My head was all over the place, I played really badly, I lost the run I was playing much quicker than expected, and decided to end stream early because of it... but despite all that, I'm weirdly happy about the whole thing anyway.

One of my big goals for 2024 is to stream a lot more often. For context, I've been off work on medical leave for a good long while now, and I find streaming to be (very fun but also) draining in a similar way to how work was draining - like in how "on" you have to be, and how much multitasking you have to do, that sort of thing. And so the main reason I streamed so rarely last year is that I rarely felt "on" enough to be at 100% for all that, and I worried that I wouldn't be doing a good enough job.

Today was the 1 year anniversary of when I first started playing the game I'm obsessed with these days, so I really wanted to do a special "anniversary" stream today, which for obvious reasons couldn't really be rescheduled. My brain did feel kind of fuzzy going in, and if it were any other day, I definitely wouldn't have decided to stream at all... but I'd been hyping up this idea to myself for a while, and knew I'd regret it if I bailed at the last minute, so I pushed myself to go live anyway.

And yeah, like I started this off by saying, the stream definitely wasn't perfect. I didn't play super well, made a bunch of boneheaded decisions, caught myself mentally drifting off every so often and not either playing the game or talking to chat or just being an engaging streamer at all. I lost a run that I for sure could have gotten further with if I played a bit smarter.

BUT!

I did it. I did the thing, and I still had fun, and my friends who tuned in as viewers seemed to have fun too. At the end of the day, that should really be all that matters.

I could very easily take today as a bad omen for the year to come... as in like, I'm gonna be mushy brained and keep doing embarrassing mediocre streams, because that's clearly all I'm capable of, blah blah blah. Past-me definitely would have latched onto that train of thought, hard. But right now, mostly what I'm feeling is just... proud. Proud of myself for not letting perfect be the enemy of good today for once, for actually putting myself out there, for not putting so much stock in "I have to be good at the games I play" as like part of my identity or anything (which I used to have a ton of bugaboos about, as a woman who used to play in a lot of sexist male-dominated spaces... it was kind of like, I have to be great at this game, or I'm just encouraging their sexism so much more and letting all other women down because of it, therefore I can't ever afford to be bad at games and especially not when someone else might see). I can finally feel myself starting to let go of a lot of those old toxic ideas, and while I know I still have a ways left to go with it, it already feels incredibly liberating.

Throughout my struggles with chronic illness these past few years, I've been trying my best for some time now to accept myself for where I'm at, instead of berating myself for not yet getting back to where I want to be. Moments like these are really nice reminders that that isn't nearly as hard as it used to be. :)

So, yeah. Thanks for reading. Here's hoping this story resonates with at least a few of you -- and here's to (hopefully) many more mediocre non-ideal streams to come this year, and maybe a few half-decent ones too if I'm lucky 😅

I find myself in an unusual situation wanting to play PC games that can't suck me in. Bear with me, this is a weird and specific request.

Ideally I want something I can easily pick up and put down maybe 1-2 times an hour between tasks. Chess or Risk came to mind, but I don't want something that mandates input or else you forfeit. Also thought of Civ, but in the past I've played that for hours at a time. I haven't found a setting that could force me to slow down, but maybe there's a mod I could use? Seems like I need something that either has built-in cooldowns or allows custom time controls.

Maybe there's some mobile games that are on PC that would fall into this category? I played "Egg, Inc" years ago, but remember the cooldowns started to extend into days which is when I stopped.

For reference, I typically play via Steam, Epic, or GOG and I like these game genres: strategy, RTS, tower defense, puzzle/logic, city building, simulation, automation, and exploration. But since there's probably not many games like this I'm definitely willing to branch out!

This is probably a niche subject, but here we go. The album version of Protect Ya Neck is censored and I hate how it was done. Luckily we have Protect Ya Neck (The Bloody Version) from the single. I don't like all of this version, so I took my European remaster and edited it all to replace the >drrrrtttt< with the swearing.

Today I got the Music on Vinyl release from 2009 and liked it enough, I figured I'd patch it. When I brought it into Audition I noticed that the audio was inverted.

Is there any reasoning behind this?

There was a brief mention of the Amish and their self-sufficiency in the Capitalism topic that got me thinking, so I thought that I'd share my thoughts and start another discussion.

My understanding of the Amish way of life - as someone who is probably thousands of miles away from them - is that they are not really self-sufficient insomuch as they are insular. They don't like to rely on the government, but they heavily rely on their community.

A lot of us here are leftists - some might even go so far as to call themselves socialists or communists. But for the most part we are advocating for government to provide support, and often it's the federal government rather than their local governments. For those of you who do, my question for you is this: why aren't you trying to help out the locals. And I don't just mean your city, I mean your neighborhood or even just your block.

I'm not talking about things like homeless shelters or nonprofits, I'm talking about mutual aid societies. People are complex; they don't just need things, they need people. They need assurance, motivation, and love. These are things that the government does not provide. The US Surgeon General state we are having a lonliness epidemic right now, and that it's majorly affecting people's health. We've had conversations about the lack of a third place but an even bigger problem is the death of our community hubs. It might be a good thing that people are getting less religious, but losing the church was a much bigger hit than people give credit.

We've had many comments in the past deriding "slacktivism". When you throw your voice into the void, you have no real power. But if you put your voice into your town hall, you have tremendous power. Giving money to the government is like having one billionth of a difference to a great many people, but helping out a person in your community is a huge impact in their life which might be the one thing they need to stop them from falling off a cliff. I don't think you'll find anything more socially gratifying.

I titled this "why don't you", but I'm also very much interested in hearing from people who do community work why they do and how they manage to fit it into their lives.

Maybe everyone knows this, but I suspect not. For years, I've been using the points I earn on a Chase Freedom card directly on Amazon. I just found out today that I'm only getting 80% of the value. Redeeming 26,345 points at Amazon yields $210.76. Redeeming 26,345 points on the Chase website (for an Amazon gift card) yields $263.45.

The Chase Amazon Prime Visa does give 100% of value directly on Amazon's site.

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.

Hey! So I used to be fairly warm to MS Teams but I utterly despise its call handling. I have three Bluetooth audio devices that I used regularly - a set of Edifier earbuds, my expensive Sony WH-1000XM5 pair, my CX-5 audio, and my Bluebus that integrates into my old BMW's hands free system. All of these work perfectly fine when I call someone via regular-ass phone calls. When I use Teams, all hell breaks loose. The edifiers work perfectly fine, so I know Teams is QUITE capable of handling these all ok. My CX-5 system won't do microphone audio when Android Auto is connected, but works fine on Mazda's infotainment call handling. In my BMW it won't handle the microphone but plays audio. On my Sony pair of headphones, it works great... And then about every ten minutes it disconnects, consistently, so I can't use them.

In theme with the other ongoing thread, nothing gets my gears moving like tech not doing what I'm asking it to. Teams barely has any options on Android for audio, so there isn't much of anything to tweak. Does anyone have any ideas of where to start? Is there something similar to Windows solutions like Virtual Audio Cable which could set up a virtual BT device to pipe audio through and simulate it being something else for Teams? Thanks all!

As part of a weekly series, these topics are a place for users to casually discuss the things they did — or didn't do — during their week. Did you accomplish any goals? Suffer a failure? Do nothing at all? Tell us about it!

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like faa, menslib and linux. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was taking notes.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

Sometime this year, probably around the middle of the year or later depending on my welfare, I want to replace my two monitors with an ultra wide.

I do have some preferences, such as:

• OLED Preferably
• Built in KVM
• 120hz or above refresh
• Has the ability to show two separate computers screens at once. Just in case I'm not being clear, two separate computers are plugged in as inputs and it can output the display for both on the same screen by dividing the screen in half. I've only seen this feature on one monitor, an ultrawide ASUS one but that was roughly $2000. This is probably the most 'nice to have' feature.

Would appreciate any suggestions or recommendations. Thanks.

Also, I have two monitors I would like to sell when I replace them, these being an ASUS VG27AQ, and a Dell S2721QS. Both of them are in perfect condition, other than being slightly dusty. What would be a fair price to list them for when selling?