With Tildes having a distinctive approach to content and comments I found that I was missing an option.
Without calling out anyone someone posted a submission today that was simply an image collection. I did invite them to also post a bit more about as a comment starter, which they did.

I naturally gave their comment an upvote. But I found myself wanting to reward them a bit more for their recognition. I could go for exemplary as label, in fact I did. But I can't help but feel that I am missing a meta label that is positive but doesn't weigh as heavy.

How do other people look at this?

The history of the web is littered with with many a dead image/video hosting service. Echos of their existence plague older forums in the form of broken links and images. It seems like they all follow the same path, starting up as the new "simple" service that just hosts images, no fuss. But then as interest grows, so do costs, and the service owners have to scramble to monetize. Generally this is done by stuffing the place full of ads until everyone leaves. Alternatively the owners are stubborn and stick to their guns, until they inevitably have to shut down due to drowning in costs. When they do shut down, millions of assets are lost and the graveyard of broken images across the web grows some more.

https://gfycat.com/ is the latest notable victim of this.

With all the recent social media turmoil, there as been lots of exploration of alternative sites, and all of them have to overcome the problem of hosting media in one way or another.

Tildes obviously does this by avoiding it entirely which, while a very effective solution, is just handballing the problem elsewhere. Users will still want to post images and videos but they will just have to find alternative hosts. Over time those hosts will die and Tildes posts will be filled with dead links.

Mastodon has similar problems,the biggest cost of hosting a mastodon instance is the storage and bandwidth required to facilitate media posts. And there's a real danger of an instance incurring high costs if a particular post becomes popular and is hotlinked on a big centralised social media site.

It seems like a really tricky problem to solve, something peer-to-peer could sort of solve the costs created by traffic peaks but has problems when there is many small files viewed by few individuals each.

Are there any other solutions out there? Web3, IPFS? Or is it just not that much of a problem, do we accept that media on the web is ephemeral and will be lost after a while?

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

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

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

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

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

I recently digitized some old home movies from my grandparents and looking through the film I realize I recognize almost no one. This got me thinking, I should go through this with my mother to help me identify family members as she's probably the last person who knows who anyone is.

Obviously I can just make a document with notes ex: 2:53 screen right, great uncle john"
But I'm hoping there's a more elegant solution in which I can keep info with the file and not some auxiliary document that dosent live in the same place.

I could just dump all that info into Metadata but that's maybe the lowest quality solution.
The xray function of Amazon prime video is the example of the best solution in a perfect world. (if you don't know, when you pause or bring up the context menu on prime video, there's a bar that identifies everyone one scene with a matching headshot)

I actually looked into it and there's an API that amazon uses for this called "RecognizeCelebrities" and uses images to train the program to recognize faces and populate it's menu. I'm not sure if it's open source but even if it was, it's over my level to use it practically I think.

The last option I can think of is using a video markup platform like frame.io but that's not really a long term solution.

Any ideas?

Hi all. On my Pixel phone I have the accessibility option for font size and display size turned up a notch or two but noticed that not all of the text in Tildes adheres to this. Some front page topic text is bigger, some of them remain small.

Is this something that can be quickly tested and fixed if it's a bug? It might drive poor sighted people away from the site.

I'm assuming it's not me, as my Pixel 7 is quite new .... but I am on the Android beta program.

Can anyone else try and see if it's a localised issue or more global?

I can post screen shots of needed but not sure what image sharing sites you prefer to use in here!

Edit:

Fixed with a chrome flag....

the text-scaling is being replaced by the "Accessibility Page Zoom" feature (currently hidden behind the feature flag in chrome://flags)

Hello, Tildes

Allow me to introduce myself.

I came over to Tildes fairly recently after Twitterriffic died and Apollo announced it would shut down.

As a relative youngster, I tend to mostly browse on mobile.

While I do appreciate Tildes' philosophy of having a simple website that works well on desktop and mobile, I've always preferred mobile apps. I'm a strong believer that a well-built native application will always provide a richer experience than a website.

But enough talking.. showing is way more fun - here's a lil' something I've been messing around with:

Introducing Surfboard for Tildes

The goal is simple: to be the best way to interact with Tildes on mobile.

Features

Surfboard is still extremely early, and is missing many features.

With that said, here is what it currently supports:

• Login to Tildes (supports 2FA)
• Browse topics
• Filters & sorting
• Browse comments
• Advanced rendering is still in early stages..
• Supports comment collapsing behavior from the web version
• Reply/vote/bookmark/ignore on topics, comments, & notifications (requires login)
• Search topics
• Global search
• Search within groups
• Option for in-line images
• Clean browsing interface
• In-line markdown preview when composing replies
• Share topics & comments
• Notifications
• View read & unread notifications
• Reply, vote, bookmark, mark as read...
• Customizable
• Toggle settings, set custom gesture actions, etc.
• Free, as in beer

The design draws some inspiration from Apollo for Reddit, an app that I loved & am very sad will be discontinued.

Try it yourself

I would love to get some feedback from other Tildes users on the app. If you are interested in trying it for yourself, you can get it here via TestFlight

Surfboard is built for iPhone, and requires iOS 16.0 or higher.

Inside the app is a 'roadmap' of sorts which is basically a list of things I know are missing, but if there's something you want that isn't listed there, I'm all ears.

Formatting is a little rough at the moment, although I made enormous improvements on the parsing & rendering there over the last day.

It should support just about anything you throw at it other than a <details>

(I'll get around to them, I swear..)

If you run into issues viewing a post/comment, you can easily open them in an in-app safari window from the menu.

As mentioned above, it's very early, but it's already becoming my favorite way to browse Tildes. I hope that others will enjoy it as well. Consider it my gift to the Tildes community.

Cheers !

Edit:

The best way to submit feature requests & bug reports is to add it to the issue tracker and/or leave a comment on this thread and I’ll get around to adding it myself.

Thanks !

Not a native speaker, so I hope I phrased it correctly. Let me explain. It happened to me at least twice.

Some years ago, I picked up the "Metro 2033" book by Dmitry Glukhovsky. I read part of it until I read about the Stalker, who was a badass wearing a black coat. It was so cliche, I was unable to continue. I wrote off the book as trash.

Then, some time later I played the video game under the same title, which is an adaptation of the novel and I liked it a lot. It had that eerie atmosphere and a unique Eastern European feel to it, unlike games like Fallout. I decided to give the book another go, but this time I knew the lore and I had images from the game in my mind and everything changed. I really liked that book, it was a good mix of horror, action and sociopolitical commentary disguised as a postapo novel. It may not be great, but it's a very pleasant read. By now, I've read all three books and played all three video games (btw if you plan to play Metro Exodus I'd advise you to read "Metro 2035" first, as the game is a direct continuation of that story and both were written by the author) and I consider myself a fan of the series.

Another, more recent example is "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone". I am not a Potterhead, I never read any HP books, I even despised them for the most part. By the time J.K. Rowling's stories were published in my country I was already 20 or so. I was familiar with Jordan, Tolkien, Sapkowski, Williams and many more authors writing fantasy. I was into the tolkienesque depiction of wizards, so something like Hogwart with robed men and children riding brooms and waving wands is both weird and strongly off-putting to me. Also, I considered myself already too old for what I saw as children's books.

I'm 42 now and those words of C.S. Lewis resonate with me ever so more:

When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.

So I decided to give Harry Potter a chance. I first tried watching the first movie. I didn't like it much and dropped it somewhere in the middle. Then a couple moths ago I loaded a free sample of the first book from Kobo Store and it was... alright. I dropped it as well. I thought it was well written, but was definitely a kids book for which I was too old.

I started playing Hogwart's Legacy a week ago or so. I'm now positively hooked on that game, it's beautiful, it has characters I like, it has a good combat system and it's been my doorway to Hogwarts. So when I couldn't play, I was thinking about it and picked up that book which I dropped earlier. But this time I had a better understanding of the lore, had images of certain places in my mind and it clicked! I am still an old fart and it is still a kids book, but I have found new appreciation for it. I think it's well written on the literary level, it has a lot of situational and verbal humor (I think it has a distinct British flavor to it, like a very toned down version of Pratchett) -- I actually often chuckle when reading it. I bought the whole set (books 1-7) and maybe I'll even read them. Here's hoping that they mature with the readers, that's what I've been told. I'm sure that if I were 12 when reading them for the first time, I'd love them.

As you can see, in my case it's usually that good video games drive me to give another chance to some books that I initially didn't like and because of the great experience with video game adaptations, I start liking the source material. Do you have similar experiences?

(btw this is my first post on Tildes)

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

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

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

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

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

Updated: June 29th 2023

Hello folks,

Like many of the other people that have been around lately, I'm new to Tildes, I've been browsing it without an account since last Monday or so while waiting for an email response (thanks @Deimos), and in that time I've been working on a little tool to add some QOL features I thought would make my experiences with the site feel better.

I didn't plan on sharing it initially, because I didn't think I'd be able to get the javascript into a usable state, and I'm not fond of sharing my code in general, as I always get a big wave of impostor syndrome whenever I do, "What if they look at my messy code and see how silly I do some things", that sort of thing. But with Tildes I want to try to correct some of my internet behaviours, for years I've generally stayed as a lurker, never commenting or sharing content of my own, so, hello there, hopefully, I stick to my guns and you see more of me.

Onto the script itself, currently, I've built five main features into it all of them being rather minor on their own, I did do bug testing on everything and couldn't find anything else, but if you notice anything please feel free to report it to me or post an issue on the repo. It's easy to miss bugs when you've only got one set of eyes.

Tildezy Github

The GitHub contains installation instructions if you've never used a userscript before, and contains some images showing off each feature described below.

Hopefully, someone gets some use out of this with me, I look forward to chatting with you all.

EDIT
Refactored the code and added a new comment traveller feature based on some of the comments below.

EDIT 2
Up to 1.3.0, we've got markdown buttons now, see comment explaining the change or check out the github readme

I recently made a post here on Tildes in ~food about a pizza I made, and linked it to an Imgur album showing part of the process. This seemed interesting to me, and didn't think of it as an image post per-se. While most of the responses were positive, and we talked about pizza-making, it clearly did upset some people who viewed it as an image-only post.

Thinking through things, image only posts can be a bad thing - but there are plenty of good reasons to make image posts as well. Would images always be ok if they are original content? Certainly doesn't completely eliminate the possibility for people to shitpost, but does reduce it considerably.

Would it be acceptable to allow image posts, but require a certain number of words/characters attached to each post? This seems like it would be pretty easy to implement, and forces the user to actually make some effort, as opposed to just "karma farming".

AND ANOTHER THING!

Subscriptions. I would really like to see more specialized groups/communities here, and the current implementation I see is encouraging. ~games now has sub-groups, ~games.tabletop and ~games.gamedesign. This same system could be extended to sports. ~sports.motorsport.formula1, ~sports.esports.leagueoflegends, etc.

Hello everyone! A few days ago I mentioned I was working on a new WebExtension for Tildes.

Since the tidal wave of users has flooded the Spectrian plains of Tildes, I came up with this idea for having interactive guided tours of the interface to explain how Tildes works and why certain things are the way they are. Well, a basic version with two (count 'em, two!) tours is here! An introduction tour as an example of what to expect and some extra info. And a homepage tour going over everything you can find there.

Firefox users, you can install Tildes Shepherd today! Chromium-based browser users, you will have to wait a while or switch to Firefox, sorry. ;)

As you will see in the introduction tour after installing the extension, if you have any questions or feedback, you can message @Community or comment in this topic. It's very likely I made some mistakes in what's already there so even if it's just a typo, let me know!

As far as other tours goes, I have some planned and am open to anyone creating their own. Even if you have no programming knowledge whatsoever, if you can come up with a tour by taking screenshots and drawing over it in your favorite image editor I'd be more than happy to turn that into code for you. The most time-consuming part of creating tours so far has been finding out all the information and then condensing it into something readable, the coding aspect has been pretty easy.

If you're new to Tildes and like what you see, please consider donating! A fundraiser was started by @talklittle and a number of goals have already been reached, with 2 more goals remaining at 500 donors. So if you want that to happen, donate! Thank you! <3

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

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

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

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

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

Hi all, I'm a recent reddit refugee who is very happy with my transition here. I like the spirit of the community a whole lot and am a fan of the admin approach, which is designed to promote engagement and deep content and prevent a shallow (advertiser-friendly) scrolling experience.

A the philosophy page on content says:

In-depth content (primarily text-based) is the most important

and

In general, any changes to the site that will cause "shallower" content to gain an advantage should be considered very carefully.

I agree with this fully. My thoughts, though, are that there are definitely forms of image post that are not just memes or jokes, and do lead to deeper discussion.

For instance, if somebody has created some art and would like to post it for feedback (or just to share), this feels more like a discussion topic than a 'quick scroll' post. I feel that this kind of image post is 'pro community'. Somebody is posting something they care about and want to discuss.

On reddit, a sub I always liked was ImaginaryMonsters, where people post cool pictures of monster art and discuss them (either original art or properly credited). This is for people who want to admire and discuss artwork. Again, I don't think this necessary falls into the category of 'shallow content'.

So, what am I suggesting?

I think it would be good for the site to actively promote the posting of the right kind of image content in the right places.

My angle is, essentially:

• Some image content does promote depth of discussion.
• This type of content may be quite vital for certain wedges of the community, especially moving forwards as the site grows (and making creatives feel more welcome).
• Rules regarding self-promotion already exist in the Code of Conduct.
• Because of how the web works, it would make sense to have limited embedding of certain images in at least thumbnail format (but it needn't show the full image in the feed like other scrollable 'content' sites). .
• Creating certain groups/subgroups specifically for posting certain types of images doesn't need to be seen as a slippery slope, if the rules are clear.
• There is even the possibility of purging image posts that don't have n amount of engagement within a specific time, so as not to end up with clutter.

I should point out two things:

• I am aware that images can already be posted as links on the site, and I applaud the reasoning for the overall tentative approach. Here, I'm talking about some select subgroups of the site that are specifically for certain types of image posting.
• I don't necessarily think I'm right. I am new here and making observations - I'm thinking about things I'd like personally - I know I don't have all the information to understand the full impact of such things here, but I am interested in knowing what other people think.

So, do you have an opinion on this? Thanks for reading!

Edit:

I just wanted to point out a couple of things based on responses.

• When I mention image posts, I'm not talking about image hosting - that's a whole can of worms - the site already allows links. I'm just talking about image links (with maybe some QoL surrounding that).
• I wasn't totally clear above, I'm not suggesting image posts everywhere, or even necessarily a whole new post type. My first thoughts were about one or two specific, limited subgroups with specific purposes.
• Those concerned about moderation, I understand that angle, but I am keeping in mind this recent post by @Deimos, where they talk about expanding moderation, or even handing it off to individual communities, subreddit style:

If the activity stays at this level or keeps increasing, we will probably need to add more moderators soon.

• Those concerned about feeds being overrun by images, there were thoughts about this from Deimos in the same post:

I think we should probably take advantage of this current high activity level to try moving the groups towards being more independent spaces. This would involve switching away from the current "opt-out" approach to an "opt-in" one, and would probably need updates to a few different sections of the site to support it.

• I also think it's worth mentioning my thoughts above do not preclude having some minimum text requirement along with every image. I agree about not encouraging shallow content, and am attempting to focus on exactly where that line lies.
• Finally, I do want to make it clear I'm not coming here as a new person trying saying "nice site, change it like this!" - which I think some people may have taken this as (I had one or two single-sentence responses). I genuinely like what I've seen so far because of what it is, but am also aware things may well be changing in some other ways already (as per the post I linked). Sorry if this seems like 'another reddit user trying turn us into reddit' - this is not my intent whatsoever, I am just interested in specifically how it could be done in a Tildes way. I am glad it started a half-decent discussion though!

I've got a problem with my nextcloud and as tildes is my favourite nice place to ask for tech-support, maybe somebody here can help me with that.

I can start and run Nextcloud AIO without any problems. I can update the subcontainers without any problems. But the update of the Mastercontainer always fails and I don't kno why, only that it has to be something with docker.sock and permissions, but I could not resolve the issues, and google does not seem to be helpful (or I'm looking for the wrong stuff).

my update logs:

time="2023-06-14T12:47:59Z" level=debug msg="Sleeping for a second to ensure the docker api client has been properly initialized."
time="2023-06-14T12:48:00Z" level=debug msg="Making sure everything is sane before starting"
time="2023-06-14T12:48:00Z" level=info msg="Watchtower 1.5.3"
time="2023-06-14T12:48:00Z" level=info msg="Using no notifications"
time="2023-06-14T12:48:00Z" level=info msg="Only checking containers which name matches \"nextcloud-aio-mastercontainer\""
time="2023-06-14T12:48:00Z" level=info msg="Running a one time update."
time="2023-06-14T12:48:00Z" level=debug msg="Checking containers for updated images"
time="2023-06-14T12:48:00Z" level=debug msg="Retrieving running containers"
time="2023-06-14T12:48:00Z" level=debug msg="FIXME: Got an status-code for which error does not match any expected type!!!" error="Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running?" module=api status_code=-1
time="2023-06-14T12:48:00Z" level=error msg="Cannot connect to the Docker daemon at unix:///var/run/docker.sock. Is the docker daemon running?"
panic: runtime error: invalid memory address or nil pointer dereference
[signal SIGSEGV: segmentation violation code=0x1 addr=0x30 pc=0x9f4a22]

goroutine 1 [running]:
github.com/containrrr/watchtower/pkg/metrics.NewMetric({0x0, 0x0})
	/home/runner/work/watchtower/watchtower/pkg/metrics/metrics.go:31 +0x22
github.com/containrrr/watchtower/cmd.runUpdatesWithNotifications(0xc0002fd830)
	/home/runner/work/watchtower/watchtower/cmd/root.go:375 +0x15e
github.com/containrrr/watchtower/cmd.Run(0xc00033c300?, {0xc000281300?, 0x4?, 0x4?})
	/home/runner/work/watchtower/watchtower/cmd/root.go:168 +0x570
github.com/spf13/cobra.(*Command).execute(0xc00033c300, {0xc0000300b0, 0x4, 0x4})
	/home/runner/go/pkg/mod/github.com/spf13/cobra@v1.6.1/command.go:920 +0x847
github.com/spf13/cobra.(*Command).ExecuteC(0xc00033c300)
	/home/runner/go/pkg/mod/github.com/spf13/cobra@v1.6.1/command.go:1044 +0x3bc
github.com/spf13/cobra.(*Command).Execute(...)
	/home/runner/go/pkg/mod/github.com/spf13/cobra@v1.6.1/command.go:968
github.com/containrrr/watchtower/cmd.Execute()
	/home/runner/work/watchtower/watchtower/cmd/root.go:71 +0x52
main.main()
	/home/runner/work/watchtower/watchtower/main.go:13 +0x17

my startup command

sudo docker run \
--sig-proxy=false \
--name nextcloud-aio-mastercontainer \
--restart unless-stopped \
--publish 8080:8080 \
-e APACHE_PORT=11000 \
-e APACHE_IP_BINDING=127.0.0.1 \
--volume nextcloud_aio_mastercontainer:/mnt/docker-aio-config \
--volume /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock:ro \
nextcloud/all-in-one:latest

output after start:

Trying to fix docker.sock permissions internally...
Creating docker group internally with id 998
WARNING: No swap limit support
Initial startup of Nextcloud All-in-One complete!
You should be able to open the Nextcloud AIO Interface now on port 8080 of this server!
E.g. https://internal.ip.of.this.server:8080

If your server has port 80 and 8443 open and you point a domain to your server, you can get a valid certificate automatically by opening the Nextcloud AIO Interface via:
https://your-domain-that-points-to-this-server.tld:8443
++ head -1 /mnt/docker-aio-config/data/daily_backup_time
+ BACKUP_TIME=04:00
+ export BACKUP_TIME
+ export DAILY_BACKUP=1
+ DAILY_BACKUP=1
++ sed -n 2p /mnt/docker-aio-config/data/daily_backup_time
+ '[' '' '!=' automaticUpdatesAreNotEnabled ']'
+ export AUTOMATIC_UPDATES=1
+ AUTOMATIC_UPDATES=1
+ set +x
{"level":"info","ts":1686746753.2700157,"msg":"using provided configuration","config_file":"/Caddyfile","config_adapter":""}
{"level":"info","ts":1686746753.2748601,"msg":"failed to sufficiently increase receive buffer size (was: 208 kiB, wanted: 2048 kiB, got: 416 kiB). See https://github.com/quic-go/quic-go/wiki/UDP-Receive-Buffer-Size for details."}
[14-Jun-2023 12:45:53] NOTICE: fpm is running, pid 106
[14-Jun-2023 12:45:53] NOTICE: ready to handle connections

I tried to change permissions on /var/run/docker.sock
I tried to change permissions on /lib/systemd/system/docker.sock

same but with restart of docker.sock
same but with restart of docker.sock and docker.service

nothing helped

does somebody know where I go wrong or can me point in the right direction to resolve this problem? It's not a game stopper as I can update the container manually, but it is annoying.

edit: it runs on a ubuntu server 20.04.6 LTS

My current collection is over 3500 individual issues with the 2 most numerous publishers being Marvel and Image. To try and make things easier I have a series of boxes devoted simply to image comics, sorted alphabetically. The downside is when I go to add issues to the A-D box, it becomes full, so I need to move a chunk of the D's to box 2, which then fills up and need to keep shifting down until I need a new Image box for T-Z. Even more fun is I digitally track with CLZ app and have to make large moves there between boxes.

Do you also fall into the same trap of constantly adjusting boxes or do you have a better system?

I immediately installed iPadOS 17 Beta 1. Apart from quirks with saving images from the browser, it's been about as solid as the latest 16.x.x.

Anyone running the other betas as your daily drivers?

I'm also eager to hear from Sonora users. Considering updating my i7 Mac Mini.

Mine is a Facebook group called ALDI Aisle of Shame. I don't know if it's okay to link to it, so I'll just let you all google it if you want to check it out!

Not too long ago on /r/femalefashionadvice, someone mentioned a product in a comment section and I went to look for it online. This lead me to said group and the place was so unexpectedly incredibly wholesome..! It is the silliest thing. There are more than one and a half million members all praising the quality of ALDI products, and posting pictures of their hauls.

Recently, a trend was to post pictures of your dog and even a pony in hats gotten from ALDI and it is just so much fun! Even women doing the Spiderman meme in real life as they spot each other with the same outfit from ALDI.

PS: I am aware Tildes is text-focused so please let me know if this many images in a post is against the spirit of Tildes! Wasn't sure if it's ok to include images in a text post like this.

Yesterday someone on /r/lgbt posted this picture of themself at a pride event, and several people in the thread commented on OP's self harm scars - one asking them to please and thank you spoiler tag the image and post a trigger warning as they found the sight of OP's self harm scars triggering.

As someone who has very similar scars as OP I said fuck that, I disagree. I found it offensive that the sight of someone else's scars somehow grants you the right and allows you to tell them to cover up or hide themself because they find it triggering. To ask to have trigger warnings and spoiler tags added is unfair, in my opinion - the commenter then replied that it's not that hard to do. But for me it's obviously not about the effort it takes to do it, it's about the fundamental principle of asking someone to cover up or hide their body that I take issue with.

OP said elsewhere that they have struggled with mental health in the past but moved on, and clearly they are now at the point that they feel comfortable or don't mind that other people can see their scars. And I certainly feel like they should be allowed to wear whatever they like. I think that showing scars like this is 1) brave, 2) helps reduce stigma surrounding self harm, and 3) should be entirely that person's prerogative - their body, their choice.

So I am curious what you all think about this?

Is it fair to expect or ask someone to tag their picture like this, to hide their scars, to cover up, etc.?

I've noticed that there are primarily text posts with some links thrown in, and I do like the "real" conversation that it brings, instead of the shitposting that ends up all over Reddit.

I was curious, though, if there were any plans to add a ~pics or something similar. I know the goal of Tildes isn't to be a true Reddit replacement of course, but I wasn't sure whether image boards were planned or were being left out to help encourage actual discussion.

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

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

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

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

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

I've been GMing games for years and over the last few transitioned to Online VTT, first Cypher System, then PF2e. My first online campaign was a little off the wall, magic versus technology, barbarian party learning that guns and space battles were a thing, aliens and robotic overloads.

What's more my party tended to blow up stuff and wreck most maps in one session, so in the end I got into making maps or desperately looking for maps everywhere I could.

So, I thought maybe people could use some of what I've found in their own searches (disclaimer, I don't sell any of my maps, free to all, and I have no connection with any of the pay-for ones, but I've subscribed to most of them at one time or another!)

Map Tools

The idea in VTT RPG is to make a map image and import that into your game tool (Such as Roll20 or Foundry) then overlay tiles, tokens, walls etc onto it. The single map image is most, if not all of what you need.

Map styles

There are a couple of popular styles if you are picky about that sort of thing, though mostly important if you want to make your own maps and are looking for asset packs.

The asset styles you find seem to fall in roughly two forms:

• Dungeondraft default style. Flat. Line art, less detail
• Forgotten Adventures (short form FA) Still hand drawn (not rendered) but more detailed computer art style

Some people prefer the first style due to simplicity, others like the second but some may find it more gamey.

There is also the "rendered" style that Dungeon Alchemist uses, but that's REALLY gamey to my eyes. I believe there are third party libraries for it but never really looked.

Lastly, there is the unique art style of hard drawn art that lots of artist draw their battle maps in.

When I chose a style I went Forgotten Adventures. You can't really mix the two main ones when making your own map, looks horrible. I also found that of the various styles, FA could be matched with many hand drawn styles.

Maps

Ok the meat, and what I meant to post before I got side tracked!

Note most of the sites I am posting above can be used offline on a table top game by just printing the maps out, though I've never tried this.

My own maps tend heavily towards space and the magic/tech mix due to the campaign. They are in the Forgotten Adventures style. Free to use, including the ones on my Patreon (DON'T SUBSCRIBE TO IT! I started working on making more maps but then got too involved in GMing the game and ran out of time)

• My main free library ~35 maps, space, ground, some bunkers and others. All in WEBP for faster loading
• My Patreon, no subscribe! Only take! Only a few maps and then the campaign finished, space ships mostly and then it gets weird if you go back further and find it was a MMORPG Kit tutorial Patreon :/

Other peoples maps amazing I've found!

Science Fiction or Modern

Fantasy

Speciality environments

Phased Battle Maps

Asset Libraries

Tokens

Animations

There is more than this of course, but I just wanted to put down what I'd found. Hope it helps someone!

It's been six months since ChatGPT launched and about three months since I started posting these. I think it's getting harder to find new things to post about about AI, but here's another one anyway.

Here's the previous thread.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In March, I asked a question here about commissioning artwork.

I was then lucky enough to be contacted by @cc-louis. I was struck by the use of color in his portfolio and engaged with him to create some artwork as a gift for my husband.

The Artwork

I thought about putting this at the end for suspense, but I know people are just going to scroll to get to the good stuff, so without any further delay:

Here it is!
And here is the print!

I'm in the back holding the Pokeball cupcake from the previous batch of cupcakes (I am the de facto taste tester of my husband's baking). My adorable husband is the one pulling the current batch out of the oven. Our adorable dog is looking up, holding his favorite toy in his mouth, hoping something will fall on the floor so that he can try to eat it.

We're surrounded by my husband's Pokemon Pride Team, some of which have been helping him out with the baking, all of which are eager to get at those delicious fresh-baked goods.

The Setup

My husband is a lifelong Pokemon fan and has been playing the games since he was a kid. He doesn't just keep up with the series -- he often goes back and replays old games, doing Nuzlocke runs and themed teams for his playthroughs.

I surreptitiously found out from my husband what his Pokemon team would be if he did an LGBT Pride theme, choosing six Pokemon based on the colors of the rainbow flag. He chose the following:

Red: Scizor
Orange: Kingler
Yellow: Ninetales
Green: Bellossom
Blue: Marill
Purple: Arbok

My husband also loves baking (and I love eating my husband's baking).

The Brief

I wanted to get artwork of us with this Pride Team. I also wanted the Pride theme to be a bit more subdued. As much as I love the rainbow flag, it can be a little too gaudy and rigid for me sometimes. I wanted something that read as a cohesive scene, with the rainbow being more embedded and suggested than outright overt.

The Artist

I cannot speak highly enough of @cc-louis.

While I think the quality of his work speaks for itself, I'll also say that he was a joy to work with. He was consistently prompt and professional in all of our interactions. Furthermore, he was eagerly collaborative throughout the entire process. He would solicit my feedback and respond to any notes I gave him, while also smartly incorporating his own ideas (that were better than mine!). He sent me multiple drafts throughout his creative process to make sure I was happy with the direction he was taking things each step of the way.

The color, overall composition, and many of the incredible details in the pieces, were all him, not me. Early on he suggested a "cozy" feel with the oven as a centerpiece and a source of warm light, and I cannot say enough how much I love how it turned out. It is so beautiful and heartwarming to me.

If any of you are looking for commissioned artwork, I strongly recommend him. If I ever commission another piece, he will be first on my list.

(Hopefully it goes without saying, but @cc-louis did NOT ask me to give this review, nor did he pay me for this endorsement. I'm doing this purely as a very satisfied customer. I actually asked him for permission to give him a plug here!)

The Print

I also asked here about printing the image, and ended up selecting a local print shop. I couldn't really judge the quality of online print services and was worried I'd end up ruining the amazing artwork with a cheap-looking print. I figured a local shop would have a bit more expertise, and that I'd also be able to speak to real people if something came out wrong.

The local print shop did an incredible job, and their price was actually better than some of the online services I was looking at. The image now lives on a 22"x36" canvas, which will be mounted on our wall shortly.

I tried taking a picture of it, but my phone camera doesn't do it justice and makes it look kinda bad. The colors look muted and it looks like there's an odd texture on it that doesn't appear in person (might be small reflections of light?).

Everyone will just have to take my word on it that the artwork looks even better in person. I actually choked up a bit when I picked up the print because it was so beautiful and heartwarming.

I was secretly hoping my husband would happy cry when I showed it to him, but instead he got incredibly giddy (which was even better!) and immediately and proudly started texting the picture out to everyone we know on every single group chat we're on to show it off.

Overall, I am incredibly happy with how it turned out. My husband absolutely loves the piece, and I am beyond grateful to @cc-louis for turning my clumsy idea into a thing of beauty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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