As we finish out 2025, it's been a minute since we had a question like this and with apologies to @kfwyre for stealing their MO.

What's something you're proud of? Maybe from this year, maybe not, but especially something you don't get to talk about a lot, for whatever reason.

Have you watched any TV shows recently you want to discuss? Any shows you want to recommend or are hyped about? Feel free to discuss anything here.

Please just try to provide fair warning of spoilers if you can.

Hello,

I seem to be in a write it down phase and have gotten to the physical health part.

I'm looking for fun, absurd, dumb, exaggerated, vanity goals related to fitness.

What I have now is:

• standing front/back flip
• cartwheels as a mode of transportation
• being able to touch my chins with my forehead with straight legs
• doing 10 handstand push ups
• running on all fours
• being a human flag
• holding my breath under water for 10min
• walking with a total weight of 150kg for 4hrs in mixed terrain with an average speed of 5km/h
• jumping up 1m from standing
• doing the splits (both ways)
• gripping my forearms with the opposing arm behind my back from top/bottom
• going down into the bridge from standing and then get up to a handstand

The idea is to have these feats as goals so that I have something to strive for... I have well over 40years to reach them.

Think of something that you would cringe at when shown or talked about, but secretly you think it's kind of cool.

Like that uncle that always has to show off...

My list is mostly gymnastics, but I sure welcome pure strength, endurance or other things too.

NOTE: I do not want comments bemoaning the current state of US politics on this post. Rest assured that I am well aware of all that. Focusing on that will not help me in my current situation and will only serve to depress me. Please respect my wishes on this.

So others here might remember that about a year ago I posted about how I was getting divorced. While nothing's happened on paper yet, my ex and I have lived separately since then. Between taking in-person German language classes and making new online friends, I've been doing a lot of work on myself in the interim, and my mental health has been mostly doing a lot better than it was while I was married, barring a few short-term dips.

Unfortunately, my unemployment ran out, and I'm no closer to getting a job in my field, and not for lack of trying. The German job market sucks absolute ass right now, and while my German language skills have improved a huge amount over the past year, they're not good enough to overcome the average German's preference for a native speaker, which in this job market is enough. Anyway, the long and short of it is that I'm broke and there's no clear solution here in Germany for that for me.

Luckily for me, I'm still quite young in the grand scheme of things, and I have parents who love me and are willing to support me in getting back home to the US, alongside letting me live with them in my childhood home until I get a job and can save up enough to get back on my feet and get my own place. The job market in the US is better for me than in Germany (especially given the lack of a language barrier) and I have opportunities for further education and career pivots that wouldn't be possible for me in Germany right now. This, plus the fact that I really want to be there while my sister's young kids grow up, means moving back to the States is probably my best next step, moving forward.

I'm excited to be near my family again and to reconnect with friends in the area, but obviously I'm also pretty anxious about the whole experience. I'd love advice from others who have moved internationally about little things that are easily forgotten or are left out of the usual lists of things to consider during the planning stages. When I first moved to Germany, I was a poor student who just had a few suitcases with me, but now I'm an adult with more stuff I own that I value to some extent. I've already begun the process of slimming down what I plan to bring with me to the essentials and checking which electronics can be safely operated in the US with/without a transformer. But I'm sure there's something I've missed that other people have experience with and I'd love any advice from people who have made similar moves themselves.

Also, any little positives about adult life in the US or bits of advice for once I move back are appreciated. I moved to Germany right after I finished my bachelor's, so I don't have much experience as a "real adult" in the US. So any tips to help smooth along the adjustment process or little bits of advice for someone learning to live as an adult in suburban Ohio would be welcome. And any positivity is extremely appreciated -- it might be a tough ask here on Tildes and I know it can be hard in the current times, but that's exactly why I need what I can get.

(Stealing @kfwyre's format since I haven't seen anything similar posted here)

This is your place to share any and all thoughts on your anime watching for 2025.

What you talk about does NOT have to be limited to this year’s releases.

Feel free to share:

• Favorites
• Disappointments
• Surprises
• Memorable moments
• Self-reflections
• Anything else!

Let us know how your 2025 went.

I don't know if you know Destin Sandlin. He has a youtube channel named "SmarterEveryDay." I believe he would self-describe his channel as "a red-neck doing sciencey stuff."

The guy has everything, from the southern accent to videos about seemingly-dumb red-neck things that involve a significant amount of engineering and the opportunity to teach about science. If you don't know him, some (not all) of what I consider his best videos are:

• How Does A Carburator Work
• Why Snatch Blocks are AWESOME
• Bullets HITTING Bullets in Slow Motion
• World's Longest Home Run

The large part of his content is like this. Maybe not of this quality, but the theme is often some, what he calls, "redneck" thing turned into an engineering challenge. And overall, the quality of his videos is quite high.

Sometimes he will just tag along with some expert explaining their fields. These are also entertaining and IMHO educational pieces of content. If you want examples, there are:

• This is Music On An Oscilloscope
• How Carburetors are Made
• His 3 parts series on how photographic film is manufactured: Part #1, Part #2 and Part #3
• Everything About Grain Bins

And more rarely, he will post weird, life advice or motivational content. Usually this is wholesome or harmless, but it feels disconnected from the rest. Examples are:

• Marriage Advice
• What's it like to become a father?

I've always like Destin. This is not a university class, and in the past he has taken some shortcuts with safety. But overall, I think he is an honest content creator, and he is entertaining and educational. He also has increase the safety of his experiments, and been educational about (see the video linked above about bullets hitting bullets) I feel that he has kept the clickbait as low as he could get away with Youtube's algorithm, and that's rare in this day and age, therefore I respect him for that. Overall his content is, IMHO, humble and wholesome.

I think this contrasts with Veritasium which has become way too clickbaity, and Mark Rober who reminds you every 5 minutes that he quit his job at NASA to do Youtube. By the way, did you know Mark Rober used to work at NASA?

Of course, Destin is not perfect. He has taken, what I consider to be, bad sponsorship in the past, such as NordVPN which is just a shady VPN (just use Mullvad or Mozilla VPN if you want to circumvent geoblocking), HelloFresh which is overpriced food delivered by a Roach Motel company, or Casper Mattress which AFAIK is a dropshipping company selling products with some health concerns. But many other Youtubers took these sponsorship, so I won't criticise him too much for that. Also his quest to make something 100% in the USA is very laudable, at least to me.

There are some weird stuff though. I'm trying to not be too much parasocial, but most of his content that is not science related feels... weird. It's often about family, helping the poor, being a good member of the community, which I think are good values to have, but it has this weird religious semi-conservative undertone that I can't really pinpoint, it's more like an uncomfortable feeling.

Most of his videos used to finishes with a reference to a bible verse in gray over a black screen. This has disappeared most likely as the Youtube algorithm started asking him to link to his other videos at the end of his videos. I also always find weird the videos with his kids because they address him as "sir". I don't know if it's cultural, but in France (where I'm from and where I live) this is usually associated with radical Catholics (aka "traditionalists")

I've pro-actively tried to avoid judging him on the last part, because I believe people can live their life as they wish as long as they don't hurt anybody.

But now, I'm torn... He has recently made more and more references to the bible for historical and biological facts. The two videos, I have in mind are:

• Nature's Incredible ROTATING MOTOR where at 27:25 he hints at creationism.
• More recently, in Pompeii Changed How I Think About The Roman Empire, the video uses the bible as some kind of historical reference, for example at 12:36.

And this is starting to bother me. I don't mind the past "I have some belief I want you to know, but unrelated to that, I put it aside, here is some engineering/science video." However, I do mind the recent "I'm talking about science, and let me tell you how it matches my made up beliefs based on a book made up by people 1000s of years ago."

I know that Destin owes me nothing. And the counter point should be "hey... if you're not happy just stop watching him." But I just feel that I'm watching a guy who spend more than a decades building his brand and audience just tearing it appart, and it was a good brand and audience. I'm just sad about it, but maybe I'm overreacting.

What's your opinion?

I've owned Baldur's Gate 3 pretty much since it came out. I prefer role-playing games with good stories and characters that feel real and interesting, so this game should be right up my alley. Turn-based, party combat is not my favorite but I find it enjoyable once I make the mental switch.

I've tried playing 3 times. The first time, I went in blind (as did everyone) because it had just come out. Having gotten into it somewhat, figured out the basics, I realized that I had managed to totally miss 2 of the main companions. I was also playing as a ranger and regularly getting my butt handed to me, because I had no warriors in my party. . So I restarted, but found the restart a slog And then an update broke my play-through so put it away for (quite) a bit.

After many months, I thought I'd try again, when Cyberpunk fatally crashed late in the game because of my modding addiction. This time there was LOTS of information on the web about BG3, which I read, hoping to make sure not to miss anything important (like, all the warrior companions...) I tried playing a mage. But this time I felt constantly stressed about getting the "right" outcome, picking the "right" dialogue, getting the "right build....It wasn't fun. I think it was my fault.

There are a bunch of people who consider this game the greatest ever, and I really think it could be up there for me, but I'm doing it wrong. So I am asking--how to you play this game to maximize your enjoyment? How much did you rely on wikis or our guides? Are there mods out that you recommend? What attitude so you bring when playing that makes the game enjoyable for you? Help me love this game, I really want to!

EDIT: Thank you everyone, I'm totally psyched to start again with a new attitude and some new strategies!

EDIT2: Sorry I didn't respond to the later posts... I took all the advice and tried again and have spent all my free time having a blast with BG3, so THANK YOU

Here's a a double feature about game console history: two YouTube videos that were released in the past few days. While the videos are unconnected, both are great quality little documentaries and I think when watched together offer an interesting contrast between the two worlds that existed at the time.

The Untold History of the Nintendo Entertainment System (45 min) by The Video Game History Foundation documents how the NES was launched in the US 40 years ago. While I was familiar with the main story, many of the details were totally new to me, including the prototypes and the initial ideas of what the NES might have been, and could well have been had the market and initial test audiences reacted differently.

The Hunt for the Lost Communist Console (18 min) by fern looks at the BSS-01, a video game console manufactured in East Germany in 1979. It was the only game console released in the country and I think somewhat similar to the Soviet console Turnir, as both used the same AY-3-8500 chipset imported from the West and offered a collection of Pong clones.

This thread is posted weekly - please try to post all relevant US political content in here, such as news, updates, opinion articles, etc. Extremely significant events may warrant a separate topic, but almost all should be posted in here.

This is an inherently political thread; please try to avoid antagonistic arguments and bickering matches. Comment threads that devolve into unproductive arguments may be removed so that the overall topic is able to continue.

• I have an AMD processor that is not supported by Windows 11.
  • I don't wanna deal with the consequences of workarounds.
• I have an old NVIDIA graphics card that was never even close to being a flagship. It is essentially unsupported on Linux (I’ve tested it).
• I intend to keep running Windows 10 for as long as possible, using either official or unofficial means.
• My current Windows installation is becoming unmanageable, as Windows often does.
• I am a competent Linux user, and I run Linux on my laptop.
  • I have WSL2 on Windows 10 and it is great. Especially because I am a heavy Emacs user. I cannot live in an OS that does not allow me the full power of Emacs over a Linux base. This greatly reduces the need for bare-metal Linux.
  • One reason to keep running Windows (at least in a dual-boot setup) is that WoW runs at around 30 FPS on Linux for me. Other games have different issues.
    • I often run games from shady origins that are not obtained from Steam and tools such as Lutris and Bottles are just not there yet in terms of ease of use. I don't enjoy doing a lot of work just to play a game.
  • I understand that there are ways around almost any issue on Linux; I just don’t have the energy right now.

Any suggestions for post-installation cleanup and removing crap from Windows 10?

Thanks!

A family member of mine recently got a cheap smart watch online. They weren't planning to use it with a phone app for privacy/security reasons. They thought using it without a phone would be fine, since they just wanted it for the time and for the health features like steps, blood pressure, blood oxygen, sleep tracking, etc. and didn't need to see their texts or other notifications on the watch.

Unfortunately, when we tested the watch, we found that basically all of the features required connecting to a shady no-name company's app. You couldn't even set the time! You can't set the time on a watch without an app!

Also, the watch was a bit bulky for their wrist, and they would prefer a slimmer one.

People of Tildes, do you know of any smart watches that allow you to use the health tracking features without ever connecting to a smartphone? If so, are there any that are slimmer instead of being bulky?