Hi Friends,

I'm in the (very) early stages of creating a financial endowment fund for a small non-profit community organization I help out with. I feel they're a good fit for such an investment vehicle: their current revenue stream fluctuates a bit and many of their events rely heavily on attendance fees for funding, which is unrealistic when they attempt to cater to lower-income demographics. However, they have a relatively wealthy patronage that tends to remain involved for years or decades, and I believe they have the institutional stability to operate more complex financial instruments.

I pitched the idea of an endowment at a high level to the Chairwoman last week, and the Board is interested in moving forward. We haven't decided how exactly we want to structure the endowment yet: restricted endowment, quasi-endowment, etc. We also haven't determined exactly how much money we should fundraise for a principal investment, what our portfolio spread should look like, and how much of the annual interest we can afford to spend. (I have estimates, but they're not final.) I'm particularly interested in resources that can help the institution plan for inevitable economic downturns.

Has anyone here done this kind of work before? If so, would you be willing to chat about some of the nuances of organizing it, and/or do you have recommendations on reading material to help with the creation and maintenance of such a fund? We plan to receive consultations from an accountant and a lawyer, but I don't have much formal background in finance and would welcome any experience, advice, warnings, or external resources Tildesians can offer.

Thanks,
Atvelonis

Cain and Abel

The Story you Might know:

Cain was Adam and Eve’s first son, Abel was No. 2. “in the course of time,” Cain, a farmer, brought an offering of his harvest. Abel, a “keeper of flocks,” also brought “the fattest part of the firstborn of his flocks.” Cain got a God Thumbs Down, Abel, a God Thumbs Up.” Cain was pissed, killed Abel. God exiled Cain and put a “mark” on him so no-one would kill him.

You Might not Know:

Cain goes on to found a city and have progeny, one of whom is the father “of those who play stringed and wind instruments,” another becomes the father of “all those who keep flocks,” another the father of those who make tools. So like, everything you could do in the ancient world except farming.

The father of these three is a guy named Lamech. Perhaps merely coincidentally, Lamech is the name of the father of Noah, the next story in the Genesis. Bible Purists obviously distinguish these two, but we’re talking about the Law Books of Moses here, seems like they would have chosen these sorts of things pretty carefully. I am not a Bible purist (or scholar, for that matter).

Something in this story dings a low-pitched gong deep down in my psyche. Granted, I was raised in a certain christian religious tradition where lots of time were spent on certain bible stories, of which this was one. But it was always presented as a simple morality tale: God wants animal sacrifices, and it’s wrong to kill your brother. Also don’t read anything past where God, who is clearly so merciful, put a mark on cain to save his life.

I turned to the internet, and most of the Christian exposition points to a few New Testament passages that clarify Abel was more righteous and had better faith. I found that wholly unsatisfactory. So I looked for Jewish exposition. One, an academic at a (presumably reformed) Jewish university, basically was like, God, wtf? (totally my summary). Others had various moral expositions, albeit far more eloquently reasoned and rhetoricized than the christians, but still unsatisfactory.

Questions based on the English text alone:

What was really wrong with Cain’s offering, and how would Cain know in advance? Sure, all the whole rest of the bible is about animal (and human) sacrifice, but at this stage? After all, God requires Adam to be a farmer, so Cain is just being a dutiful son, and offering what he has to offer. The implication from the text is not that it was wrong in kind, but that it wasn’t “nice” enough, suggested by the text’s additional detail about Abel’s offering being fat and firstborn.

Also, how can Cain’s descendant, born well after this incident, be the of father those “who keep flocks,” when that’s what Abel did?

How did Cain ditch his curse?

What other people were there to kill Cain? At this point, technically, there’s only Adam, Eve, Cain (and dead Abel). Also, where’d he get a wife? And don’t say Adam and Eve were busy. The text says their next child after Cain and Abel was Seth, born after all this mess.

Other than the nature of the offering and the curse, these questions are really only important to Ken Hamm and his pals.

Based on preliminary research:

The questions don’t easily resolve, as some scholars believe that what Cain offered was flax, which would have been the best of his crops. Also, what Abel offered was goats, when the best offering would have been cows. Conclusion: god doesn’t care what kind, so long as it’s the best of that kind. Or, God prefers a Chevy with full options over a base model BMW (better get that heated seat subscription now!).

Cain’s name might mean “blacksmith.” The father of tools is Tubal-Cain. “Abel” might be a transmogrifation of “Jabel,” the father of those who keep flocks.

Lamech is the same Lamech in both stories, what we are seeing is an attempt to include and combine two traditional sources into one text. Assuming that is true, would keeping the name the same be an effort to signal the reader needs to understand we are bridging two stories? I mean, if I were trying subterfuge, I’d change one of their names. If I were trying to be real, I’d add a footnote explaining it. But then again, I don’t have to write on papryus by hand.

Later interpretations:

In the late middle ages/early post middle ages, depictions of this story show Abel as clean shaven, smaller, with soft features, and wearing fine, aristocratic clothing. Cain is bigger, bearded, aggressively countenanced with sharp, angular features. He’s wearing the clothes of a field-hand.

Why I am writing this:

Like I said, it bangs a ceremonial gong. I feel like there is an important truth embedded here. It’s more spiritual, and important, than merely accepting it as an artifact of changing and competing cultures. There’s some talk of two traditions merging here, one priestly, the other “YHWH-ist,” especially when you consider the preceeding and succeeding texts (Adam <> Noah). The competing cultures are nomadic, pastoral (these two are not exclusive), and agricultural, and also urban “industrial.” Everything comes from Cain—nomadicism, agriculture, technology, music, animal husbandry. Some jewish scholars say Architecture is included in there, too.

My interpretation:

I deign to practice midrash. When Cain lets his displeasure at God’s judgment be known, God says something like, don’t you know if you do right, I will lift you up? I think what is being said here is that what Cain did was not good enough—for Cain. That is, Cain could do better. Abel did the best he could, he gave some juicy meat. But God had bigger plans for Cain. No offering of mere crops, or money, or even cows would have satisfied coming from Cain. No, Cain needed to literally found civilization. And following that path is when the blessings started to flow.

Side-note, In old Egypt, Osiris was the first-born brother of Set, and created culture for humans.

Abel the first capitalist.

I believe that medieval interpretations were attempting to perpetuate feudalism. The depictions of poor, innocent Abel, righteous and faithful servant of God, as aristocratic, against aggressive, crude, farmer Cain as a peasant, is meant to keep the judgmental finger of God pointed firmly and clearly at the heart of the serfs. God’s (through his faithful feudal Lord) is going to expel you if you act like Cain. Keep offering your crops to God (through your faithful feudal Lord) plus some phat veal.

It’s also possible that the story was holding up an early form of capitalism. I’m getting speculative (and casual) here. But whereas farming is a very labor intensive endeavor, flocking is very capital intensive (and also, like modern big capitalists, is very good at externalizing costs). Farming does require land-capital, a few tools, and seed, but mostly crops are grown through effort. Pastoral endeavors, otoh, require capital, namely, the flock. The inputs are externalized-water and pasture not owned by the shepherd. The flock largely persists, producing milk, wool, and babies (ROI!!), requiring much less effort to maintain than dirt. Don’t believe me? How do you think David had all that time to sing those psalms?

Thanks for reading.

Hello! I do a fair bit of my reading via Libby (I have memberships at the NYPL and Brooklyn Public Library) but I like to pick up some physical copies as well. I've spent some time in a couple of NYC bookstores but I'm curious about online portals folks here use to buy books. I've switched to bookshop.org for new books but what's the go to for used books?

Thanks!

Long story short I am a web developer that currently makes more money than I've ever made in my life to this point. The downside is that my benefits package is sub-par. Very few vacation days, no health insurance (though we do get $ on our checks to go toward costs), fairly bare-bones retirement plan, etc. I also feel kind of aimless at this job. There is no clear path for raises or promotions. It's too small of a company for that.

I got an offer today for a job with a company that a former manager of mine works at (We both left our previous jobs around the same time, so no poaching concerns there). It's an opportunity to change my specialty from backend development (databases, server-side code) to frontend development (HTML, CSS, JS). I've always enjoyed frontend development more than backend. Feel free to giggle about this terminology because it's definitely ridiculous. The job basically resolves all of my benefits issues. Unlimited vacation, pretty good health insurance, and a more robust retirement plan. There are also very clear paths for raises/promotions. In fact one of the first things you do when you get hired is sit down with your manager and department head and plot out a career track for yourself. So in my case I'm aiming for team management or something along those lines in a few years. So they would cater my training and promotions around that. There's a guaranteed yearly raise, plus a nice 5% bonus at end of the year.

So what's the problem? Because the second job seems perfect, right? Well the second job pays nearly 12% less a year. So what's the problem? Because that's an insane drop in pay, so clearly stay where I'm at, right? Well I was told by my former manager (and potentially new department head) that the plan would be to fast-track me into something closer to my current salary once I'm there for a few months and start excelling at my job. And I trust this guy because he fought for me to get raises twice when I worked under him before. It's rare to work under someone who will go to bat for you, and he was always that guy for me and I've no reason to think he wouldn't be again.

Because the way I see it, once I get a raise or promotion under my belt I should be pretty close to where I'm at now, but with substantially better benefits. And in a place with more of a future for me than my current job.

I just really don't know what to do here. I've "made a decision" in my head about a dozen times today, going back and forth between options. I kind of feel like it's worth taking the hit in the short term to be working at a place that will pay off better in the long term. Not just financially, but I'll get to broaden my skill set and actually have a concrete plan for progressing in my career.

Looking for any advice, or opinions, or whatever. I'm completely torn here.

edit -- Just wanted to thank everyone here. I decided to accept the job offer. My wife and I are working on a plan to weather the loss of income. Next step is writing the resignation letter....which always sucks. I hate disappointing people and it's a small company that I'm leaivng so my departure will be felt.

Thanks

After about a year-long absence I've hopped back on to Tildes again. There wasn't anything about the platform that made me "leave", it was purely external things in my life. With online communities, you really don't expect people to recognize you from day to day, but people here do and it's one of the things I love about Tildes.

What has absolutely shocked me is that after being gone for a full year people recognize my username. They have been incredibly kind and welcoming. They are happy to see me again. They remember the photography posts that I made and said they look forward to seeing them again. They remember the hard times my family was experiencing and have wished me well.

I'm not trying to be dramatic, but I'm being serious when I say that this reception has made me tear up. I've never experienced this before in any community, anonymous or otherwise. In all of the noise of the internet I never really expected my voice to be heard, much less be remembered by anyone. I never anticipated strangers to care beyond the time it takes to comment on a post.

I am completely overwhelmed by this reception. This is the kind of place that I thought had gone extinct on the internet. All of you have made me feel like I matter, and I don't think there's any way I can ever express my gratitude for this.

Since I'm posting anyway, I'll give a quick update for everyone.

Family

My family is doing amazing right now. Both of my sons have flourished and made so much progress. I've been around other foster/adoptive parents and the transformation that has happened for them in such a short amount of time is nothing short of a true miracle. Neither of them has needed inpatient psych care for almost two years now, and my oldest is now able to go to a special school that can meet his needs. My youngest who has struggled his whole life with social interaction now has several friends and even a best friend. My wife and I's relationship, which was on the verge of total destruction is now back on track and stronger than ever. I really appreciate the awesome support this community gave me during the worst year of my life.

Photography

I also fell out of photography during that time, but with the new stability I have rebuilt my darkroom in our new home and I'm picking it up again. It has gone from a fun hobby to a driving passion, and I'm now partnered with a mentor who has decades of experience. With his guidance, I hope to start producing gallery-quality material. I don't know that I'll ever submit to a gallery, it's really just a personal goal to start making things I can be proud of.

Again I can't thank everyone enough for all that you've done for me. I'm excited to be here and get plugged back into this awesome place!

So I've returned here after being gone for about a year. I didn't "leave" on purpose, just got distracted with some life stuff.

I'm happy to be back and to see the community is still as awesome as it was before. I'm also happy to see that on the technical side the site is still super minimalist and easy to use.

But what do you feel has changed here in the last year? Are there more users? Have the topics shifted? Are the opinions of users trending in a certain direction?

I'm really happy to be back and thanks for keeping me updated! :)

I'm an on-again off-again smoker, currently (the past 4-5 months) on-again. Been meaning to requit, but it's been much harder for me this time.

Here's the crux. Two of my roommates just tested positive (for Covid). Not guaranteed, but it's a good bet that, within another 2-3 days, all 5 of us will be symptomatic.

Am I better off quitting right now, or will that just put added stress on my lungs during the coming illness, and I should wait until after I recover (always assuming I survive it, of course)?

ETA: Y'all are shooting holes in my, apparently, flimsy justifications to keep smoking. Just switched to vaping now.

Thanks everyone.

Reply All was consistently one of my favorite podcasts on my player. I've been a listener for years, and while risking sounding parasocial, I felt a huge loss when the show finally ended. There's something about the consistency of some content, and the nostalgia for the rough patches where that content helped make things easier, whether it be a podcast, TV show, or blog.

It was that right mix of personality, investigative journalism, humor, and weird internet culture. I have a lot of alternatives in my player, but none of them seem to fill that RA-shaped hole. Here's what I'm listening to nowadays:

• Underunderstood
• You're Wrong About
• Endless Thread
• Darknet Diaries
• Crypto Island

Basically, I'm begging for podcast recommendations from shows you consider to be your favorite. Preferably, if you can include a recent, really good episode to get started with, I'll give it a listen and report back. Thanks!

I've posted about my mental health issues on Tildes before, 1st post 2nd post.

I reread my other 2 posts before writing this, and I definitely cringed a bit at them. I was not doing good and did not have a real sense of what to include and not. However, I really needed to feel seen and heard, so I also don't regret either of them. I didn't have anyone to open up to in my real life.

I've gotten a much better understanding of what I went through as a kid over the past year. My sister physically and emotional abused me since before I can remember until she left for college, and my parents always ignored it. That's fucked up, and there's nothing wrong with me for being so damaged because of it.

I moved to Portland, and it was definitely the right choose. I can't imagine living in the suburbs again. I went to my first concert, I got my first tattoo. I tried weed for the first time, and it really helps me gain emotional clarity. For first time in my life, I have some real hope for my future.

As the final note, I'd like to thank all the nice people here again; you really did help a scared, lonely kid more then you think.

I'm mostly interested in metro/subways, but also over the ground systems and rapid transit in general.

Mostly the vehicles themselves, the rails, and the related technologies. I mean, I do enjoy the city planning bits, but some channels focus too much on the design and evolution of the lines and I don't like that, looking at a map is not really enticing to me. A healthy mix would be nice, some engineering deep dives mixed with history, urban planning, and a lot of train porn! (Not rule 34 lol).

Thanks!

Denmark

Commentary: A rock heavy selection coming out of Denmark for this month. So in typical fashion, I'm gonna skip over the generic guitar riffs and angsty lyrics this May and focus instead on the crisp pop voice of Sonic Girl. The track “hackerboy” is worth a listen just for the shoehorning in of antivirus and IP addresses!

Finland

Commentary: Where Denmark failed with rock, Finland might just have delighted this month. The country is synonymous with death metal, so imagine my surprise to find a source of surf rock in the band Mary Ann Hawkins. Their track “Hawkinsmania” is an espresso shot of frenetiscism.

Iceland

Commentary: Iceland is a small place, with 366,000 people and counting, so sometimes pickings are low. But they do say quality over quantity, and that's what we have here. The names behind NEVERNEVER have some real pedigree in the music industry and are led by the strong vocals of Klara Elias.

Norway

Commentary: In April Norway took the crown for the month's biggest and best release with Röyksopp's newest. They've done it again! Sigrid's follow-up to her debut album, “How To Let Go” is a real banger, with stand-out track “Mirror” destined for summer playlists all across the Nordics.

Sweden

Commentary: Four years since the previous album, it's great to have Lykke Li back. “EYEYE” is a brutally melancholic album, with heart-felt lyrics taking centre stage. Margaret Farrell at Pitchfork had this to say: ‘Her music is a companion to sorrow in the same way the sun is a companion to the morning.’

Previous months: March | April

With Top Gun: Maverick opening up to over 150 million for the four day weekend. I thought it would be nice to revisit the sudden shut-down of theaters and their road to recovery.

2020 movie theaters everywhere shut down. The only major Hollywood film to get a theatrical exclusive run was Tenet. Tenet ended up grossing 362 million dollars. What was seen as a disappointing gross at the time ended up being aspirational as theaters started to open up.

The only films that opened throughout 2020 were small genre and art-house films that would end up on PVOD sooner rather than later. Things like The War With Grandpa, Unhinged, and Freaky. December we got the release of a couple of awards films like Promising Young Woman and News of the World. Their grosses were small and largely insignificant. Mostly coming from a few states were theaters were opened at reduced capacity and Drive-Ins that stayed open throughout the winter to try to give people something to do before the roll-out of the vaccine.

While Disney sent Soul to Disney+, Warner Bros decided that they would release Wonder Woman 1984 on Christmas Day simultaneously in theaters and on HBOMax. Wonder Woman grossed a respectable 166 million world wide. That’s all we could expect at the time, especially for a film that wasn’t well received by either critics or audiences. Although it still grossed less than Tenet and The Croods 2 domestically.

And then, the big news happened. Warner Bros said that they would be releasing all of their 2021 films day-and-date with HBOMAX. While a big reason for this was due to the pandemic, the likelier reason this decision was made was in order to build up HBOMax. The launch of HBOMAX, which happened at the start of the pandemic, was an utter disaster. Confusion with HBOGo’s subscription, along with a variety of other factors, led to MAX not getting enough subscribers. So the day-and-date strategy was put into effect to boost subscription numbers (this plan indeed worked, although they were met with immediate backlash from filmmakers).

I won’t go over every film that released in 2021. More or less just the important ones.

January and February 2021: Wasteland

The only major movies that released in these months were awards contenders The Little Things, Judas and the Black Messiah, Nomadland and children’s film Tom and Jerry. The Little Things, Judas and the Black Messiah, and Tom and Jerry were all Warner Bros. films which means they also released on HBOMAX (which is how I watched all of them). This was an interesting period where theaters were actually grateful for the day-and-date release of these films. Vaccine rollouts were still low and restrictions were still in place. Warner Bros. releasing these films in this way meant that theaters were at least getting something that they could play. The films made some money, the highest grossing being Tom and Jerry, but nothing anywhere near we could consider normal.

March and April 2021: Uptick

In March Disney released Raya and the Last Dragon in theaters and on “Disney Premiere Access.” Unlike with WB you would both need a subscription to Disney+ and also pay an additional thirty dollars to watch the film at home. The film made a decent amount of money. In April, Mortal Kombat released, also making a decent amount at the box office.

But the true star of both of these months was Godzilla vs Kong.

At 32 milion, Godzilla vs Kong became the largest opening weekend of the pandemic era, beating Tenet’s 20 million. It beat all expectations. Despite being available to anyone with an HBOMAX subscription, people decided that this was the type of film you need to see in a theater. They wanted to see a big gorilla and a big lizard fight each other on the big screen. And while it wasn’t the first movie of the pandemic to gross 100 million at the domestic box office, it crawled its way to the finish line.

May 2021: A Quiet Place Part II

Exactly a year ago, A Quiet Place Part II opened. What was originally meant to premiere March 2020 ended up premiering Memorial Day weekend 2021. As a theatrical exclusive the sequel toppled Godzilla vs Kong’s opening weekend record to open at 47 million. Releasing in far better conditions than any movie had opened prior (this is actually the first time theaters in my state re-opened), it became the first film of the pandemic to cross 100 million domestic. Although it ended up grossing less than it’s predecessor (in normal times it would have out-grossed it), this became a watershed moment for the box office. Godzilla vs Kong gave them hope, but A Quiet Place proved that theaters were on their way to recovery.

Cruella also released on this weekend, having a Premiere Access release just like Raya, it ended up opening to 21 million and grossed 89 million. With how warmly received it was by audiences it’s fair to say it would have had a shot at making Maleficent numbers (700M WW).

Everything was on the rise at this point.

June - August 2021: Rocky Road

In The Heights. Poised Oscar contender, great critical acclaim, and seemingly great audience scores. It was supposed to be a star-making blockbuster. And it could have been, had the pandemic not happened. But the box office tells another story. Initial projections had In The Heights opening at over 20 million. Fantastic for a non-franchise film with no stars, and for a day-and-date film. But as the weekend went on those projections lowered... and lowered... and lowered. Until it opened at 11 million. The musical ended up grossing 29 million domestic. The disappointment of In The Heights told a story here, one of older audiences refusal to return to the theaters. But because it was the first, all people saw was a box-office bomb.

F9. Theatrical exclusive, opened to 70 millon. Again, breaking the opening weekend record for the pandemic. While its domestic reception was lackluster, it’s international reception was wildly better. It ended up grossing 721 million dollars World Wide. At the time, it was seen as a little bit of a disappointment. There was a chance that this could be the first 100 million opening weekend since Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. It did not meet that, and it’s legs (that being how it performed week after week) were weak domestically. However, this can’t be seen as anything other than success thanks to grosses in Latin America.

Black Widow. Here we go. The first MCU to be released since Spider-Man: Far From Home. It was originally supposed to be the start of the summer season of 2020 but ended up getting pushed back several times. Disney decided to release Black Widow with Premiere Access. This would lead to Scarlett Johansson suing Disney but that’s a whole other thing. Black Widow, like F9, had a lot of hope of being the first 100 million opener of the pandemic. This seemed plausible all the way up to Friday. Its estimates lowered from 100 to 90, and then it kept lowering until the film opened to 80 million.

What was to blame? Audience reception? Perhaps, with an A- Cinemascore it didn’t have the greatest reception in the world (MCU films usually get an A Cinemascore). There’s a couple things we can blame it on actually. Black Widow released just as the Delta variant was making the rounds. More importantly, in my opinion, it was Premiere Access. Take that away Black Widow would have been the first 100 million opener of the pandemic. This also affected it’s legs. Premiere Access cut down on repeat viewings from fans, and audiences that would have waited to watch the film in later weeks decided to just watch the film at home. Still Black Widow grossed a respectable amount for the circumstances it was released in.

Jungle Cruise. Also a Premiere Access release. The 200 million dollar film opened to a decent 35 million but, somehow, was able to leg its way to 100 million. A rounding success for “original” movies. (The press would refer to Jungle Cruise as an original movie despite being based on a ride. Does that make it IP or Original? It’s been debated.)

The Suicide Squad. Bomb bomb bomb. My lord did this bomb. Not much to say on this. The general consensus is that this would have bombed regardless of the pandemic. Rated R, low audience reception, it just wouldn’t have been financially successful. Which is a shame because it’s such a good movie.

Free Guy. A through and through original movie. Free Guy opened modestly at 28 million, but because it was so well liked by audiences it managed to leg out to 121 million dollars domestically. The Ryan Reynolds comedy then got greenlit for a sequel. While Jungle Cruise didn't make a profit theatrically, Free Guy at least broke even. In normal times both of these grosses wouldn't have warranted sequels, but these weren't normal times. Crossing 100 million during the pandemic was the equivalent of grossing 200 million in pre-pandemic times. As a non-franchise, non-IP film, Free Guy was an important sign of movie theaters health.

Candyman. If there was one genre that was doing well under the pandemic it was horror. Due to low budgets the films were able to gross enough to not be box office failures. During the summer, Candyman ended up grossing the most. It was the 10th highest grossing movie of the summer domestically. At 61 million, it outgrossed The Suicide Squad. Ending the summer on a positive note.

September - November 2021: The calm before the storm

Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. Another MCU film. This time it was a theatrical exclusive. Disney actually used this as a test. It was to determine whether or not they would release the rest of their films as theatrical exclusives or keep doing the Premiere Access thing they did with Black Widow and Jungle Crusie. Lucky for us, Shang-Chi managed to beat expectations. Managing to open at 75 million and legging it out to 224 million domestically and 432 million World Wide. Again, in normal times this gross would be disappointing at the very best, and a bomb at the very worst. But 200 million was the equivalent of grossing 400 million in normal times. Shang-Chi became the first film of the pandemic to meet this threshold.

Venom: Let There Be Carnage. The second movie of the pandemic to reach 200 million domestic. The film managed to beat expectations on opening weekend. Becoming the highest opening weekend of the pandemic with 90 million. It took a big second weekend drop but it ended up stabilizing and ended up having pretty good legs. A pattern that would become common throughout the pandemic, and that continues to this day.

No Time To Die. While the latest Bond film could be considered a disappointment domestically, the film was aiming to open at 100 million for the weekend and ended up opening to half that with 55 million. What No Time To Die did was jump-start the box office in Europe. It broke records in the UK and ended up grossing 760 million world wide. Beating F9 as the highest grossing Hollywood movie of 2021 (at the time).

Dune. Since before the pandemic, Dune was always touted as a future box office bomb. It was too heady, too nerd oriented, in order to be a box office hit. And now it was releasing simultaneously on HBOMAX. There was no way it could do well. The film went on to open to 41 million. And went on to gross 100 million domestic and nearly 400 million world wide. People decided, like they did with Godzilla vs Kong, that this was the type of film that needed to be experiences in cinemas.

The Last Duel and Last Night in Soho. The Last Duel opened to a measly 4 million and grossed only 10 million domestically and 30 million world wide. Last Night in Soho had a similar performance but grossed less world wide with 22 million. This is around the time that the narrative became clear. Older audiences (those being over the age of 25) were not coming back to the theaters. The only things that were making money were movies aimed at younger audiences or (in the case of NTTD and Dune) big budget blockbusters aimed at older audiences. Adult dramas were struggling. This put the performance of In The Heights in an entirely different perspective.

Eternals and Ghostbusters: Afterlife. These are being grouped together because they were the biggest films released in November. Eternals, once again, was thought to be a possible 100 million opener. However, word of mouth came around and it was bad. The film ended up grossing 71 million on opening weekend and a total of 164 million domestically. International reception was a little better and it ended up out-grossing Dune with 402 million world wide. Ghostbusters: Afterlife opened at 44 million and with general positive audience reaction it grossed 129 million domestic and 204 million world wide. It actually out-grossed the 2016 Ghostbuster domestically, and because this one had a smaller budget (Ghostbusters 2016 had a 144 million dollar budget and Afterlife had a 75 million dollar budget) it was far more profitable for Sony. Considering Afterlife outgrossed 2016 which was released pre-pandemic and was a summer movie, it's fair to say had this opened in the summer of 2020 like it was supposed to it would have made a killing at the box office.

House of Gucci. Adult dramas, as I've said, were struggling. In comes Gucci. With Lady Gaga's star power and a Thanksgiving release, it beat all expectations and opened to 15 million for the three day weekend but 21.8 million for the five day weekend. Thank god for Gaga. Adults finally came back to at least one drama. Gucci ended up grossing 53 million domestically and 148 million world wide. While this gross would be considered a disaster for its 75 million dollar budget. Considering the state of adult oriented films at the time, this can't be seen as anything other than a success.

Encanto. On the other side of things. Encanto managed to score the best opening weekend for an animated film during the pandemic. Disney had sent their animated films either straight to Disney+ or Premiere Access. Encanto was the first animated film from Disney to be a theatrical exclusive. With a shortened window of 35 days before being put on Disney+, Encanto managed to gross 96 million domestically and 230 million world wide. The highest for an animated film during the pandemic. Had Disney given the film a longer theatrical window, there would be no question it would have hit 100 million domestically.

December 2021: Release the Spider

Before we get to the big one. Let's discuss some of the smaller releases.

West Side Story and Nightmare Alley. Two big award films releasing wide in December. West Side Story fared better than most adult oriented films. Opening to 10 million but out-grossing In the Heights to a 38 million domestic gross and a 75 million gross world wide. A bomb, technically speaking, compared to its 100 million dollar budget. But as we've learned, these grosses took on a different connotation during the pandemic. Nightmare Alley did not fare so well. A failed attempt at counter-programming opening the same weekend as Spider-Man. The Guillermo del Toro film opened to a shockingly low 2.8 million for the weekend. Grossing only 11 million domestically and 37 million world wide. Even in the context of the pandemic, this was nothing else but an utter disaster for the 60 million dollar film, the most expensive film from Searchlight. All of this signaled that older-audiences were still reluctant to come back.

The King's Man, The Matrix: Resurrections, and Sing 2. The long delayed The King's Man (originally slated for 2019 before being pushed to early 2020, then pushed again to late 2020, and then pushed a few more times due to the pandemic). Opened weak with 5.9 million for the three day weekend and but managed to stay around grossing a total of 37 million domestically and 121 million world wide. A commendable run for a film that wasn't well received and which lost audience interest due to the numerous delays. The Matrix: Resurrections grossed about as much as The King's Man. Difference was that it opened to twice as much. Word of mouth from audiences was toxic. The film fared a bit better internationally grossing 156 million world wide. It would be the last day-and-date release form Warner Bros. Sing 2 surprised everyone. Opening to 22 million, higher than The Matrix and having an incredible run. Due to being the only family film in the market for months. It grossed 162 million domestically and 402 million world wide. The highest grossing non-Spider-Man film that released in December.

Spider-Man: No Way Home. Here's the big one. People were expecting it to be big. But most people did not expect it to be this big. Despite an Omicron resurgence, Spider-Man opened to 260 million for the weekend. Beating the previous December record holder Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Spider-Man would go on to play week after week. Grossing 800 million domestically and a billion internationally for a total of 1.8 billion world wide. Had the film opened in China, it very much would have grossed 2 billion.

Spider-Man was the film that brought audiences back to the cinemas.

As much as I deride trickle-down economics, there might actually be some truth to that theory in terms of this specific example here. There's almost a clear difference between box office grosses before Spider-Man and after Spider-Man. As Paul Thomas Anderson said, "You know what’s going to get [audiences] back in movie theaters? 'Spider-Man.' So let’s be happy about that".

So let's see what the Spider-Man effect brought us.

January - February 2022: Not much

Scream. The only major release of January. The legacy sequel beat Candyman by opening to 30 million and grossing 81 million domestically, 138 million worldwide. Horror movies, especially R-rated horror film, rarely make 100 million domestic, and this getting close was a great sign. Both Scream and Candyman were well received horror films that were part of a franchise. Both films being so similar, shows us the direct difference between audiences pre-Spider-Man and after-Spider-Man.

Jackass Forever, Death on the Nile, and Dog. Jackass opened to 23 million, finished with 57 million domestically and 74 million worldwide. Despite sporting the best reviews for the franchise it did not outgross Jackass 3D. Which brings us to the fact that the Omicron spike started happening quickly around this time. While states had relaxed restrictions, cases were spiking. Depressing turnout for theaters. Death on the Nile grossed less than half of what its predecessor Murder on the Orient Express did, despite a similar reception from both critics and audiences. Another blow to adult dramas. In comes Dog, a PG-13 drama that is still debatable whether it was aimed at families or adults. Dog managed to beat the opening weekend gross of House of Gucci and legged out better domestically. Grossing 61 million, though had less international appeal, grossing only 74 million world wide. Still, this pointed towards a better direction for dramas.

Uncharted. Hot off the success of Spider-Man, Tom Holland drew in audiences for the video game adaptation. Opening to 44 million, getting positive reception from audiences, it legged out to 147 million domestically and 400 million world wide. Although those weren't Spider-Man numbers, it was the numbers that MCU movies were making pre-Spider-Man. This gross is more impressive when looking at other video game adaptations. Uncharted managed to beat Detective Pikachu at the domestic box office in order to become the second highest grossing video game adaptation. It beat Sonic the Hedgehog's world wide gross of 319 million. And is currently more than Sonic the Hedgehog 2's 385 world wide gross. Video game adaptations were never big money makers, but Uncharted manage to outgross several of them while cases were still on the rise. Had the COVID situation been better, there's a chance Uncharted would have unseated World of Warcraft as the highest grossing video game movie ever.

March 2022: He's here. Who? The Batman

The Batman. The DC film became only the second film of the pandemic to have an opening weekend above 100. At 134 million the film went on to gross 369 million domestically. Internationally the film was a disappointment, no doubt due to the situation in Eastern Europe and also the COVID situation in China. Early predictions had the film grossing between 800 and 900 million, but the film grossed 770 million instead. Still it beat No Time To Die, even as a disappointment. Not bad for the first installment in a Batman reboot that was also nearly three hours long.

The Lost City. The Sandra Bullock starring romantic comedy originally titled "The Lost City of D" was set as a test to see if adults, and specifically women, were still hesitant to return to theaters. It didn't disappoint. The film opened to 30 million and became only the second original film (or third if you count Jungle Cruise) to cross 100 million at the domestic box office. Signaling that both adults in general and adult women in specific were in fact coming back to the theaters.

Everything Everywhere All At Once. If there was something that was struggling more than adult dramas at the box office, it was the indie market. Licorice Pizza has done banger numbers while in limited release, but was ultimately a box office disappointment. Grossing less than 20 million domestic. In comes EEAAO. While not specifically targeted at adults, generally speaking it was targeted at young men between the ages of 18 and 25, it still suggests a return of the indie market. The film is still playing today, having small drops week after week. Beating Uncut Gems to become A24s highest grossing film domestically.

April 2022: Flop City

Before we get to the flops, let's talk about the successes from this month.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and The Bad Guys. Sonic 2 beat it's predecessors opening gross of 58 million by opening to 72 million. It has outgrossed the first both domestically and world wide (though the first film's theatrical run was cut short due to the pandemic). Sonic the Hedgehog 2 is currently the only film that opened in April that grossed over 100 million domestic. The Bad Guys opened at number 1 with 23 million. The Dreamworks film was warmly received by both critics and audiences. It's been holding well week after week, currently at 81 million domestically and 197 million world wide. While it likely won't hit 100 million domestic, it should get close.

Ambulance, The Northman, and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. All three films had at least somewhat positive reception from critics. Audience reception was good for Ambulance and was decent for The Northman and Massive Talent. All three are considered flops. Ambulance opened to 8 million for the weekend. While this is better than other adult films like The Last Duel, it still signaled that adults weren't coming out. A well received Michael Bay action-thriller would have been a hit a couple of years ago, but today people decided to stay home. The film grossed 22 million domestic and 51 million world wide. The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent didn't fare much better. Opening to 7 million grossing 20 million domestically and 25 million world wide. The Northman was the most successful of all three films. Slightly beating expectations, it opened to 12 million. Grossed a total of 33 million domestically and 66 million world wide. Although with a budget of between 70 and 90 million it is considered a flop. Though all three films flopped at the box office, I think what they did was get at least some people, specifically some older audiences, back in the mojo of going to the movies. As James Gray puts it, these films were an investment to try to maintain broad base interest. Which is a big reason why something like Top Gun: Maverick was able to open so big.

Morbius and Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbeldore. Here we have big franchise films. A Marvel film and a Harry Potter film. Both of them flopped at the box office, but their performances cannot be blamed on COVID. At the very least COVID is only a small reason as to why these films flopped. They are IP movies aimed at younger audiences, at the very least that's the case in Morbius, though Fantastic Beasts audience is slightly older. Morbius opened to 39 million. Originally it was looking to open at 60 million. But, word of mouth was incredibly toxic, so the film dropped dramatically. Had the movie been good it would have crossed 100 million easily. But the film was so bad it didn't even double it's opening weekend grossing a total of only 73 million domestically and 162 million world wide. Fantastic Beasts is a dying franchise. Crimes of Grindelwald, the previous installment, was poorly received by both audiences and critics. It grossed 600 million world wide, dropping 200 million from the first installment. The Secrets of Dumbeldore opened to an okay 42 million, but reception was so tepid it still hasn't crossed 100 million domestic and will not be crossing 100 million domestic. International reception was slightly better, but not by much in places that should have liked it more like the UK. Germany is liking the movie a lot though, so Fantastic Beast will be reaching 400 million worldwide. Though with a 200 million dollar budget, it will not be breaking even. Both of these films would have bombed regardless of COVID. They were bad movies, and they were always destined to flop.

May 2022: Back to normal?

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. Benefiting from being the next installment in the MCU. The film opened to 187 million. Disney's first 100 million opener since The Rise of Skywalker (Spider-Man is distributed by Sony). Despite the film's large grosses, it was still seen as a disappointment. It was looking to open above 200 million but word of mouth was pretty bad so the opening weekend fell day after day. The film looked to be making a billion dollars (making it only the second film to hit that mark during the pandemic) but will now be looking to make around 900 million world wide. It's a disappointment through and through. But here's the thing, 1) it had no China or Russia or several Middle East countries, and 2) it's still going to be making 900 million dollars. 900 million dollars world wide being considered a disappointment is fantastic. In pre-pandemic times, it was almost normal to consider movies making this much a money a disappointment. Notable Pirates of the Caribbean 5 made nearly 800 million world wide but was still considered a disappointment. It shows us how far we've come when last year were happy when a movie barely made 100 million, that now a film that will gross 400 million domestic is a disappointment.

Top Gun: Maverick. Top Gun has re-energized older audiences. Being now the fourth film to open over 100 million in pandemic times. It's looking to gross over 400 million domestic (in fact it could outgross Doctor Strange). It is the highest opener for a Tom Cruise, beating War of the Worlds. And is a film that audiences have embraced both domestically and internationally.

Downton Abbey: A New Era also opened in May. The adult-oriented film took a big dive from the first. Opening to half of what that film opened to in 2019 and suffered a big second weekend drop (no doubt due to Maverick's success with older audiences). So older audiences are returning, but just to specific films. Will Maverick lead to older audiences coming back to other films made for them such as Elvis? Maybe. Hopefully.

Things are looking up from here on out. Grosses seem to be hitting pre-pandemic times. And while there's less movies being released in 2022 than there were pre-pandemic (due to the production problems caused by COVD). It's nice to see how much things have bounced back in the past year.

Things like Jurassic World: Dominion, Thor: Love and Thunder, and Avatar: The Way of Water, look to be making 500 domestically. In the case of Jurassic and Avatar we could be looking at 600 million+ domestic grosses and a potential 2 billion world wide grosser in Avatar. It is incredible the journey the box office has had.

I'm really struck with the references in this show. As an aside, it's a really enjoyable show. And this time, unlike Lost, I expect to be let down at the end, and am just appreciating the ride as long as I can til it goes dumb. It's also awfully familiar to some other recent shows, like Homecoming and Loki. I've only just finished ep 2. Thank you, red letter media for the introduction.

Interesting references:

Mark Scout looks a lot like original macintosh era Steve Jobs.
Lumon -> Lemon -> Apple
using a logo without text. Also, the teardrop, if you squint and abstract a little, is like an inverted apple with the bite gone
corporate aesthetic is like evil Jony Ive Apple (I've heard tell it's not unlike 60's IBM), not counting the old testament painting.
founder's cult
I feel like I'm forgetting a couple.

Non Apple references:
Portal (and portal 2): opening animation, instruction books

The Matrix: scary codes on a screen, black goo

The Cube Series: general plotline (I am only on ep 2, mind you).

Hi, I'm pretty new to browsing coffee at home.

Currently using aeropress, timemore c2 titanium, and electric gooseneck kettle with no temp control.

The coffee I'm making is pretty good (to my novice taste buds) but I'm looking to elevate that. I'm planning on upgrading either the the grinder or the kettle.

From what I understand, grind quality can affect taste, but consistent water temperature should also help improving workflow and taste as well.

Which one do you think is the better upgrade in terms of producing better coffee?

For grinder I'm now considering 1zpresso K-plus. For kettle, I'm looking at Timemore fish kettle.

Thank you.

Hi everyone,

I recently got accepted into University and Lethbridge and University of Manitoba for Computer Science second degree.

Both of them have co-op programs, but I don't know which would be better for me. Ideally, I want to go the uni with a better job market for CS, so Lethbridge seems to be the winner since it is close to Calgary. But I am also looking to immigrate to Canada in the future, and I know that Manitoba has easier requirements for Permanent Residence nominations.

I am in a bit of a bind, and I am trying to gather as much information as I can before I make a decision. Anything you have to share would be much appreciated. Thanks!

P.S. I know Toronto and Vancouver are much better places for jobs, but sadly I missed the deadline to apply to most of the colleges there. I do plan on applying for jobs in those cities though.

So I had ordered this Pigeon Induction Cooker from Flipkart as it had great reviews and ratings, but mine arrived yesterday a damaged piece. The damage was that the device simply didn't turn on, it just gave a beep and then no display, nothing. There was also a slight surface scratch but since the major problem was electrical, I cited "Electrical Problem" as the reason.

I've been a Flipkart customer since almost a decade, so I thought they'll replace this damaged good for me without any fuss. However, this simple process is turning out to be a nightmare for me! Though my replacement request was approved, the Flipkart person who came adamantly refused to give me the replacement. He said since there was the surface scratch, you should've cited "Damaged Product" as the reason and not "Electrical Problem". Said he simply can't accept the return good as it was "damaged".

I then contacted customer support who cancelled my replacement request and raised another one citing "Damaged Product" this time. But this time, I had to take a snap of the product through Flipkart App and only once they approve the "damage" will it be processed further tomorrow. I just hope their verifiers will be able to see that tiny scratch on the image and won't cancel this request again!

Tried escalating by contacting their twitter support but to no avail. They keep following their usual bureaucratic process which is to keep assuring that this will be resolved soon.

I've somehow lost the sprit to live and faith on this world after this incident. I know it seems stupid having such attitude for a mere induction cooker costing 1500 bucks. However, I'm feeling that the world has become more and more "process oriented" and less human oriented or empathetic. It could be that I'm a bit selfish due to my own personal issue but I remember a time when humans cared about other humans, a time when humans were treated as such and not a mere number or statistic on the issue tracker.

Edit (Day 2 - 17-05-2022)

Still unresolved. They haven't yet approved my new replacement request or even done the image verification. Though the app says it should be done by today, God only knows how long this ordeal is going to last.

Edit: Day 3 - 18-05-2022

Still no luck. The image verification was going to happen yesterday but it didn't. The return order status is showing as "We are processing your request for return". Might call them in the afternoon if there is no update by then, though I'm not sure how helpful even that would be.

Edit: Day 3 (08:00 PM):

Just received a call from Flipkart Escalation Team's executive who approved my return request and assured me that it'll reach by 20th. I just hope it's replaced without any fuss this time! Once again, thanks for staying with me.

Edit-4 - 20-05-2022 (01:30 PM):

At long last, the replacement arrived today! It was a 5 day long ordeal which seems to have had some happy ending at the end. In an ideal world, I should have returned this piece too as it had a slight bend on the lower left corner - but obviously, I don't want to put up with the hassle all over again and the device is working perfectly otherwise. Thank you friends, for staying with me during this ordeal.

hi tildians,

i'll be moving to VA pretty soon. if there's anyone who's lived there, and could possibly share any tips, that would be nice! and I mean anything -- places to check out, info for people out of state, etc.

thanks!

I'm going to be building a simple blog for myself.

Partially I just want something really simple and customizable, and also it will be a fun little programming project.

I'll be using PHP and mySQL for the backend. I won't be using any sort of framework as it shouldn't be necessary for a very simple blog. I'm fairly comfortable with JavaScript.

What I'm imagining is some sort of JavaScript library I can just download, link to my html and then turn a textarea into a simple wysiwyg editor. It could be as simple as a markdown editor or something with a little more features.

It has to be free. Open source would be a plus.

If anyone has any recommendations or advice I would be very grateful. Thanks!

[SOLVED]

Thank you so much for everyone's support and suggestions, it seems that I may have overreacted a little bit. One of the things that I did was send a form to Google, but the form was not really for this issue, so I wasn't hopeful at all. To my surprise, I received a message just now with instructions to recover the account and change the 2-factor phone number to my mother's current one. The cause of the issue is not clear, but whatever it was, they sorted it out. She is obviously ecstatic, when I went to her house two days ago I couldn't disguise my pessimism.

I set her recovery email to my own and will generate recovery codes shortly, so we're good for now. I instructed her on how to download all her data from Google (it's easier than I thought), just because this made her quite paranoid, and I'll take the opportunity to gradually move my family out of Google, as well as myself. Thanks for being so supportive, this was very stressful, to say the least! Sometimes it's nice to know we're not alone ;)

Original post

So, for some reason Google logged my mother of everything at once: browsers in two laptops and two smartphones (one Android and one iPhone). Trying to recover the account sends a message to a cellphone number she no longer has. I understand Google is basically unreachable, but there must be something I can do, right? We're not famous, but she does pay for YouTube Premium.

This may seem like an odd request and I'm not sure if I can properly explain this, but for some reason I dislike games that require me to drag things with my fingers. I prefer games that allow me to "click" stuff using my finger as a mouse, like Go (baduk), checkers, and other board games. Any genre. Any suggestions on Android? Thanks!

Final update: See here.

Update: Thank you ALL for your valuable feedback. I'm definitely looking into refurbished models now and I have a lot better grasp on what what I should be considering. I'm going to do some digging and a ridiculous amount of overshopping over the next couple of days, and then I'll let you all know what my final pick is!

Hey techy Tildes! I'm back with another support request from you knowledgeable and helpful folks.

I need a laptop that does exactly three things: gets me online, displays PDFs, and runs office software. I have a large number of online courses that I have to take in the coming years, and I need something that I can just grab while on my couch or in bed to work on papers and assignments, hence the 13" size preference. Long battery life would be highly preferable.

I looked for options that come with Linux preinstalled, but there's really nothing available that hits what I'm looking for -- there isn't much of a market for 13". As such, my plan is to just buy a standard Windows laptop and then put Linux on it, but I have no idea which particular hardware will play nice with a Linux installation. Budget would be sub-$500 (if possible). I don't need the laptop to do anything other than stay on for a long time and let me type, so I have no need for a powerhouse.

Can anyone point me in the right direction with some recommendations?

I would love to hear stories of all the tilderinoes here who somehow acted on their impulses to somehow upend their lives, that could be in small or big ways -- moving to another country, changing careers, changing their name, anything else.

I very often think about how someday I'll finally take hold of my life and suddenly start doing all the things I'd like to if I do some "big thing", whatever that currently is (changing my name, moving abroad...). So I was wondering if it is at all realistic, if anyone here actually has experience with something similar and if it actually helped to improve their life.
I always really enjoy reading advice people give here, even though I sadly do not ever actually really use it. Thank you.

Hello everyone,

This will be a long post because I want to give my post the proper context. I apologize in advance for taking your time.

About five months ago, with the help of relatively high ceiling of Windows 11's system requirements, I finally pushed myself to use Linux exclusively on my desktop. It was a decision between using Windows LTSC or Linux and I went with the better long term option.

I am not a programmer but I'm also not unfamiliar with the Linux world. I believe I've used one distro or another on a spare computer for shorts period of time since at least 2008. But those use cases have always been to satisfy the curious side of my brain as I am always interested in technology. So after installing distros ranging from Ubuntu to Arch, my curiosity waned enough to never look deeper into how these systems work. They were, after all, a hobby project on a spare computer that was often gathering dust.

When I decided to switch exclusively to Linux, the next decision I had to make was to pick a distro. Naturally, I looked for the established players first. Ubuntu was the obvious choice because it has long been the distro for newbies and there are a lot of guides on the internet if I ever needed help, which was inevitable. But then I read about snaps and thought that was a deal breaker. I was moving to Linux specifically because I don't want things shoved down my throat. I had no intention to relive that¹.

So Ubuntu was a no go, but I was certain I wanted a Debian based distro as their support and software availability was unmatched, maybe save for Arch². At this point, why not Debian right? It's known for being rock solid and it's Debian itself, not some derivation. Well, because I had various issues with Debian before. These issues were always fundamental and not very specific too, so I didn't want to risk wasting a lot of time fixing things I didn't understand, only for them to break again after a couple of days. Then I came across Pop!_OS, which seemed like a perfect fit. It was Ubuntu without its worst parts, came with Nvidia drivers and it had a company behind it that seemed to be committed to Linux. I installed it and everything just worked. I had zero issues.

But then I started getting that FOMO itch again. GNOME 42 was out and it looked great, but Pop!_OS was two versions behind. I also found out that they're working on their own DE, which might end up being great (it looked nice) but I didn't want to leave an established player like GNOME behind, including all the benefits you get from its wonderful extensions. I started looking for other distos again and Fedora caught my eye. I was obviously aware of Fedora, I even used it once back when YUM was still a thing, but it didn't leave a lasting impression on me. The fact that it wasn't a Debian based distro was also a disadvantage because that meant something different and at this stage of dipping my toes into Linux, I didn't think different might be the best way to go for me. Still, despite my best judgment, I installed Fedora on a USB and used it live. When my gut feeling was confirmed by my research about how Fedora leaves things as stock as possible and is ahead of the curve in terms of upcoming technology (btrfs, PulseAudio, Wayland et al.³) without sacrificing on stability, I was hooked.

After renewing my Timeshift backup, I formatted my Pop!_OS system and installed Fedora. The installation process could use a facelift, but it handled everything perfectly. I didn't even have some of the issues I had with Pop!_OS right after installation. It was literally problem free. I'm now on day #3 of using Fedora and the experience remains the same. The only issue I had to deal with was trying to get Timeshift to work (apparently it doesn't play nice with btrfs on Fedora), but instead of wasting my time with that, I just installed Déjà Dup and I'm good to go again. Barring any drastic issues, I don't plan on changing my distro again.

Now, onto my plea for guidance.

I'm looking for comprehensive resources that will teach me how Linux works under the hood. Considering my non-programming background, I'd appreciate it if the language is approachable. The reason why I want this, for one thing, is to learn more about the system I'm planning to use probably for the rest of my life (in tandem with macOS) but also, I want to do some cool stuff Linux allows users to do.

Just to give a quick example. Yesterday, I installed Rofi, which is, besides many other things, an app launcher. I got it to work just fine, I even got a configuration of my own with a theme of my choosing, but when it comes to using some scripts, I just couldn't do it. Every video I watched on YouTube told me how easy it is to use scripts with it as if it's a self-explanatory thing, but I was simply clueless. There was a lot of lingo thrown around like environment variables, setting up $PATH, making the scripts executable with chmod etc. I have very little knowledge of these things. I want to learn what they are, why they exist, and how they all tie together. I want to learn how /etc/ is different than /usr/ and the difference between X11 and some DE (or if they're even in the same category of things). Now, at the risk of sounding impatient and maybe even worse, I also don't want to go way too deep into these things. I am not, after all, trying to become a kernel developer. I just want to be better informed.

There are a lot of information on the internet but most of this information is scattered and out of context. If I try to learn more about one thing, I'm bombarded about other things that I don't know, so in the end I learn nothing. In short, I'm looking for a comprehensive, entry level video series or a book about Linux written in an easy to understand language that assumes no prior knowledge.

Additionally, I'd appreciate any website, YouTube channel and what have you to keep up with recent developments in Linux. I already found a couple as there are plenty of them, but I'd like to learn more about how people here keep up with this fast changing environment.

Thank you for reading and sorry for being so verbose! 😊

^{1: I know you can remove snaps, but I didn't want to deal with the hassle of any possible issues deleting a core system functionally might bring about.
2: Despite finding its approach fascinating, I had no intention to get into Arch because it's a rolling distro and I didn't want an advanced system that can break at any moment in the hands of a novice like myself.
3: To be clear, I don't know how most of these technologies are better than alternatives, but the Linux community at large seems to think they're drastically better than alternatives and are the future.}

I'm making a video game, which is sort of a mixture of a puzzle game and interactive fiction. I'm a little uncertain about some name and pronoun choices that I currently offer to the player and I thought that you guys might be able to help me.

The game is in English. At the beginning of the game, the player chooses the main character's name and pronoun. This is presented through two screens that offer the choices through textual narrative. It goes something like this, with [brackets] marking the options that the player can currently choose between.

This is the story of...
[...Alice Aster.]
[...Alan Aster.]
[...Al Aster.]

It is...
[...her story.]
[...his story.]
[...their story.]

Detached from the wider narrative context, this method may seem clunky, but I believe it works within the game itself. Mechanically, that is. I'm less sure about the options that I'm offering.

The player can choose any of the three options in the first screen and again any in the second, regardless of what they chose in the first. This affects the player character's name and pronouns used throughout the game.

Now, there clearly are also many other pronouns that people identify with in English, just like there are many other names. However, for technical and design reasons, it would be challenging for me to have the player freely type in their preferred name or pronouns, and neither can I really present a long list of options. At the same time, by condensing all non-binary choices into the most common (?) "their" and by assuming that "her" also equates to "she" and so on, I wonder if I end up coming across as someone who thinks they are on top of things, but clearly has only a very superficial understanding of the topic. Which, to be honest, might not be that far from the truth.

Similarly, of the three names offered, "Al" is intended as a more gender-neutral or non-binary option than the other two. Does that make sense? Would there be a better way to handle this? Are there names that better signal non-binary or gender-neutral identity?

Or am I simply approaching this wrong?

The game itself does not deal with gender identity. As you can see, I'm not the right person to write about the topic. The choice of gender in fact has relatively little effect on the story itself. The player also has no choice over other matters of identity, including their character's cultural background or family structure. The character is not intended to be the player, but someone whose story the player follows. But it still feels important for me and for the story to offer a choice about the name and the pronoun. And I wouldn't be comfortable with it being just a "traditional" choice between male and female, as it would quite explicitly imply and reinforce assumptions about the world that I think we should move away from as a society.

Not that my game is of course going to change the world in any meaningful way. But having worked on it for about six years now, it has been one long personal learning experience for me. And this feels like another opportunity to understand something better.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts and advice.

By "not too specific to the UK", I mean something that can be enjoyed and understood (on a cultural level, not the language - subtitles take care of that) by someone who is not part of that culture. For reference, I really enjoyed The IT Crowd and Peep Show. Thanks!

Hi folks! I am, unfortunately, probably going to have to build a new PC soon; my beloved Thelio-r1 is slowly failing, and while my original plan was to buy a Ryzen 7 5800X and keep riding this PC for another three to five years, I don't know that I'll actually be able to make that work.

I like the NXT H510 I used for my boyfriend's gaming build, but the thermal performance isn't amazing and, most importantly, I hate tempered glass!

Yes, I understand that people want to show off their (ridiculously!) expensive components. I understand that lots of things have RGB. However, metal is cheaper, easier to work with, doesn't shatter, and I can modify it if I need to.

So, does anyone know of a good mid-tower PC case with decent airflow, up-to-date features (no 5 inch bays, good cable management hardpoints, a cable hiding bay, etc.), and no tempered glass or, preferably, acrylic?

Thank you!

One of the greatest sources of stress in my life right now is noise. This is consistent with the (presently unconfirmed) hypothesis that I'm probably on the spectrum.

I live in a very noisy neighborhood, with many sources of loud music several days a week. I use a regular headphone to try to isolate myself, but they're not always effective. I was thinking of purchasing a noise canceling headphone (NCH). I'd listen mostly to podcasts and white noise. Hence the title question: can these headphones cancel variable non-regular noises like loud music around me? And to what degree?

Product recommendations are welcomed, with a focus on great noise canceling. I have a preference for over the ear headphones, but that's not a hard requirement. Other than that I don't have any requirements.

Thanks!

Hey folks.

May someone recommend a good web dev community out there for quality discussions?

Right now I'm using Vue for a project and I'm wrestling with architectural decisions. I'd love for a place where I can discuss different approaches' trade-offs and merits.

Many thanks. :)

I've decided I'm going to start looking for a new job. I'm a software product manager in the US and will be looking for senior positions, hopefully remote. Has anyone used a service to help find jobs before? This is the first one I've come across and I'm considering it.
https://www.findmyprofession.com/career-finder/

Any thoughts or feedback welcome. Thanks.

I have heard just a little bit about the language Crystal every so often, probably since it was first mentioned on /r/programming. From what I know, it's Ruby-like syntax but with a static type system, which seems like a big benefit to me.

I written just a little bit of Ruby, so the syntax isn't very familiar to me, and I haven't bothered trying Crystal out, but I'm curious to know what kinds of things people do with it.

So, my questions are: Do you have any experience with Crystal? If so, what have you used it for? Was it a professional or recreational project? How did you like it? What about it stood out to you compared to your experiences with other languages?

Thanks!

Hello everyone,

I usually do my own research, and then I try to find multiple matching results and afterwards, read specifically in detail about each recommendation, but, I have to be honest that for UPS recommendations that I’ve seen, it seems to be a very personal recommendation depending on the wattage and connected devices.

First of all, most people recommend CyberPower or APC, but I’ve also seen some recommendations for Eaton. Is there any other brand that I should be looking into?

The devices I would like to connect to a UPS would be: desktop, TV, Apple TV, NAS, router and probably my Nintendo Switch.

There are some general things I've found out while searching that I think I would like some confirmation:

• I actually think I should buy two UPS's, or? I think just one for the desktop and another one just for the remaining devices, since the desktop uses a lot more wattage.
• Pure Sine Wave: It does not matter for smaller stuff (routers, etc) but it seems that anything above 70 W, it should use a UPS with this. So, that would mean I need pure sine wave, since my desktop and TV definitely use more than 70 W of power.
• Some people said to search for a UPS with line conditioning so that you always get a perfect sine wave. Would you agree?
• USB connection (not a faux USB!) so that the NAS detects the power failure and shuts down gracefully.
• It is important that the UPS has removable battery for better longevity.

How would I choose a UPS? Do I need to see the total wattage of all my devices and then pick the UPS accordingly? Anything I'm missing?

My budget would be up to €100 or €150 in case it is really worth it.

Thank you in advance for all replies.

I don't use Windows 10 all that much, but there's a Windows laptop in the house that I use from time to time.

I generally wait like a year before upgrading, but I heard Windows 11 has better support for running Linux GUI applications with the Windows Linux Subsystem 2. Command-line Emacs is fine but is not exactly the same and there is no clipboard integration. That is the sole reason I'm thinking of upgrading. I don't care about any details or aesthetic changes, since I'll just make everything look and feel more like Windows 7 anyway. I just wanna know if it's stable enough, and if it will get in my way.

Thanks!

Hey everyone!

Sorry if this is a long post, but I've done my research and I would like to make a few questions.

I've decided that I would like to buy a NAS mainly to storage all of my documents, photos and videos, so that, I can access them from multiple devices and also use it to upload important documents to Backblaze B2. Then, I've actually discovered that I can install a few Docker containers and I could use it as a media server (Jellyfin) and serve the content to my Apple TV (neat!).

I considered a QNAP (better hardware for the price) but everyone recommends Synology instead (because of the stronger security and better overall software), but to be honest, I'm not sure what should I get.

My budget would be to buy a NAS (without counting the disks) below €1000. Ideally, €500-600 but I don't mind stretching to the €700 mark, if it is really worth it.

Spoiler alert: I think, it should be the DS920+ (4-bay) or the DS1520+ (5-bay). I think a NAS above 4-bay is better for future-proofing.

Looking here in Germany at price comparators, I could buy the DS920+ for €663 and the DS1520+ for €750. But these prices seem to be at an all-time high :(

Questions & Assumptions:

0. I'm not sure if the price difference of about €100 is worth the premium to get the 5-bay model. There are only two differences between these two models: The 5-bay has one extra slot, and it has 4x 1 Gbe LAN ports instead of 2x 1 Gbe. All the rest is the same. What is your opinion?

1. I've read that if you run a few containers (~10) it consumes quite a bit of RAM (~3 Gb), so it should be ideal to have at least 8 Gb. This is the reason I've said that I think I can only choose the DS920+ or DS1520+. Looking at official Synology resellers, these models, seem to come already with 8 Gb, and they are within my budget. Is my research wrong?

2. These two models, have an encryption engine. I think this is necessary to encrypt my files before sending them to Backblaze, or?

3. A lot of people seem to say to simply pick Synology's hybrid RAID setup called SHR-1 or SHR-2. I would go the easy way here and pick one of those two. Would you think that is a bad idea, and it is better to pick a specific (standard) RAID? I've read about the long long long RAID rebuild that could happen in some situations, and picking the "right" RAID could decrease the rebuild in days (or weeks!!!!).

4. In case, I choose a NAS model with Nvme cache slots, most people say it is not worth it to use if you are not running Virtual Machines and the SSD’s "burn" really fast. I have no interest on VMs.

5. Most people say to pick an Enterprise (Server) HDD instead of a NAS HDD mainly because price is similar in some cases and Enterprise has longer life and warranty. I should also pick a CMR HDD which is helium filled. 5400 rpm would be preferable to 7200 rpm because of the noise. Sadly, all Enterprise HDD's and most of NAS HDD's are 7200 rpm. Is the noise difference that big? The NAS will be in our living room.

6. Is 8 TB still the best cost per Terabyte?

7. I was extremely sad to hear that the Hitachi hard drive division was bought by WD. I've had lots of misfortune with WD drives (and let's not forget the debacle with the SMR and CMR drives) and I would prefer not to give money to them, but, nevertheless, I'm still tempted to buy the Ultrastar drives that belonged to Hitachi. Does anyone know if WD kept the components, manufacturing processes, staff, etc., that made these brilliant disks?

8. Following the HDD topic, what is your experience with Seagate or Toshiba drives?

9. These two NAS models have the same Intel Celeron CPU, which supports hardware transcoding. To be honest, I don't know in which cases would that happen. It seems if I use Infuse on the Apple TV it would never transcode (and instead direct play) because Infuse would do the transcoding in software. Should I take in account that hardware transcoding is a must-have or a nice-to-have?

10. Would you recommend having a CCTV system connected to the NAS? Should I dedicate one entire HDD just for the NVR system? Would a standalone NVR device be better?

11. My last question is: Should I just wait for the new model of the DS920+ or DS1520+? The 20 means it was launched in 2020 (in Summer specifically) and it seems Synology refreshes the model every two years., that means, a new model would be available in Summer this year. Most people say it is not worth the wait because Synology is very conservative in its model updates/refreshes. People are saying that a better CPU will be of course available (do I even need that for my use cases?) and probably upgrade the 1 Gbe LAN ports to 2.5 Gbe or 10 Gbe (10 Gbe I really doubt it). I've read that a 4K stream does not fill a 1 Gbe bandwidth, and you could theoretically have three 4K streams in a single 1 Gbe connection. If all else fails, I could just do a link aggregation of the two ports to be 2 Gbe, or?

12. Anything I'm forgetting? Should I be careful with something in particular?

I know I should buy a UPS too, but I think I'll create a separate post regarding this topic because I would also want a recommendation regarding a UPS for my other devices.

I know that I could actually build my own NAS and use Unraid for the OS. Furthermore, I'm just at a time in my life with too much on my plate (baby and small child) and having something that just works is preferable. When they are older and more independent, I'll have more time to investigate this option :)

Again, sorry for the long post. Thank you everyone!

I want to share with all of you a gift I've been preparing. I love finding good gifts and seeing people's reactions when they get something that truly blows them away. But this is the one I'm most proud of yet.

First, some backstory! Early February 2021, something amazing happened in Belgium. The winter cold wave hit hard and all over the country, lakes froze.

In the middle of an intense and frustrating lockdown, after a 5 months lull during which all ice rinks were closed and travel was impossible, Belgian skaters all across the country put on their boots and went to skate outdoors on lakes.

On February 12th, that's exactly what I did with my (at the time) friend from the rink. I posted about it here before. We had a blast of a time; truly a day you don't forget, and it came at a time where both of us were seriously depressed.

Today, that friend and I have gotten very close and she has become my skating partner. Recently, she moved in to her new apartment close to the ice rink, and I needed a housewarming gift for her! I settled on a keyring. It's very on-brand for a housewarming gift, and I myself have skate boots keyring ornaments kinda like these which are pretty cool. But this is someone I really like, and I wanted to personalize it a bit.

I then thought about a skating figure ornament that could represent her. And what better than my absolute favourite photo of her from our day on the lakes?

So I got to work, and a friend helped me trace the initial silhouette as vector since my tracing skills suck. I did clean it up in Inkscape, and I now needed somebody who could turn this digital silhouette into a real physical artifact!

I found this shop on Etsy, but they did not respond in time when I asked them about cutting that figure for me. So I asked my ex girlfriend (who is doing a Ph.D in metallurgy, soldering and metal printing) for some advice. To my surprise and delight, she volunteered to do the laser cutting herself!

And so we got to work. I turned the SVG into a DXF (thanks Inkscape for being able to do that!), and she helped me clean up some of the edges. We calculated dimensions, stress spots, and added an attachment anchor. Here is the final contour for the cut, and here is the first trial sample!

So, after fixing a couple more minor issues, she gave me eight samples. We engraved her trouser's pink stripes into two of them; they're very representative of her skating attire.

One final issue to deal with was the burn marks. The back of the samples had very burnt edges due to the laser. Today, I found a jewelry workshop which was able to polish that away. I then added a small chain and a cute little snowflake ornament.

And so, here is the final result:

• Front: https://imgur.com/TqKLCzU
• Back (after polishing): https://imgur.com/7OdItjf

Full album: https://imgur.com/a/SW7Sqdm

She's currently sick and in quarantine. Once she recovers, we are having dinner at her house. I cannot wait to see her reaction :)

Update: By a friend’s suggestion: Added a print of the original photo with a cute note on the back. Looking nice!
https://photos.app.goo.gl/d5gvZEqx3eRZgN5dA

So I wanna purchase a domain for my personal website (just a WordPress thing), and I wanna pay for three years in advance (I have my reasons). Which domain sellers are reasonably priced, trustworthy, and more likely to assist a less technical, non-developer user like myself?

Thanks!

I've got a 2TB Toshiba drive (formatted as NTFS) that has become very slow and I was wondering if anyone here as any ideas what the problem could be and how I could fix it. All the data I'd need off the drive is backed up, but I would at least like a drive to put it back on to!

In short, it became slow after I had to force power-off the system it was connected to (Pop OS installed on another external drive which I unplugged by mistake) and I haven't bothered to try to fix it in the six months since.

I've tested it on Pop and it takes about 10-20 minutes to mount, and 2 minutes to unmount and safely remove. The data itself seems fine but performance is slow, accessing a 20MB image takes several seconds and selecting the drive in GNOME Disks caused it to freeze.

The drive sounded louder than normal, especially after plugging in.

On Windows, the drive was recognised and browsable immediately, but browsing through folders was very slow - opening some folders causes Windows Explorer to freeze for a while. Some of my double-clicks were mis-recognised as click-to-rename, which took several seconds to activate and during which time Task Manager reported the average response time between 5000 and 11000 ms.

Attempting to load an audio file resulted in lots of buffering. Task Manager reports an active time of 100% (even when not loading files or folders) and the activity never exceeded 100 KB/s (and doesn't sustain it for more than a second). Ejecting the drive takes forever - after ejecting it using the tray icon, the tray icon is not removed (even though there are no other drives connected or listed) and the active time is still 100% with the indicator LED blinking non-stop. The system did not enter sleep right away after me asking it to either.

All of that to say, does anyone know what the issue could be, or how I could find and fix it? Thanks!

Edit: fixed and normal functionality restored (at least so I can check the drive a bit easier) using Scan & Repair in Windows (see my comment).

I've been thinking of writing a follow-up to my post about my now on only mostly lifelong depression. And surprise, this is that post. :) Its mostly stream of consciousness style, but I did try and edit it a bit.

I've realized that I have never had a friend before. I've cared about people, but the trust required to consider someone a friend was something I wasn't capable of. I only realized a few months back that trust is an emotion; it was always a rather cold calculus for me. I would think something to the effect of 'While I trust them not to kill me or physically hurt me...'. I would think a similar thing about best friends, 'Well they are literally my best(think closest) friend'. People have cared for me, but since I couldn't reciprocate, I can't call that a friendship.

It does explain a lot of things that didn't make sense to me before. Everyone I knew always acted like I hated being around them, and in a sense, they were right. I hated being around people because I couldn't actually connect with them. It was like watching people feast while you are starving. I had to impotently attempt to form connections that were impossible for me, while the other person blissfully formed that connection without even thinking about it.
I still have issues trusting people, but I have gotten massively better in this regard. There are a few people I consider casual friends now, but I cannot say I have a close friend.

I also have a fair bit of anger towards people who called themselves my friends. I cannot remember a point when I felt like any of them seriously tried to help me. And its not like I didn't have people who stated they loved me, I've had a few, but that I never felt that love breathed into actions. I imagine I will always wonder if it was just because it was too hidden or if no one ever really tried. I have also realized that I don't think anyone ever realized how bad off I was. To be fair, I couldn't have told you how bad off I was then either, but I have the excuse of not knowing what happiness was.

I've also realized how little people who have not experienced something like lifelong depression understand about it. I've discussed it with a few people, and even the one's who have been depressed and who have had serious issues, do not understand. In particular, a lot of people will use the phrase 'Making up for lost time' and do not understand how incorrect it is. There is no making up for the lost time; I will have always lived roughly a third of my life devoid of happiness and meaning. Nothing will change that, and nothing could ever remove the weight of that burden. Even if I live my best possible life from now own, it won't make my past self happy. Also of course I want to live my best possible life, but that's probably the most universal desire in existence. And my point isn't to insult the people who use this phrase, but to offer a particular example of what I mean by not understanding.

This type of comment also implies suffering from being in a bad situation, not suffering from being in a void. (Though I imagine the vast majority of people do not understand the difference) What most people call suffering is being in the dark, a metaphorical, or sometimes literal, punch to the face; something clearly delineated and demarcated. Some moment of shadow within a wider context of light; even if the shadow greatly outweighs the light, there is still both light and shadow. The suffering of the void is a separation from even the dimension of light/dark itself. And it is a hungry void, it consumes everything and turns it into the Same. Even people who have experienced the suffering of being in a void for a time have memories of light/dark as a reminder of what they are looking for. I do want to be explicit here, I don't think suffering is useful or valuable. Suffering doesn't make you strong or interesting, it just fucking sucks. Nothing pisses me off more then when people dick measure with how bad their life has been. I do kinda feel like an angsty teen talking about this, but it is something I have feel so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I have also been steadily seeing how fucked up some things in my past were. For example, as a 7 year-old I had to learn how to careful couch all my words to avoid pushing my mother to suicide. I realized that not feeling physically safe anywhere is a problem.

I got a job working at a local restaurant. Its a mediocre job, but I wanted a zero-stress job and it provided that. I have a few coworkers I consider friends, but the one I am closest to just left which is a bummer. I do also feel like I am down with this period of my life, and I just want to move on right now but I still need to wait a bit.

I am moving to Portland, OR in February. Its definitely the next step I need to take, but its obviously still scary.

I have been working on some coding side-projects that I have enjoyed. One is a weather alert that only sends me alerts if X condition is met, so if the temperature drops 20 degrees or a blizzard is coming type of thing. I have the core logic working, but I am still working on the notification method. I am also working on a stenography theory that attempts to use semantic relationships instead of phonetics as the base dimension. Its still really, really early, but its in that fun, highly theoretical stage.

I have realized that I am not actually ugly, but you know a little too overwhelmed to recognize normal people's interest. I was also surprised how enjoyable it is to wear clothes that look good on you. Unfortunately, there is no one I am particularly interested in right now, but at least I would be able to act if I met someone. I also still have no idea how to date; like do you just approach someone and ask them? Is that it?

This post is much longer then I was originally thinking, so if you read through to the end, thanks.

So, I just listened to a This American Life podcast called Ghost in the Machine. In one of the stories, a man decides to calculate, every week, the Average Family Location of his family. By that, he means: once you add everyone's coordinates for every coordinate in which they've been in that period, what city/location represents the average point between them all?

I decided to do the same for my family, which will be much easier because there are no touring musicians among us. The one complication is that a good chunk of the family is on other continents, and I wouldn't want us to "meet" in the middle of the ocean. So some approximation might be warranted.

I'd be happy if someone could provide me the math, I'm fairly confident I would be able to do it with a calculator or maybe put into some crude Python. I don't think I need to make a weekly report, since we're not that mobile. Maybe twice a year, or once every two months.

Thanks!

Edit: I don't know much math

Edit2: holy shit this is not simple at all! Now I feel kinda bad for throwing this problem at you guys. I really thought it would be quick and easy!

Right now I've got a shitty WD EX4100 and everything was sort of running along nicely with docker and all, but today it rebooted and decided that it didn't want to do anything with docker anymore. I got the thing before I got into Linux and its time to move on.

Someone locally is selling the following for $250CAD

• Quad core Celeron @ 2Ghz
• 8GB RAM
• Fractal Node 304 case
• 2x WD 2TB Red 3.5" hard drives
• 120GB Kingston SSD
• 700 watt semi-modular power supply

All I run are the following:

• nzbget
• sonarr
• qbittorrent (but I'll switch to a better one)
• serve up content to my HTPC (running Kodi, so no transcoding or anything)

I don't need the drives that come with it. I'll be putting in 4x 4TB WD Reds. Right now the box is running Open Media Vault 6, so I'll give that a swing, otherwise it'll just be Ubuntu server.

How does this sound? I'm not opposed to spending some money on a new NAS, I just want something simple that I don't have to fuck around with too much.

I ended up going with the HP Proliant

OS: Ubuntu 20.04.3 LTS x86_64
Host: ProLiant ML310e Gen8
Kernel: 5.11.0-43-generic
CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 (8) @ 3.700GHz
GPU: 01:00.1 Matrox Electronics Systems Ltd. MGA G200EH
Memory: 32GB

It's pretty good so far. Thanks everybody!

Hoping to generate discussion and have a few books recommended that have some of the following characteristics:

• foreboding discovery of a main character’s past
• a plot conflict that with a focus other than war or physical/political fighting
• preferable plot conflict examples: exploration, escape, grand heist, obtaining wisdom, treasure hunt
• undercurrent of a great unused power or magic that has been long lost

btw, I’m borrowing this format from r/Fantasy

Books I have liked:
Joe Abercrombie’s The First Law series
Samantha Shannon The Priory of the Orange Tree
Michael Crichton The Eaters of the Dead
Lara Prior-Palmer (non-fiction) Rough Magic
Arthur C. Clarke (sci-fi) Rendezvous with Rama
Neal Stephenson (sci-fi) Anathem
Brandon Sanderson’s The Stormlight Archive series

Traits like prose, characters, or settings you most enjoy:
Settings within the wilderness, crypts, large buildings/structures, caverns are all great.

Series vs. standalone preference:
No real preference, but longer is better I suppose.

Tone preference (lighthearted, grimdark, etc):
No strong preference, but mystical, ancient, and dark comes to mind.

Complexity/depth level:
Preferably on the more intricate side.

Thank you, let’s chat!

Hi Tildes,

I'm looking to introduce my children (aged 10 or so) to simple electronics (blinking lights, simple sensors, ...). I've played with Arduino in the past, but I see that there are now many competing options: Arduino, cheap rip-offs, RPi zero, adafruit, ESP32, ... It's easy to get lost!

Which do you recommend? Ideally, I'd like something cross-platform and open-source, easy to set up (ideally a kit with everything included), and of course not insanely expensive.

Edit: thanks everyone for the good advice! There are so many good options...

Hello everyone,

I'm currently living in Germany and in these few years I've discovered by chance a small but super sharp fruit knife from Solingen (I think the brand was from Rör). I was so amazed by the sharpness that now I want to buy a chef's knife for myself (budget: up to 60 or 70) and a knife for my dad (budget: up to 30 or 40) as a Christmas gift.

I've already searched the web for great German knife brands, and it seems these are the ones:

• Wüsthof
• Burgvogel (a.k.a. in the US as Messermeister)
• Friedr. Dick
• Herder Windmühlen
• Hohenmoorer

If someone is looking into this post looking for a budget (but still good) German knife brand, it seems that Rör is that brand.

But since, I’m looking for advice with this post, I’m no expert on the topic, if there are bad knife makers on this list or great knife makers missing, please tell me, and I'll remove/add them from/to my post. :)

The knives list below are all that fit the budget I've mentioned. Hohenmoorer and Windmühlen (and this brand only has wooden handles, which I don't like), are just too expensive, so only Friedr. Dick and Wüsthof are left inside my budget, but I could include two more expensive ones from Burgvogel and Friedr. Dick, if it is really, really worth it.

For myself:

• Friedr. Dick

  1. ActiveCut 21 cm
  2. Premier Plus 21 cm

• Wüsthof

  1. Gourmet 20 cm

• Bonus (around €80, if they are really worth the extra effort):

  1. Burgvogel: Master Line 20 cm
  2. Friedr. Dick: 1905 21 cm

For my Dad:

• Friedr. Dick

  1. ProDynamic 21 cm
  2. Superior 21 cm

• Wüsthof

  1. Silverpoint 20 cm

Last questions:

1. Would you recommend a 20, 21 or a 23 cm blade size? Some knives have different variations of these blade sizes.
2. Should I care about the material of the knife? I saw someone saying that it should be made of carbon steel (I think?).
3. Should I already buy a knife sharpener from one of the brands above?
4. Should I buy one of those knife guard/protector/sleeve to store it on a drawer or something like that?

That is all, and I want to say thank you in advance for all the replies 🙂

EDIT: I already bought a knife! Thank you so much for all the help! I've bought the Burgvogel Comfort Line 21 cm, I got a nice discount and bought for €58! I don't know how did I miss it but, Burgvogel has the Comfort Line and Series 4000 which are cheaper and also nice quality, just in case, someone in the future wants more options when looking into a new knife. :) My Dad will have a ProDynamic after reading good things about the quality of the cheaper F. Dick knife series.

Hello everyone.

Sorry if this is a long post.

I currently have a dumb TV 1080p at home and, during my searches on Reddit and so on, I've chosen between the Nvidia Shield Pro and the new Apple TV 4K, at the end, I've concluded to get the Apple TV because of the regular software updates. With the Shield, people are already complaining, and they aren't having updates for a while (but please, you can try to convince me otherwise).

My main objectives for the box are:

• Watching YouTube / HBO;
• Watching / Listening my local content (films, music, etc.);
• PC gaming streaming from desktop to the TV.

1. About game streaming directly from my desktop, how good does it work? I saw people saying the Shield is better for gaming but, if I use AMD Link or Steam Link, I would think it does not matter if it is the Apple TV or Shield, or? Maybe the Shield has better support for GeForce Now, but I do not use the service.

2. How easy is to watch / listen to my content that is currently on my laptop / desktop? I saw people simply saying to use Infuse or Plex and stream it to the Apple TV. Is there a better way?

3. Are there things that I should be "careful" with the Apple TV? I remember the time that my wife bought our iPad, and it was hard to just find how to upload a TV series and run it with subtitles. (facepalm) There is no complexity like this on Android, honestly, no software to install on my pc, etc.

4. I saw a lot of people complaining about the support of codecs on the Apple TV comparing to the Shield. Stuff like, no TrueHD audio, no DTS:X, no lossless audio pass-through, transcoding, etc. So many topics that got me confused, since I'm not an expert in this field. If my goal for the future is to buy an amazing 4K "smart" TV and soundbar that both have Dolby Vision and Atmos, and most of my content are local downloaded films or streaming from HBO or Netflix, how important are all of these missing "features" from the Apple TV? People also said to just use Plex or Infuse, and they will have the "audio features" that the Apple TV is natively missing. So, honestly, I didn't understand all the discussion regarding this and why was the Shield better if other apps can support the codecs and missing features.

I think that is all, thank you in advance for all the replies 🙂

I tried to do a quick search and can't find an example of exactly what I want to do. I want to keep my email provider but change how it "looks" or said in another way, change the address itself. The reason for that is that I ditched Google to a lesser known email provider but I hate having to spell out my address to everyone because they don't know about said provider.

My idea would be to create something like myname@personal.com. Is there a name for what I want to do? Is it possible?

Thanks.

I'm a big believer in the theme system proposed by CGP Grey (discussed in much more detail on the Cortex podcast), and have been thinking about what I would like my theme for 2022 to be. After realigning my financial situation this year through the (imaginitively named) Year of Finance, I want to spend some time focusing on myself as a person and my existence in the world.

Enter the Year of Authenticity. Recent circumstances and some serious meta-cognition have led me to the conclusion that I am not sufficiently honest enough about my values, beliefs, expression, and well, myself. I find myself bending to the various social situations I find myself in, and it feels very dishonest at times. So I plan to spend 2022 thinking more about the person that I want to be, being more true to that desire, and trying to align my various "selves" into an individual who I am confident being in any situation.

I already have a few things in mind that I expect to work on, including my public gender expression and my fear of expressing opinions in unfamiliar groups and situations. But I find myself wondering, how do other people experience the desire to be more authentic? Is this something any of my fellow Tilderen have ever spent time working on? What are your approaches to practicing authenticty? Do you have an idealised version of yourself which you work towards? Do you find yourself acting differently with different groups of people? Is this even something I should be worried about? Lets have a talk about it :)

Edit: The nice thing about a theme (watch the video if you haven't, it gives a good explanation) is that it's fuzzy, and it can mean a lot of things, or even change meaning when necessary.

A few have mentioned the idea of consistency, which is not really what I'm shooting for. I don't believe that there is a core, unchanging, self that I have inside me that I am wanting to unleash on an unsuspecting world. I know and embrace that as humans we are emotional, multi-faceted beings, and that changing social situations necessitate changing mannerisms. I don't expect to behave in the same with with my university professors as I do with my best friends of multiple decades. I haven't yet nailed down exactly what I do mean by authenticity, but I do know that it doesn't mean trying to be the same logical, consistent character to all people.

There's a reason I've started thinking about this journey for 2022 now, even before December: there's a lot of introspection and metacognition required for something like this. Being an intronaut can be scary and difficult, but I'm excited to see where it takes me! This whole process is just beginning, and I'm looking to gain insight into others' experiences to help frame my own view of what this year can/might/should mean for me. Thanks for everyone's responses so far <3

I generated markdown with a table of contents which is auto-generated on Emacs. I tested it on https://rentry.co and it works fine. On Tildes the links don't work. Is there a way to make this work? It would be nice to have that for longer posts. Thanks!

Why am I posting this thread?

Honestly, I'm really excited about this. Isn't that enough? :)

What is it?

The World Chess Championship (WCC) is the topmost competition of the sport, and basically determines the best player in the world. It is disputed between the winner of the Candidates Tournament and the current champion. Since his first title in 2013, Magnus Carlsen successfully defended the title on three different occasions and is the undisputed favorite. The challenger Ian Nepomniachtchi does have a positive score against Magnus, but most don't give that much importance, since most of his victories happened when they were much younger. Chess.com combed through the data and gave Magnus 72% winning odds. In terms of style, Magnus is considered a universal player. Nepomniachtchi is generally more aggressive but adopted a more conservative style in the Candidates Tournament.

Since 2014, the WCC happens once every 2 years, alternating with the Candidates Tournament. The current edition was supposed to take place in 2020, but was postponed due to covid. It will happen in Dubai.

The World Chess Championship starts this Friday, November 26, at 16:30 local time, 12:30 UTC.

Where to watch

• Chess.com
• Chess.com Youtube
• Chess.com Twitch
• Chess24
• Chess24 Youtube (I strongly recommend the stream with David Howell for non-advanced players)
• FIDE Youtube
• FIDE Twitch

In the United States, the NBC over-the-air television channel will broadcast daily 30 minutes highlights.

The players

Time controls

In chess, time controls determine the time each player has to make their movies. A time control of 10 minutes means that each player has 10 minutes to use throughout the game. There can also be increments, which are added to a player's overall time after each move. For example, with a time control of 10 | 5 each player starts with 10 minutes to make their moves, and automatically gains 5 seconds on the clock every time they make a move.

The time controls for the World Championship matches may seem a bit complex at first. This is just for reference, if you intend to follow the games online, I'm certain that the commentators will make sure to remind you of these details.

The table above means that, on stage 1, each player has 120 minutes to make their moves. On stage 2, they have 60 minutes. On stage 3, each player has 15 minutes, with an addition of 30 seconds after each move.

Format

• Draw by agreement is only allowed after the 40th move (it used to be the 30th).

• There will be 14 standard games (it used to be 12). The first to achieve 7½ points will be World Champion.

• If, after the 14 games, the score is equal, there will be tie-break games in that order, with the subsequent tie-break only being disputed if the previous one maintained the tie.

  1. 4 rapid games of (TC: 25min + 10s)
  2. Best out 5 blitz games (TC: 5min + 3s)
  3. 1 armageddon game.

Scoreboard

Magnus won on round 11. Rounds 12 to 14 will not be disputed.

Schedule

All games, as well as the closing ceremony, are scheduled to 07:30 AM EST / 12:30 UTC.

This will be updated with the results for each match, as well as the sum of the overall points. I will also try to sum up some experts commentaries for each selected games. Adding notes to every game would require more effort than I initially thought! I'll create a top comment with links and basic info on each game, but will not be adding personal notes to all of them. Feel free to add your impressions to the top comments. Thanks!.