Given the current state of things, I have been trying to avoid internet sites that could trigger anxiety. This is harder to do that I thought it would be. So I'm reaching out to the fine and resourceful Tildes collective for links to sites that are less known, and may provide, if not joy, at least interest, uniqueness maybe, fun, or education? Stuff that may be comforting, engrossing, or diverting to give some respite to those of us who are feeling pretty crushed.

Here are two sites I can offer, but I don't want to limit anyone's idea of what might be a good suggestion.

Futility Closet "is a collection of entertaining curiosities in history, literature, language, art, philosophy, and mathematics, designed to help you waste time as enjoyably as possible." (description from their about page)

Strange Company bills itself as "a Walk of the Weird Side of History"

(edited to add links)

I hate TODO lists. Even when they're for a single day.

I inevitably put more in my TODO list than I can accomplish in a day. When the new day begins, and I see the tasks I did not accomplish before, I feel anxious, sad, and even ashamed. Then I find some of that anxiety is for how my partner will judge me for the unfinished tasks on my list that she tells herself she expected me to accomplish.

While I have worked on self-compassion for years, occasionally it is not there. I have worked on having boundaries between my partner's own issues and my mental health.

I wonder how others with ADHD, particular those with partners, cope.

EDIT: I started using an allegedly ADHD-friendly planner yesterday. These feelings came pouring out of me this morning, hence the post. Yet I've had these similar difficulties for years.

There are currently four computers in my household: a Windows 10 desktop, a Windows 11 laptop, and two additional Linux laptops (those are "mine"). One is a very weak but new machine, basically the cheapest laptop I could buy that was neither Android nor literally a toy. It is running Lubuntu 24.04, and is used largely for writing and light browsing. The other is an older machine running MX Linux. Right now it's single purpose is running my Plex server. Given that setup, transferring files between machines is often a necessity.

Both my desktop computer and my Plex server are connected via Ethernet directly to the router. The other two laptops are connected largely via WIFI, although I do connect my writing laptop via an USB/Ethernet adapter for updates/upgrades and larger downloads when necessary.

Among other things, I often download movies on my Windows 10 desktop computer and then manually transfer them in batches to my Plex external hard-drive, and then to my Plex laptop (when it has enough space, otherwise I just keep the movies on the hard-drive). That is because it is way more convenient for me to (re)search what I wish to wwatch, find and download it to my desktop than it would be the case for my Plex laptop. The laptop is not only in a position that makes it uncomfortable to use but is also very slow even for basic things such as firing up Firefox. I also prefer to do the scraping using MediaElch and while it is a fairly heavy (probably Electron) application, my desktop is powerful enought that it doesn't make any diference. I also use Subsync sometimes, which is, as far a I know, only available as a GUI application on Windows.

Most content I find online is very practical, teaching me how to follow concrete steps to make things work, but I haven't found much advice on which programs or tech "stack" would be adequate for a specific situation such as my own. I just want a robust way to seamlessly transfer file between all the machines on my home without having to plug and unplug hard-disks and flash drives.

Any suggestion? Thanks!

I recently switched over my reading platform from Kobo to BookFusion. BookFusion lets you upload your own ebook files and sync them between devices, so I spent a lot of time de-DRMing my Kobo library and porting it over, as well as adding in some old de-DRMed books from my old Kindle.

For "traditional" titles I plan on still buying them on Kobo and then just stripping the DRM and transferring them over, but I also know there's an entire internet out there full of non-traditional publishing:

• Authors who sell their ebooks directly to consumers (e.g. Cory Doctorow)
• Publishers who sell ebooks directly to consumers (e.g. Boss Fight Books, Topatoco)
• Ebook bundle sites (e.g. StoryBundle)
• Public domain works (e.g. Project Gutenberg, Standard Ebooks)
• Assorted other stuff that doesn't really fit a simple category (e.g. this Planescape: Torment novelization)

I'm interested in adding some of these to my library, given that it feels like the "spirit" of BookFusion is to bring your own organic grassfed files, rather than glom them off of a DRMed service like I have been doing.

The hard part is that discoverability for stuff like this is really tough, since they're sort of just scattered across the internet. Furthermore, when I do tend to find stuff, I tend to find entire catalogs rather than individual titles. It's hard to know what's worth diving into from entire collections. That's why I'm hoping people can help me out by pointing me in the direction of specific stuff that they've loved!

With regards to recommendations, I want to leave the topic open to anything and everything. I don't want to limit this topic to just my tastes, in case other people find it useful.

If people do want to tailor some recommendations to me though, I tend to love sci-fi, nonfiction, LGBTQ stuff, videogame-related books, and comics/graphic novels (but only if the series are completed).

Important note: I am NOT looking for pirated books. I'm happy to pay for books I'm interested in, especially if they're supporting independent authors/publishers or online hobbyists.

It's no secret that the big (commercial) social media platforms are designed to maximize on-site engagement as much as possible. Anything that leads the user away from the site, be it an external news article, an image/video hosted somewhere else or relying on external communication tools, is antithetical to your business model if you rely on ad impressions or sponsored content.

So when I visit Tildes it's feels different. Often I stumble across interesting links or discussions that take me elsewhere on the web and encourage me to research or think about topics in a variegated way. So after an hour or two I can decide that I have gotten my share of curiosity, entertainment or social interaction and can move on to something else. It helps that the content on here is generally genuine and high quality.

This is in stark contrast to the endless scrolling loop of other sites that keeps one busy, but never quite satisfied. It's a very good sign.

Recently I was watching the World War 2 series "Masters of the Air". In one of the last scenes, there is an American prisoner of war who climbs up the flag pole and replaces the German flag with the American flag as American troops liberate the camp. I thought it was a powerful aesthetic image: A battered flag of freedom replacing a flag of oppression.

The American flag looks very nice to me, especially used in dramatic art. But I think that's mostly the connotations of my upbringing. If you look at the aesthetics of it without any history of it, it looks like a striped tablecloth sewn to a starry apron or something. And to a lot of other people in the world it looks like greed or violence or oppression or something else again.

I'm sure these aren't original thoughts, but the use of this flag as a symbol has been bothering me for the last 8 or 10 years. It's been co-opted to mean something different than before, inside the very places where it previously would have much more positive connotations. If I see that flag on a big pickup truck, I have a strongly negative connotation with it. Or if I see it defaced with a blue line on it. Or if I see it on the pin of a politician. Or on a pole in a used car lot. Or in any advertisement.

This is more about my own naivete about whatever the United States was actually about, separate from what we are taught as children and the stories we tell ourselves. But I'm guessing a lot more people have these thoughts than did a few years ago.

I remember some people a few years ago were telling progressives to "Take back the flag from the right wing". I guess I don't know if that's going to work, there seems to be a poisoned well now and anyway everyone always brings their own experiences to such symbols and your display of positivity may have the opposite effect on others.

Preface: I am familiar with Habitica. This idea would probably scratch a similar itch, but I'm also using this as an opportunity to sharpen my Rust skills.

My idea came about when I was trying to find out some new tactics to curb my alcohol consumption, which isn't quite out of control yet, but I don't want to tempt fate.

I've also really liked the progression aspect of RPGs. What if I could gamify my quest to not drink alcohol and make it sort of a fun, unique RPG experience at the same time?

In the broadest sense, it would go something like this:

• You open the game up, ideally each day. You are instantly prompted: "Did you drink yesterday?" (and perhaps it will go back a few more days if you skipped).
• For each day you answer "no", you are rewarded with some sort of tokens, credits, etc. -- currency to play the game. If you answer "yes", maybe you get penalized somehow.
• Then, you pick up your journey, which is sort of a standard RPG experience -- fighting battles, buying gear, learning spells, leveling up, advancing through the world, you name it.
• The game should get progressively more difficult, but should not have an ending, as "quitting alcohol" does not have an ending either. At the same time, it should scratch the RPG progression itch.

The initial game concept I came up with is just one that I see as the quickest way to get this off the ground, which would be something CLI-based, where you are presented with a menu ("visit shop, enter arena, view equipment" etc.). You spend battle tokens to enter into arena battles, which reward experience points, money, and gear. You level up, work towards a build (there needs to be a way to respec because restarting isn't really an option), and progress through the arena.

In total, you would probably spend less than 5 minutes every day playing the game, which is by design. It should be an every day habit. But, there should be enough entertainment value that, if I'm not getting those sweet battle tokens by not drinking, I'm missing out on experiencing the game (or, I could lie, which defeats the purpose of the app).

So that's where I'm at right now. I'm really interested to hear your thoughts, ideas, critiques, etc. before I spend a free weekend building out a concept.

Some questions in particular:

• I was leaning toward just building this in CLI because it will be extremely simple. It could just be a matter of STDINs. However, I'm open to other Rust-based options. Is there a good Rust UI toolkit or web framework that is worth looking into that would make this a little more modern?
• What about game features? What could make this a really fun experience, while also balancing the whole concept of being built around your life and your habits?

In the end, this is a deeply personal project that would be built, first and foremost, for my specific needs. But that's not to say I couldn't build it with some scalability in mind. Rather than asking about alcohol, perhaps the "habits" can be customized, and so forth.

Anyway, have a great weekend!

We live in Texas, so abortion is already illegal here. We ordered a plan C pill as soon as Roe v Wade was overturned back in 2022 and just ordered another yesterday, as well. We also went to Costco to get some plan B, just in case, and the pharmacist literally said they'd sold over 100. It's so crazy to me that Trump can win with policies as unpopular as abortion bans, ugh. I worry for my girlfriend and women and LGBTQ+ people across the US, but especially in red states like here.

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.

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!

With the inevitablre result of the US election, for the next four years all media will be totally overwhelmed by one person. It'd be nice to be able to at least on Tildes shove all of that into one corner so it can be hidden.

While Tildes is quite US focused, there is still a lot of us non-us people here.

I think I'm not the only one asking themselves, whether it's time to pack up and leave. But where to?
So for the sake of brainstorming I need your help. As for myself I'm willing to go basically anywhere as long as I can imagine a future there.

Edit: Since you all are getting caught up in telling me how naive/wrong/misguided I am, I'm boiling it down to one question:

What countries are not on the verge of descending into fascism and are accepting in some form or another of westerners moving there?

All I want is countries I can look into myself and give people in my spot something to look into, please for the love of all that is holy if you don't have anything positive to say, save it.

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like casual, voting and controls.tactile. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was fussed.

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!

Section 9 of Google Workspace's Terms of Service has been updated. Here's how it was summarized in the notification:

Section 9, Publicity: We clarified that neither Google nor you may issue a press release or other similar public statement regarding your use of the services without the other party’s permission

The section itself makes clear that:

Neither party may use the other party’s Brand Features or issue, publish, or present a press release, blog post, speech, social media post, or investor relations call or announcement discussing Customer’s use of the Services or this Agreement without the prior written consent of the other party

Have you seen similar terms before? It seems very strange to me that they would contractually disallow customers from sharing how they use Google services or from discussing the TOS.

So this is reality. I warned myself not to take anything for granted with Trump, 2016 happened, but still I was starting to feel hopeful for a minute there. But nope, this is what America looks like now. For now.

This sucks for a lot of Americans, some are justifiably devastated. A lot is uncertain and we all have to figure out how to navigate this version of the country for, at least, the next 4 years. That's of course part of the insanity, that there are big questions about what happens when Trump's term is over. We kinda know there's going to be some level of a coup attempt, we just don't know if it will be successful.

But for the moment I want to put aside the myriad fucked up social, economic and geopolitical implications and explore what it means from a more ideology and identity sort of angle.

This means that we don't live in a just world. When my partner was crying last night, I think that's what she was feeling the loss of most of all. The idea that despite the imperfections of the world, somewhere underneath there is some form of justice based in the fundamentally good nature of human beings.

Intellectually it seems obvious that there is no inherent justice. But emotionally it's a different story. Speaking for Americans, it's not the story we're told growing up in the shining beacon of democracy. The concept of what America is, and who Americans are, that we translate to our childen is missing most of the nuance. And many of us keep that with us emotionally as adults, even if we know better.

The grown up version, the story we tell ourselves in American culture, has more nuance but not as much as you'd hope for. As an example, we've been pretending that giant corporations, conglomerates and the ultrawealthy can serve the public interest for an embarrassingly long time. We've made materialism into an art. A little light to medium evil in our foreign policy is just something we need to accept.

Of course the nuance isn't lost on everyone, a lot of us have a clear view of what America is, and western capitalist democracy writ large, but Trump is president, in part, because a lot of people do not. Full stop. We, as a culture, are telling the wrong stories about ourselves.

But Trump is president, in spite of his escalating rhetoric and Jan 6th and the nazis on parade and the election wasn't even close. So we have to come to terms with what that means about what America is, and who Americans are.

That's going to take time and processing and I'm not sure how that might or should look. I just want to add that this isn't new. This is the country we've been living in for some time. The only thing that's really changed is that we can't rationally tell any other story now.

It's heartbreaking but after we grieve I think we'll have an opportunity, collectively, to come to terms with what we are, good and bad. Which is of course a vital early step in the process of change.

One thing I'd like to add to the conversation, that's been said a lot and still not nearly enough, is that the enemies here are not just bigotry, or ignorance, or extremist religion or lack of security. Perhaps the biggest reason, directly and indirectly, for Trump's second term is unchecked capitalism.

I hope that, as a whole, we'll learn from this, and focus our energy on the right demons. The ones we maybe have to deal with before we can handle the others.

And also I want to say: this is sad and it feels bleak at the moment... and this grief is shared by millions. We're not alone in this. We'll get through it.