out games even if I'm not responding in the thread to each individual request! I didn't want to keep bumping the thread myself with confirmations.

Last time I owned an inkjet was well over a decade ago. I had a nice HP color laserjet that Just Worked™for almost a decade (and PS, I bought it used), and then I just lived w/o a printer for the past 3-4 years. Now, I'm window-shopping for inkjets, it sounds like the whole "use-our-ink-or-die" business model has only gotten worse.

Are there any good inkjet printers where I can just use it like a normal printer, just buy ink (cheaper than the printer was) when I need it, yada? Or should I just write off the entire industry (again), and go straight to the laser printers?

And does anyone actually have a decent (color, all-in-one) printer that works reasonably well with their (YourDistroHere) Linux machine?

Danke

ETA: Thanks for all the feedback. I'm now prioritizing a Brother laser (maybe just mono), or possibly an Epson Ecotank.

Side-note ... how cool is it that we have so many Linux-folk in our midst!?

Thanks again.

I've suffered from depression and anxiety disorders for a while now. I take medication daily and I am seeing a therapist. However, I feel that I should know more about the disease. I think it would be useful for when I'm talking to my therapist and psychiatrist for example.

Recently I had a healthy debate with my therapist because she believes I am too young to be dependent on meds and that I should aim to get out of them long-term. I explained her that before I started taking drug mix that (kinda) works for me, I was falling into an abyss. I couldn't function, I couldn't be independent. And, with my current knowledge and experience, I think I will be a chronic user of medication.

So I got the impression (I might be wrong on this and we will discuss it more in the future) that my therapist believes in some kind of separation of the brain from the biological world. For example, if someone is diagnosed with a heart disease and starts taking meds, no one bats an eye. When it comes to psychiatric drugs people get concerned. I am skeptical of this double standard.

I also believe that the current umbrella of depression will be revised in the future. I think for some people it is caused by a life event but for others, the brain just isn't working well and we can't (yet) identify a source for the depression. My therapist doesn't like this theory. She thinks that it all comes down to your emotional and behavioral landscape, both in the present and in the past. Now, I know that the brain is a "special" organ because, unlike the heart, we use it to think and feel. So there is definitely SOME relationship between depression and what you feel and act, but I think that is a simplistic way of seeing things. I have done brain exams before and nothing was found. But did someone test my brain chemistry for example? No. So There is probably much more to learn with regards to the disease.

So I guess this was a long way of reaching my request: I am looking for up to date and thorough literature on depression, mostly on it's causes, treatments and current undergoing research. I want to be more informed so that I can better communicate with my caregivers. I want to know what the hell is wrong (at least, most likely) with me. I want to know that there is hope in current research.
This literature can be books, papers or another medium.

I would like to finish by saying that I like my therapist a lot and the objective of this post is not to bash her. It's about explaining the context for my request.

Thanks.

I'm on a binge of watching YouTube videos about Asian culture and wanna take it to the next level. Anything about the cultures of countries like Japan, both Koreas, China, etc. As long as it's high quality and available on the major streaming websites. Thanks!

I need to read some fiction children books about death (for research) -- any age group preferably for young children.

Stories both realistic and fantasy/fantastical that doesn't gloss over the suffering and pain children can experience, possibly with dark overtones.

Stories featuring Death as a character would be great too.

Thanks!

Shakespeare's birthday is observed today. Thank you, verily, for sharing your writing!

Please post your efforts below, with an introduction and/or questions for your readers.
Here are the guidelines, again.

I have a Xiaomi Redmi 4X device with 2GB RAM and 16GB on-device storage.

Yesterday, I setup PostmarketOS on it, and it works well enough. WiFi and display work well, although no 3D acceleration and no telephony at all. As such, now it is just another device on my home network, except that I can ssh into it to do some basic stuff. Right now it is setup as a Syncthing node to backup my Keepass db and personal knowledge base written in org-mode, but I would like to use it further, and looking for ideas.

Two things to consider, though. First, I don't want it to overcharge and bust the battery. Before when it was on LineageOS, I had a magisk module acc so it would charge only 40-80%, and is largely the reason why the battery holds up pretty well after 5+ years without swelling. I will take further look into it over coming weekend and try to make something like it for the alpine kernel included in PmOS. Second, while on charging the phone keeps vibrating repeatedly. I have no idea how to fix that one, but would like to strat given pointers. (I have never done kernel dev in my life)

So, any ideas on what I can use this extra computer in my metaphorical basement welcome. Thanks in advance.

I got a cheap mop at the grocery store last year thinking that would be enough, but it broke like a month ago and always left smudges all over my floors anyway. I never really liked it. It was one of those fixed sponges with a handle to squeeze it out rather than one that looks like Medusa.

I have wood laminate floors throughout my house, not true wood floors. Unfortunately, they're dark brown and show a ton of crumbs and smudges, so I'm looking for something sorta in the buy-it-for-life category. I.e. willing to shell out a little more if it makes a difference. I've had a vacuum for a year that has been good for all the crumbs (Miele), and I really love it.

Also what soap should I be using for best results?

Thanks, all!

Hey everyone,

I launched my little project LinkLonk here on Tildes back in December and wanted to tell you how it has been going and get your feedback/suggestions.

New changes since the launch:

• The temporary accounts now automatically get deleted after 30 days of inactivity. I didn't have the deletion logic at the time of the launch, but had it implemented about 30 days after launch. Automatic account deletion is quite destructive - removes the account from the database (thank goodness for foreign keys and cascade deletes) and from Firebase Authentication. I'm happy that there were nobugs when I ran it the first time.
• In addition to submitting external links you can now create text posts. The posts are Markdown-formatted (similar to Tildes). One novel thing is that you can post "anonymously". The database has a record of who the author is so the author can delete/edit their post, it's just the name is not show next to the post.
• Comments - each item has a comment section. The comments are ranked based on how much you trust the people who upvoted each comment (as opposed to being pure popularity). This is the same ranking system that is used to rank the "For you" page, but now applied to comments.
  • Unlike Tildes, the comments have a downvote button. The downvote does not bury the comment for everyone else. Instead, it makes your trust in upvotes of people who upvoted that comment go lower. So the downvote button effects what you see, not what others see. It is much harder to abuse that button that way. For that reason I feel much more comfortable putting it there. However, there is a second order effect. If you downvote a comment that someone else already downvoted - then you will trust the downvotes of that person. When they downvote some other comment - then it will rank lower for you. In a sense they earn your trust to moderate content for you by identifying comments you don't want to see.

In terms of users, there have been 260 user records created (some from my shameless plug comments on HackerNews). Of those, ~45 rated something - excluding those that were temporary accounts and were deleted. And I think we have 2 regularly active users (excluding myself). In my mind I had 10 as the number of active users that I was hoping to get by the end of 2021. At this rate we may reach it.

I was pleasantly surprised that there have been no misbehaving users. I didn't need to remove any content even once. This lead me to constantly postpone the implementation of a content reporting system. I hope it stays this way for a long time.

The whole idea of a trust based recommendation system is based on having someone to trust. Right now it is the RSS feeds that are generating most of the content recommendations for the active users. But ideally it would be mostly users recommending content to users. I have two priorities for the near future:

• Make the "single-player" experience better so the active users find value already. As an example, I added full-text search through items you liked
• Find more users to improve the "multi-player" experience. One option is to submit a "Show HN:" post on HackerNews. But you can only do it once and I'm not sure I'm ready to use that shot yet.

What do you think I should do next on these two fronts?

If you would like to give LinkLonk a try register with code "tildes" at https://linklonk.com/register. Feel free to comment on this post: https://linklonk.com/item/6347369602224750592

My girlfriend and I have had a habit of going straight to watching movies and tv-series when we hang out, because due to lockdown almost everything is closed, so we don't really have a lot of activities to choose from.

We also play games occassionally, recently scrabble on our phones. But what other boardgames work well when there are only 2 players?

Edit: Wow! I can't possibly respond to everyone but I didn't expect so many people to comment with help. Thank you so much!

So recently I've been kind of hating big parts of where I am in life, most of all where I live. I am still living with my family, and while they are all good people, our place isn't the biggest so there isn't too much privacy most of the day. So over the years I have basically started to quietly resent everyone in this house, which got exacerbated over the quarantine (and even much more when we were all stuck at home for 14 days when we got the corona and were in isolation).

I've been thinking that basically the only way to make sure I don't go fully insane is to finally move out. Also, I don't really want to admit it to myself, but I am not very independent, and I feel like I really need to change that. This year I will be finishing my Bachelor's degree, so that seems like the perfect time I would like to aim for. The problem is that after I am done with the degree I want to continue by doing a Masters in the same place. The obvious easy solution is to just rent some place with roommates I'd have to find, which is probably what I'll try to do.

But I have also been engaging in a lot of fantasizing - escapist thoughts involving doing my Masters in a different country. I was already thinking about this a bit before starting my Bachelor's degree, but I ultimately decided not to, which might have been a good call as I was definitely even more of a baby back then. But now, as I have another opportunity I have again been thinking about this a lot.

I am from the EU, so I could study in any other EU country for free. Mostly I've been thinking about Finland, or other Scandinavian countries (maybe kind of cliche?). It would definitely be really hard though, and I am not sure am I strong enough to do this. As I said I am kind of a not very independent wuss, so I am kind of scared if I could survive by myself in a different country with basically no one I could fall back on. Finding a place to live would also probably be quite hard and I would very likely need to find a part time job there, because even though I spent almost 2 years saving up money at a part time job, the countries I am looking at are more expensive than mine so my savings wouldn't most likely be enough. Hopefully there would be some student dormitories available that would be quite cheap? I don't really care too much about how prestigious my university is, but it could also be nice that I could choose a better rated one somewhere.

I hope I wouldn't lose my current best friends. I probably have some very overblown expectations about this though. I always dream how I would meet some new cool friends, maybe even find a relationship. I am quite an anxious person, especially socially anxious which I'd also hope I would have to overcome a bit. But I probably wouldn't magically become more extroverted, and less anxious. I might even just be unable to make any friends there, but I'd hope that I would be kind of forced to make some and get out of my shell so to speak. Suddenly having to do everything by myself, while having a job, in a foreign country might be too much though.

Also another random thing that I would like about this is I would kind of like to change my name at the same time and I am fantasizing that it would work out nicely. I don't dislike my name too much, but I feel like I would like a different one much more, and that it would kind of help me become myself more or something? I don't really want to change my name legally, I am more thinking that I would just start telling people that my name is <name I like more>, so it would kind of be more like a nickname. Yeah, writing that out I should probably try telling some friends to just start calling me by the name, even though I feel like they would just be like why and cringe a bit.

I know I am probably fantasizing about studying abroad too much, and that it wouldn't be that great, studying abroad most likely wouldn't help me find a relationship or anything, but I'd think it would definitely force me to become more independent. I feel like I am once again coming up on quite a big decision in my life and I am still not really sure how to proceed. Did anyone here study abroad, for the whole degree, or even as an exchange student - Erasmus or similar stuff? Any other thoughts would be appreciated too. Thank you for reading, I hope my writing isn't too much of a messy stream of thoughts.

Edit: Thanks to everyone for your responses, you are all so nice, uplifting and motivating <3. I will definitely be seriously researching much more about studying abroad, and while I can't guarantee I'll go forward with this plan, I'll try working towards it for now. I still have almost 2 months to decide, and if I decide to go ahead with it, it would still be at least a year away. But I promise to you guys, that I will at least move out of my parents house for my sanity, one way or another.

Up until recently my girlfriend’s grandmother had a relatively good life. She’s taken care of, had some interesting allucinations, slept most of the day and had funny interactions with her grandaughter, some of which ended up on Instagram.

In recent weeks, she started refusing food and spent days at the hospital. The sudden lost in autonomy made her hostile. It’s a struggle to change her diapers. The situation was made worse by the feeding tube up her nose, which she attempts to remove non-stop, and can only be replaced at the hospital. We had to restrain her arm. That is no way to live.

She's made it very clear she does not want to be in this world any longer. Today I heard a hundred year old lady scream, multiple times: "just let me die!".

I don't know what to make of it.

Edit: I'd like to thank everyone's answers. I wasn't really looking for a solution since the legal situation in my country does not allow for any wiggle room. But it is always nice to read the smart people of Tildes passionately explore their ideas, sharing knowledge with compassion. Sometimes it is enough to feel less alone. Thank you and good night.

I've been learning a bit more Python, going through a Udemy course to expand my skills a little. One of the programs the course guides you to make is a little dictionary, but it currently only runs once and then quits.
I'd like to adapt it to use a nice TUI that keeps itself open until the user specifies they want to quit, using something along the lines of npyscreen. However, this library uses classes, and that's not something I'm yet familiar with. I'd rather have an understanding of what classes are, how they work, and why to use them before I take the plunge and start fiddling around with npyscreen (although I'd be interested to hear if you think that I should Just Do It instead).
Can anyone give or point me towards a good explanation of the what, how, and why of Python classes? Or better yet, a tutorial that will give me something to write and play with to figure out how it all fits together?
Thanks!

Thanks to @suspended and @deimos for the suggestion!

Hey y’all, I am a basin chemistry engineer for the Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site in South Carolina. Our facility stores spent nuclear fuel from a variety of research and experimental reactors underwater. Our specialty is highly-enriched aluminum-clad fuel, but we have a diverse array of unusual fuels from around the world. A good overview of fuel types can be found here.

My primary responsibility is ensuring the basin water is kept highly pure to minimize corrosion to the fuel, as well as ensure it is free of radionuclides to the extent practicable. I’m happy to answer any questions I can about nuclear fuel, nuclear power, radioactive waste, etc.

More links:
Corrosion of Al-clad fuel
Basin overview

Here's the server info, again thanks to @Icarus.

Just a quick update that I have completed the communal village portal hub and storage building. Check it out! Major biomes are located on the first floor (with an attached dock incoming) and the second floor is for key areas like the Trader and Boss altars. Be wary of going into dangerous biomes alone if you're new, especially the Plains or Swamps.

Third floor will be a communal storage and miscellaneous area, feel free to use it however you wish. Put your bed up there and make it your room if you want.*

*I just need to add a fire pit.

Last week I woke up to yet another PM from someone I've come to admire from afar on tildes. This was a user I'd seen many times on Tildes, bringing with them a unique and powerful voice. This person was a minority. They brought a voice to the table that was like a breath of fresh air - I'd frequently see them enter threads dominated by a single opinion and make everyone challenge their assumptions. They would enter and offer their shoes to anyone who'd like to try them on and get a glimpse into how the world might work for them, should they be brave enough to walk a mile or two.

This is not the first PM I've received from someone who decided this website had become too troublesome to continue participating and it's likely not the last I will see. While it is heartbreaking to see them go, it is equally heartbreaking to me that the reason they are going is often not because people are trying to push them away. By far and large, I see a majority of tildes users actively participating in discussions with good faith. By the results of the last census, increasing diversity was of importance to the majority of users and I do not think they were free-text typing that in without good cause.

This post is one that I've been contemplating in the back of my mind for a very long time now. It first really occurred to me nearly a year ago when a fairly well known person of minority status got banned for being too confrontational and aggressive to the kind of voice they didn't want to see on Tildes. I wasn't sure how to address it at the time, and I wasn't entirely certain it would be a problem, but the year since this post I've become hyper aware to its existence in a way I wasn't previously. In fact, I've had a bit of this conversation on more than one outlet on the internet already, because my recognition of this behavior has had me upset many times since. To this extent, I thank that user, because it truly did open my eyes to a behavior which I believe is self-sabotaging, but often genuine in nature.

I believe the simplest way to explain what is happening is through the law of large numbers. While not everyone responded to the 2020 Tildes Census (in fact I would imagine maybe 10% of us did), I'm going to use it as a model to touch on these issues. There were a total of 350 responses to the survey. Of this 86% were male, 67% were heterosexual, 75% were atheist or agnostic (50, 25 respectively), 52% were from the US, and 47% identified as white or Caucasian. I point all of this out to say that as a population we tend to trend towards a particular kind of individual. To be clear, this isn't necessarily bad - we are still quite a small website and we need to start somewhere with a base we know how to pull from.

But this does present a unique problem when it comes to interaction. Let's imagine for a second that 1 in 100 individuals has some sort of problematic behavior on Tildes that manages to find its way into discussion. This behavior might be that they have a strong intolerant opinion on a specific subject but manage to obscure it enough to get past the intolerance detecting capabilities of others. Or perhaps their views are not intolerant, but they simply possess a strong opinion on how something should be worded or an aversion to a particular kind of venting. Because I don't want to throw anyone under the bus I'm going to pull from an upsetting behavior I used to have in my childhood - I couldn't shut my mouth when people would bring up that women make '70 cents on the dollar'.

It's very hard for me to look back and definitively say it was one shaping experience that led me to behave like that. If I had to attribute this shameful behavior, I think there's a few major players. First off, I grew up in an upper middle class family who happened to be located in an area that was very homogeneous. I went to school with the children of tech millionaires, many of whom were white and quite privileged. I think there were a grand total of 4 people of color in my middle school. Things got a lot better once I had made it to high school (by numbers, whites were in the minority), but there's a subtle cultural indoctrination that happens through absorbing what you hear from parents and teachers at a young age. As a young child, I also latched on to early internet behavior. People who were pedantic about grammar, who could use logic effectively, and otherwise followed the rules that rich white people before them set up as the 'correct' way to do discuss were revered on the internet. I remember when being the grammar police was behavior that was actually celebrated. This kind of mindset lead me to read into the research on the matter (also primarily conducted by rich white folks, another bias I'm trying to undo in my life) and the modern research suggested that this figure was outdated and poorly controlled.

I was the 1 in 100 users with the problematic behavior. It took me awhile to learn that I wasn't helping anyone out by offering this information up (turns out there were a lot of people already doing the same work I was and people are smarter than I gave them credit for), but that only scratches at the surface of the real problem. The real problem is that I didn't have the lived experience of a woman entering spaces where this discussion was happening. I wasn't the woman who received less pay than their colleagues, who put in more hours, who spoke up but was talked over, whose ideas were restated by their male peers, or who clicked on an article link talking about pay inequality or women's rights and how far we still have to go and was met with hostile comments. I didn't know how soul-crushing it could be to be met with nearly the same resistance in every public sphere where this was being discussed. I didn't know how tiring it was to have to justify my existence and to explain my struggles to those who hadn't lived the same life as me. I didn't know how heart wrenching it would feel for someone I valued, trusted, and loved to express opinions like these years after I had built up a strong bond with them and for them to be entirely unaware of the damage they were causing.

To be clear, when I say understand I mean to have either experienced it directly enough to begin to actually place myself in the shoes of others or heard about it enough for their experience to truly sink in. It's one thing to acknowledge and know that this behavior exists, it's another to live it and see it first hand on a day where you're hanging on by a thread. To truly understand how mentally exhausting it can be to treated this way was something that escaped my comprehension because I could only live this experience through the words of others. I didn't really start to appreciate this until I got older, because I started recognizing how universal this experience truly was. I don't think I know a single female who doesn't have a story of sexual assault - the rate at which they respond with something in their lives is a stark reminder of how far we still have to come.

What I knew, but didn't truly understand is that if 1 in 100 users have problematic behavior and 1 in 100 users are transgender, we have an equal number of transgender individuals as we do users with problematic behavior. I want you to stop here and reread the last sentence and really absorb it before moving on. Ask yourself what problems might arise by these inequality existing.

In this hypothetical we have an even number of individuals who are going to participate in a thread about a transgender issue as we have transgender individuals. If even 1 of these transgender individuals decides they do not want to engage with this behavior, we're on a downwards slope to eventually having nearly no transgender representation as now they are outnumbered and their voice is more likely to be drowned out by the problematic individuals. As less and less people of the minority engage, because they are discouraged by the expressions of the problematic individuals, less people will wish to engage as the threads become increasingly more hostile.

The problem we have on tildes is that the only way I see for us to become more diverse is to ask for more from those who have, to protect those who do not. I'm calling on everyone to pay closer attention to the intended audience of a thread. We need to look at how discussions are happening throughout the entirety of a thread and do a better job being welcoming of the minority opinion. We need to elevate and celebrate the voices of the minorities in these threads so that they are equal in paradigm to the voices which counter theirs. If a thread's topic is about a minority class such as gays we need to ensure that gays get an equal voice - if one person is dominating replies to gays in the comments, we need to be good allies and help balance the scales.

We also need to stop and think about how these discussions usually play out on the rest of the internet. Do you ever see something like this on twitter and go "definitely not checking the comments"? We need to pay attention to this, and strive to ensure the same doesn't eventually apply to Tildes.

A common example of this that I've seen is present in threads directed at specific minorities. The early discussion in a fantastic thread titled What's hard about being a woman? exemplifies this issue - because there aren't enough women on Tildes, the thread was dominated by male voices. Only one of these individuals were particularly problematic, but there was a hesitation from women I knew to enter this thread because an environment dominated by the male voice is not welcoming. Some of the women who entered this thread were met with replies challenging some of what they said, rather than elevating their voices and celebrating their participation. A small minority of men were in this thread to learn, but weren't aware of how the way they engage with other men on the internet was not appropriate for this venue. They didn't stop to consider that a thread dominated by male voices was neither welcoming nor a good start. If they had merely waited for women to start populating the thread, and replied to them, or opened soft with commentary on what they had seen in women without providing too much analysis they may have made the thread more welcoming.

Another common example of this that I see happened in a thread I posted titled Stop telling women they have imposter syndrome. I actually had to stop myself from posting in this thread because I had an inkling that it was going to exemplify the behavior I wanted to address in a thread like this and I didn't want to disrupt what would naturally happen on Tildes absent my intervention. Nearly every reply in that thread criticizes the author for not mentioning that men can have impostor syndrome too. Imagine entering this thread as a woman - even if you emotionally connected with the author on some level, would you bother engaging when highly regarded comments focus on nitpicking the author for not being 'inclusive' enough? As far as I could tell, even the title doesn't call upon the reader to critically examine what imposter syndrome is and who is eligible to suffer from it. It's calling upon the reader to stop telling women that they have imposter syndrome (or to stop others when they make this statement), when the problem is a sexist environment. I've even received recognition from women on Tildes outside of this thread (through DMs and discussions on different platforms) who thank me for posting these threads, but their voice is often conspicuously absent from the thread itself. I do not want to speak on their behalf, but I can guess that a major reason for that is the environment we are creating here on Tildes is not welcoming enough for them to feel it is worth commenting.

The insidious part of this problem is that very often the people creating a hostile environment do not intend to do so. They truly wish to be inclusive. Or they see behavior like this and they don't understand why it's problematic - it doesn't cause a flag to go off in their brain which tells them that they should jump in and fight on behalf of the people they want to protect. But this behavior is slowly causing minority individuals to flee this website. I don't know and cannot know them all, but waking up to PMs about someone else leaving makes my heart sink. Entering threads about the intersectional minorities that I find myself and my loved ones a part of often makes me feel similarly upset, downtrodden, and makes me feel like I want to engage less and less with this platform.

I wish I had an answer. I wish I could wave a magic wand and make everything better. To give everyone omniscience, or at least a day's firsthand experience of someone radically different than them. Unfortunately, I do not. I think the best I can offer at this time is this post - a call on all of us to do better; a start of an ongoing discussion on how we can protect the minorities among us so that we can be bettered by their presence.

I purchased a license and activated DEV MODE on the Xbox Series S, with the purpose of running some SNES games I definitely own... But part of the procedure involves using the Games and Apps tab to set Retroarch as a game. Without that, it doesn't have access to all the system resources. The problem is that the tab disappeared and I don't know how to get it back. Anyone have the knowledge to fix this? I really don't want to reset my Xbox to factory just because of that... thanks

I'm looking for a new office chair to replace my old Ikea one, and I'm curious what people recommend. I'm looking at the Autonomous ErgoChair 2, but I'm not completely sold on it. I've heard amazing things about Steelcase and Herman Miller, but I can't justify paying $1k on a chair.

What do you have and would you recommend it?

Edit: I went to a used office supply store and got the Steelcase Gesture. Thanks for all the input!

We had a stimulating and moderately edgy trial run with our Valentine's Day submissions thread! Thank you to all who took part. Next up is short stories, chapters, essays.

I initially posted this with the wrong date (thanks @eve and @deimos for the help), so I'll put the call out in a fresh post with the correct date.

I'm at a pharmacy, distributing their vaccine after hours the second it came in. I'm typing this up while my pregnant wife is in line to get her vaccine. If I get lucky maybe I do too. If not, my heart is still lighter knowing that my family is safer.

I'm filled with joy knowing that there is light at the end of this dark tunnel.

Thank you all for putting up with my special blend of near-persistent 2020 mania. Hopefully this will finally calm it for awhile.

Vernacular mental health terms are used in everyday language as a nonspecific indicator of extreme value judgement or deviation from an expectation or norm. Examples of words include 'crazy', 'cray', 'insane', 'whack', 'mental', and 'retarded'. I think we can criticise the language on numerous grounds:

1. It normalises poor mental health as something extreme or atypical
2. Where the language is used to connote a negative value judgement (example 3) it reinforces the association that "poor mental health" = "bad"
3. It can be triggering to people with mental health issues because of the way they are or their condition is perceived or because of experiences they have had
4. It can be imprecise, in the sense that there are often more contextually appropriate words to describe the specific quality being discussed

Examples:

1. "This new track from Lone is insane!" -- positive use cf. 'extremely good'
2. "I can't believe Tesla bought all that BTC, that's insane!" -- neutral use, no value or ethical judgement, observing deviation from typical or expected behaviour cf. 'unexpected'
3. "Trump is fucking insane" -- negative use cf. 'extremely bad'

Some alternatives:

1. 'wild' -- I use this particularly for positive and neutral connotations
2. 'ridiculous' -- for the negative connotation
3. Something more specific to the context, e.g. "Trump is fucking evil", or "This new track is banging", or "I had a hectic morning" instead of "I had a crazy morning"

Questions:

1. Why has 'retarded' faced so much backlash and fallen out of acceptable usage, but other terms like 'crazy' have not?
2. Are the criticisms valid and do they apply to all of the examples? Are there more grounds to criticise this language on that I have not listed?
3. Are there other ways the language is used which is not covered in the examples?
4. What alternatives do you use?
5. Is use of crazy/insane/mental/... common in non-English languages? If not, what is used instead?

Thanks for your input! 🙏

Hi everyone, I'm looking into getting a new laptop for university work. Thanks to a scholarship, I can get up to $2000 covered off a laptop purchase (and I'd be willing to pay a few hundred more out-of-pocket too).

I plan on using this laptop primarily for basic web browsing, word processing, and Zoom calls. I may be playing some video games on it like Slay the Spire or Hollow Knight, but these aren't too demanding and most of my time will be spent working anyway. My use case shouldn't require a lot of processing power or a high-end dedicated GPU. After graduating, I'll have more consistent access to my desktop anyway, which already has a dedicated card for gaming and can easily be upgraded to suit my needs if I get into video editing or programming, which further reduces the need for a laptop that can do these things. In light of this, I'm looking primarily at a laptop that is lightweight, has a long battery life, good build quality, and a 14-inch screen, to upgrade from my current 13-inch. I haven't decided whether I'll be dual-booting Windows/Linux or running Linux only, but I do plan on running Linux so compatibility is important. Ports aren't a huge deal since there isn't much need for anything more than HDMI/USB on a college campus and I can get a docking station for post-graduation needs.

After lurking around on this forum and others, I've settled on a few potential options:

• Thinkpad X1 Carbon
• Thinkpad T14s
• System76 Lemur Pro
• MacBook M1 Air (added after suggestions, link to specs)

ThinkPads seem to offer the best build quality and potential to last years after purchase, so I'm leaning towards those, but System76 appears to have upgraded their build quality recently, and I just love their designs as well. Lenovo will be releasing the next-generation X1 Carbon soon, but it may be priced out of my range, and I'd like to purchase soon. Even the Carbon Gen 8 is above my price range, though as I understand it Lenovo usually offers discounts so I'm waiting for the sale on customizable builds (they already have discounts on pre-designed builds). I'm totally open to suggestions not on this list, and I've also read that purchasing refurbished ThinkPads can be the way to go, though I'd like to take full advantage of my budget if possible. If anyone has any experience with the above laptops, reason to recommend one over the other, or knows why I might want to wait on purchasing (e.g. for a release of next-gen hardware), please let me know!

edit: Table working now!

edit2: Thanks for all the suggestions and discussion everyone. I've yet to make a final decision but will update again later.

Hey, so I'm looking for more comfy Nintendo (or maybe retro stuff in general?) focused youtubers like Scott the Woz or Nitro Rad or even AVGN to leave on in the background. In general I'd prefer people talking about games or gaming trends or whatever over just playing them...I don't think I really have much interest in let's plays or highlight reels anymore.

It can be full-on silly AVGN stuff or super dry Gaming Historian stuff, I love it all, though my ideal is somewhere in-between. Of course, I'd also like for them not to be terrible human beings, so no jontron or anyone like that please. Thanks!

Unlike the current tendency, unless I'm playing with my real-life friends, I don't care for multiplayer in shooters. I'm usually surrounded by highly skilled players that seemingly dedicate their lives to becoming experts in that game. I don't wanna become actually skilled, I wanna play in my own way and feel I am skilled in face of limited AI. You know, fantasy!

Most franchises are leaning towards multiplayer, and my playstyle is quickly becoming old fashioned. I recently purchased the Xbox Series S and would love suggestions of great shooters with a focus on offline missions. Especially historical shooters (like WWI and WWII), but not limited to it.

Thanks!

Via email:

Effective January 26, 2021, GitLab has phased out the GitLab Bronze/Starter subscription tier.

Current Bronze/Starter customers have over a year to transition
Transition discount offers are available to current customers
Over the last few years, GitLab has evolved into a complete DevOps platform. Many Bronze/Starter customers adopted GitLab just for source code management (SCM) or continuous integration (CI), but GitLab is now a robust DevOps platform that can replace entire toolchains. GitLab customers are achieving faster releases, lower toolchain costs and more productive developers.

The Bronze/Starter tier does not meet the hurdle rate that GitLab expects from a tier and is limiting us from investing to improve GitLab for all customers. Ending availability of the Bronze/Starter tier will help us accelerate development on customers’ priority needs such as improving usability, availability and performance, and making sure that security and compliance are enterprise-grade.

We understand that this change could be disruptive for our current Bronze/Starter customers, which is why GitLab is offering transition options and price discounts to ease your transition to Premium over the next three years.

All Bronze/Starter customers can choose a free upgrade to GitLab Premium for the remainder of their subscription for the first 25 users.
At your next renewal before January 26, 2022, all Bronze/Starter tier customers can choose to
Either renew at the Bronze/Starter tier for US$ 4 per user per month for one additional year
Or opt in for discounted GitLab Premium prices for the next three years. For customers with 25 users or less, your discounted transition prices (paid annually) are US$ 6, US$ 9, US$ 15 per user per month for your first, second and third renewals respectively.
To claim this offer, please visit the GitLab Customer Portal.

To learn more about this change, watch this video, visit our customer FAQ or contact GitLab Sales.

To address your questions and feedback, we have created a space in the GitLab Community Forum, which is actively monitored by GitLab Team members involved with this change.

Thank you for the trust you place in GitLab to help you deliver software faster and more efficiently. We appreciate your use of GitLab and look forward to delivering more value to you every month.

Hi Tildes. Hopefully this thread will be both a good discussion and helpful to some of you, and hopefully me.

As I'm guessing most of you know, data backups are quite important and it is best to have at least one copy locally and another copy somewhere else. At the moment, I store photos on an external hard drive and Google Drive, photos from my phone on Google Photos with copies of important original quality files saved locally, and everything else on drives in my PC and a network drive on my Raspberry Pi. It's far from ideal, I've only got one copy of some files and three or four of some others so I've been looking for something better to keep everything organised, safe and in one place.

I've tried the free trial of Backblaze, which seemed the obvious choice, but it had a few problems. I couldn't backup my Pi's network share, and in general it's a bit clunky and difficult to use. It is marketed as an easy solution to backing up data, but in doing this it just makes everything more difficult, at least for me - I know what I want backed up, and I would prefer to select it manually, but by opting in everything for backup by default you have to spend ages excluding the folders you don't want saved, one-by-one, in a UI that is difficult to use and often unclear. Sometimes the exclusions list just doesn't work - the Program Files folders are meant to be excluded by default and they were listed under exclusions but were backing up anyway. For me it found over 200,000 files, and because they were all so small it barely managed to backup 100MB in three hours. (Not that I know where the files come from because they aren't listed in the Windows app in any vaguely comprehensible way.)

So I need to find something else, and I was hoping someone here would have some recommendations. Personally I need it to:

• Be affordable and easy to setup and use
• Backup external and network drives to the cloud (physically keeping another drive somewhere else isn't an option for me)
• Be trustworthy and have strong commitments to security and privacy
• Work well for my use case: preferably automatic from Windows

Looking forward to any comments or recommendations. Thanks!

Hello people of Tildes, long time no see! As per title, since some point last week I've begun receiving calls from extra-EU countries I've never had any contact with (Haiti, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia just to name a few).

No doubt it is part of a call back scam; of course I have never picked up nor redialed, still, this seriously blows as I've now been woken up twice at 3am during the week.

Now, I've never had such a problem before, nor have I recently posted my number online anytime recently. Has anyone here had a similar issue? What can I do about it (I'm from the EU if that might help)? Is there any way for me to find out where my number was leaked from?

I have just now installed NoPhoneSpam from f-droid, but have no idea how good of a fix that will be.

Let me know if y'all have any ideas, thanks :)