Make new friends here!
Recently there has been a discussion thread about how many people (myself included) are recently finding it difficult to find meaningful, lasting friendships. Let's change that. I don't know if we've ever had a thread like this, but if we did then it must have been a while ago (or my search juju failed me).
Normally, the "finding friends 101" involves finding a small community that revolves around one of your interests, then make friends within that community. Finding those kinds of small communities on the internet has become nigh-on impossible, at least for me. Discord is no substitute; most Discord servers revolving around a certain interest are massive in size, with text channels flying by faster than a popular streamer's Twitch chat.
So we're breaking the code. Instead of finding a specialized community for your interests, just type up a list of your interests, quirks, or whatever other things you'd like to lure new potential friends with as a response to this thread. Go into as much detail as you'd like. If anyone has mentioned an interest you share, send them a DM and start a conversation! (That goes for the lurkers too – if you are one, don't be shy; you play an essential part in making this thread work.)
Note: it may be helpful to add other details too, like your age (if you want friends in a similar age group) and what kind of friends you're looking for in your post. Some people may be looking for people to hang in voice chat and play games with; others may just look for people to discuss topics via Discord DM; and others still may not even necessarily be looking to take their new friendship outside of Tildes. All of these are completely valid.
Very very very cool idea, so here is me just offering up to, like, I don't know, the tildes god or something-- idk what I'm saying...
But hiiiiiiii I'm Luna •⩊•(25 She/They/It)
I'm a (real) person who enjoys stuff (listed down below):
I am probably only looking for to like text, since calling and talking to people is kinda scary :c.
General interests
Other stuff to know about me
I guess you can contact me here on tildes or there are more options on my website. Yipiee •⩊•
I can definitely testify that Luna is a real person & is really fun to talk with! 💜
I love your website. It's so nostalgic.
I just want to say I'm a big fan of your rotating 3D cat model.
The click-to-move cat is also fun!
Fellow autistic & trans moe-domain enjoyer here, followed you on some services. Cute website, by the way.
Thanks a lot!
Also same things goes back to you.
Cool Site + and cute art ⸜(｡˃ ᵕ ˂ )⸝♡
Awww, thank you so much!
Oh neat, another it pronouns user, nice to meet you!
Anyway I'm wondering how the use of perspective compares for web design vs drawn art vs photography in your experience! Been thinking a lot about affordances lately.
To be fair I don't think about perspective when i edit my websites (I have never really learned it propperly).
very bad at drawing so I kinda don't think about it
Photography is very very much different than drawing or coding. In Coding and drawing you add stuff. But in Photography you remove stuff. In terms of what lens you use or how close / far away you are.
So yaa idk if that answers your questions. But I think I'm only like "qualified" to answer on perspective on photography.
I think doing something different with perspective can make your pictures better. Like for example:
Everyone just takes out their phone and snaps a photo from chest-height.
Even If you are aware of that and just crouch down and take the picture it will look so much more intresting. Or rather it can.
IT pronouns?
Like IP/V4? In a groan inducing joke way, not a making fun of pronouns way
Luna, you are IT in every way possible
plz fix my printerI did an apprenticeship in IT actually but I never wanne work in that industry again :3. The apprenticeship ruined everything yay
Depressingly relatable :/
Hopefully you are now in a line of work wgere you feel better :3
Me:
Happy to chat about any of this stuff in outrageous detail!
I can absolutely relate to this! I try my hardest to be as organised as possible at work and will champion data-informed decision making wherever possible. At home though, I'm the complete opposite and feel like somewhat of a hypocrite, to the point where I can't bear the thought of managing a personal electronic calendar of any sort (much to the annoyance of my partner!) lest it aggravate my acute Outlook/Teams Meeting calendar anxiety.
I've struggled to let go of tracking my reading (every now and then a Goodreads-Like web app will catch my attention) as I find constantly tracking my progress towards reading goals to completely suck the fun out of what should be some relaxing down time. Sometimes it's nice to just enjoy things without worrying about how effectively you're enjoying them.
Glad I'm not the only one! Back when I had a Kindle (before I realized how awful Amazon treats 90% of their employees and humanity), I had one that permanently displayed my percent progress through the book in the lower left corner (or a meaningless location number, or an estimate of time left in the chapter). Even that level of quant in a fun activity like reading stressed me out, so I just... wrote over the spot with a black Sharpie.
I also marathon prepped entirely using macro stats -- I ran an 8 mile loop and just used my total time divided by 8 to estimate if I was in the right ballpark. It was kind of funny to go out for a run with my running group once a week and realize that everyone else had all of this special gear, and multi-hundred dollar tracking watches, and thoughts about their heart rate and cadence and how often you should replace running shoes... and I just tossed on running clothes and ran. Turns out if you're reasonably self-aware of your body and exercise regularly you don't NEED all of that stuff to train for even a big event like a marathon. In all fairness, all of our parents did exactly that!
Cool about your reread of Malazan. I'm on the Bonehunters - is the best over or yet to come? I absolutely love it. Also, what's your favourite Stephenson book?
House of Chains was my personal favorite, simply because we got to spend so much time in Karsa's POV instead of hopping around between different POVs. Turns out, I like to spent a lot of time in one character's head instead of getting cliffhangered between different perspectives!
But honestly Dust of Dreams/Crippled God is hard to put down at times. It's basically two books of climax, paying off dozens of storylines simultaneously. Probably my favorite chunk of books in the series, no two books flow into each other quite so well in the Malazanverse. I suspect Steven meant to write the books as one giant book, but his publisher told him he couldn't physically fit that many pages on a single spine, much like what happened to GRRM with Feast/Dance.
Anathem is my current favorite Stephenson book. It was also the first Stephenson I ever read, and a lot has happened in the half of my life that has passed since I last read it. Notably I learned a lot more about philosophy, computer science, mathematics, and logic, which helps with Anathem a great deal.
On the other hand, Cryptonomicon was my second Neal read, and it's much much worse than I remember. The humor is too over the top most of the time, the plot is too slow, and my god it's hard to deal with crypto nonsense these days. Though I am beginning to suspect that a lot of the 'modern day' plotline is borderline parody, meant to poke fun at startup tech culture, but played straight enough I didn't recognize it as a young'un. Now I'm just so cynical about tech it honestly triggers a lot of negative impulses!
What's your favorite Neal book? I've read all of them except for the Baroque Cycle, which I'm hoping to finally tackle this corpus-read cycle.
Haha, I love that your reread of Cryptonomicon helped to air out the satire of it all. Snow Crash is the same for me -- it's a hero's action movie whose tropes have been so wildly pulled apart by today's culture, that (like Star Wars by 2010), inspired space fantasy storytellers had picked the corpse so clean that taking the OG today is basically worthless.
I haven't read Anathaem, but my wife speaks highly of it.
She's read more Stephensen than I have, but from what I have read, The Diamond Age and SevenEve's are up there. It's hard to stick the landing on a single volume speculative Sci Fi novel, but the Diamond Age introduces such a novel setting, story and characters that it had me all the way through. I particularly like the man's weeks long days transferring orgy bender. Duck a wild subplot
Maybe I'll give a nod to Some Remarks, too, as it convinced me to write on a treadmill going forward.
...on Malazan, some have said that it's possible to read them out of order and have it still make sense. I'm very much enjoying the buildup to the Crippled God's arc and how perfect an antagonist he is for Erikson's world.
Malazan as a whole is practically a story about a medieval court with its different layers and strata of royalty, yet those involved aren't Lords, dukes and barons but gods, ascendants and the wildest natural forces I've ever seen described on a page (divers, anyone?). It's an audiobook universe that I look forward to living in whenever I have a few hours worth of repetitive tasks ahead of me.
Just a fair warning, I bounced off of Anathem twice and gave up before going back and finishing it. The first 100 or so pages feel incredibly dry and boring( IMO), but by the end the book is great and I can see why many consider it their favorite Stephenson book.
I remember her reading it now - it was a cult that spilled out into our world, right? She reflects positively on it, but then couldn't stop talking about how great System of the World was. Lol
That's not quite right, but I'd think its better for you to read it if you can rather than for me to butcher the complex narrative. I honestly think that most of Neal Stephenson's books all come from him having some highly inventive and cool basic idea and then writing a whole book to somehow bring that idea to life. Some of those ideas are almost like crazy fever dreams (Fall, or Dodge in hell being a good example) that won't work for a lot of people, but usually they made for a standout and unique read.
Looking forward to it when I get there!
Thoughts on the Diamond Age, though? Did you like it?
Diamond Age was my second Stephenson book after Snowcrash, I read it at least 15 years ago. With that in mind, I can say that at the time I loved it and I especially loved main premise of the primer itself and the world building with the "feed" and all the interesting societal factions. A younger and perhaps more naive me would have thought we could maybe work towards something like that with AI, but after seeing what we have now, I think it's a terrible idea :)
Hah, yeah it's not the tools that are the trouble; it's us. That personal matter compiler is still a dream worth casing, though.
Wow, one of the dozen whole people in the world who prefer Universe over SG1 and Atlantis :D Even admitting you like Universe is controversial. Personally SG1 will always be my favorite but I loved Universe and it was cancelled just as it was really hitting its stride. I need to actually sit down and watch all of Atlantis and the rest of SG1, but once that started and SG1 changed up the team my wife lost interest (Gods bless her for having interest in the first 7 seasons). Watching Atlantis live for me was always a bit hard since it was after SG1 and I always fell asleep, so I missed tons of episodes.
For reference 33/M/NY but not NYC
There are dozens of us... DOZENS! And at least 3 of us are here on Tildes! ;)
I still fantasize about Universe coming back because one of our billionaire overlords wants to see the conclusion. But I suspect few of them have paid much attention to sci-fi over the years, since all of them seem hellbent on making mistakes that sci-fi has warned us about for years. Honestly, I'm mostly happy with the way the show went. It would have been nice to see the full 5-season arc but I get the impression that The Powers That Be ruined Atlantis through formula and arc tweaks and the same would likely have happened to Universe if it had been renewed to juice the numbers. It's nice that they negotiated 2 seasons to start so we at least got a reasonable amount of story and character growth, I wish the streaming services would try that instead of dead-ending shows on cliffhangers after 1 season.
SG-1 has a special place in my heart as the first TV show I ever got really deeply into. I'm pretty sure I've watched every episode half a dozen times thanks to the Sci-Fi channel reruns at 6PM every weekday. But after watching TNG I am forced to conclude that SG-1 is sort of the action-obsessed overly militaristic kid brother. I still really love the writing of certain episodes, because I'm a sucker for moral lessons, but overall it's hard to ignore how much padding went into every season to get 20+ episodes. You don't get to 200 episodes without cheating a little, I guess.
What other Sci-Fi shows do you recommend? I've been meaning to watch through Babylon 5 for ages now, and I think I have some freedom in my TV show queue soon.
Universe had so much potential, such a shame it was cancelled. SG-1 up until season 8 is my comfort show, along with MacGyver!
What routes are you looking at? I've had the Ohio to Erie trail on my list for a year as a week ride, just haven't found the time.
As a kid I spent most winter mornings next to the pellet stove reading Calvin & Hobbes.
I'm now in this boat after my SRAM etap shifters have died in the middle of rides multiple times.
SG-1 really is an amazing comfort show. You just have to avoid a few arcs where episodes end in particularly sad ways. Though it sounds to me like RDA might be an essential ingredient of your comfort shows -- I only started to appreciate Ben Browder after I watched Farscape (worth a shot, if you struggle with seasons 9 and 10)!
I've done a lot of routes around Vermont and New Hampshire in the last few years, but my biggest bicycle trip was from Edinburgh to London via a circuitous route that took me through Wales and Bristol. Was around 3-4 weeks, with stops in some of my favorite cities. My partner rides with me, and I think we're both keen on a Japan-South Korea route (with a ferry ride, no aquatic bikes here) for a potential next trip. But Italy and Spain are also really high on our list too!
I've heard really good things about the Ohio to Erie trail, you should absolutely do it! I've done the LVRT in Vermont and stretches of the Empire Trail in NYS, and from what I've heard, Ohio-to-Erie has better stops, better food, and a nicer temperature profile in the fall and spring than either of those. The best part about rail trails and canal trails is that even if something goes wrong, you're not stuck on the side of a busy highway, and inevitably someone will come by who can help fix your mechanical problem.
Calvin and Hobbes by the pellet stove sounds incredibly cozy. I'll have to give that a try this winter when we're visiting the inlaws, who have the only pellet stove I regularly see these days (thankfully -- what a dusty heat source!)
I have some friends who really love the electronic shifters, but I fear the exact same thing would happen to me. I'm just too forgetful to trust that they wouldn't fail me in the middle of a ride, especially in the winter when temperatures are below freezing and batteries can drop dead in an instant. Hell, I've had issues with my chain icing up on cold days, and that's a lot simpler than a battery!
Weighing in, not because I have the time or interest in developing online friendlies but it's nice to know who's who here.
41/M/ Canada
Life summary:
I'm a parent to an 18 month old - she's out first and a wild and beautiful little bean. I work in higher Ed with the goal of making the jump to urban planning soon.
Hobbies:
When I do have the time to work on hobby tasks, I sink much of it into an arcade building project that I've been working on for the past 6 months. I've built a modular standing cabinet and two wall mounted units before, and I'm planning for this 4 screen, hallway-sized thing to be my final kick at the can.
I'm also a hobby illustrator and writer with a background in movies and film, so that makes its way out every so often as well.
Music and movies:
As far as media goes, my love for Coheed and Cambria, The Midnight, Soca music and bunch of others persists despite having no time for leisure listening these days. I'm into seeing films at the theatre, but mostly, my peanut gallery pals and I just binge old flicks and take turns knee slapping because our running commentary is just too good. Lol
In short, I have a ton of hobbies and time for few of them. Having kids is amazing but beware to anyone who thinks you'll get stuff done in the first 3 years ;)
Best of luck with the career jump and the little bean!
Thanks! No rest for the weary 🥴
Also 41/M/Canada. I love stories about homebrew arcades. I used to work at Marine Land arcade in high school and was fascinated by the machines but definitely don't have the space to do anything with it now.
What games are/will be in your arcade? Will it be open to fellow Canadians or just friends? If just friends, let me know how I can bribe my way in... I guess assuming we are remotely close to each other in this massive country.
Sweet! There are probably lots of us out there in the 41/M/Canadian category, but that location... I'm willing to bet that since you grew up by Marineland that were not within a Paris to Madrid drive of one another. Paris to Irkutsk maybe?
The games will be everything from early titles to modern ones - including Steam. A PC is the best way to catalogue and access everything, so once again, I'm using Lunchbox to do it.
While it'll only be for friends, the real goal is to make it feel like an amusement park ride lol. I've rigged up a programmed a lightshow that'll trigger with different systems, fans and buttkickers in the pull-out chair and wheel for racing games and a whole lot else.
I'll send you my coordinates once it's time to drop in :)
Yeah I'm still within less than an hour of Marineland. And are you talking about Paris, Ontario or Paris, France? ;)
That sounds like a legit setup. Again, I would love to have the space to do anything like that. Good luck with getting all that set up. I don't know if you actually want an internet stranger showing up at your house but it would be cool if you shared progress updates/pictures of your arcade.
Hah, well I'll just come out and say Calgary to Toronto - we're three worlds away!
...and I totally don't have a habit of inviting randoms over, but it wouldn't be the first time I had a hang with a bunch of people whose username was the only thing about them I knew!
Thanks, I'll absolutely post a video about it once I've wrapped up construction.
Yeah, no pressure there. I do love Calgary and my wife has family there so it's easy enough to find an excuse to get out there.
Will you have any traditional arcade games that aren't video games like skeet ball?
Na, I should probably clarify that it's one machine that takes up an entire hallway (shaped room) and does a few other things (gun games, driving) rather than multiple machines.
Space is an issue for me too, so the decision was to sell or disassemble the other two and build 'One cade to rule them all'.
Ah, that makes a lot of sense and probably is the smarter thing to do in the long run anyways.
As for gun games, are you talking about light gun games? Do they have like, light guns you can hook up via usb these days or something like that?
Yeah, there's been a lot of progress with light guns lately. The most recent iterations use IR sensors around the screen to focus the gun. Also, recent versions have all sorts of kick back, buttons and floor pedals for compatibility with time crisis, Virtual Cop and all the rest. Pricey as all hell, but if this is my final arcade, I'm in.
https://retroshooter.com/product/rs3-reaper-kit/
I had no idea. This is super cool. I probably didn't need to know this site exists. I might need to turn my PC into a retro shooter...
I'm an idiot and I just pulled the trigger on it. I'm sure that duties and tariffs from the USA will kill me, but my project is a 'spare no expense' style thing, so I'm doing it.
I'll let you know how it goes if you'd like.
Hah, well thanks for being my test idiot, although it sounds cool as hell! I would definitely love to hear your thoughts once you have had time to play around with it!
Ha! Here I was thinking this must be the first ever mention of soca on Tildes, only to find someone beat you to it years ago. Still, I didn't have that on my bingo card today.
Well I'm not surprised. It's a pretty infectious listening experience 😜.
Carnival this, winin' that, rinse and repeat across the whole genre lol. I can't help myself. Soca is low effort, instant good vibes music that always gets me pumped.
Not a 1:1 match, but we had this thread from chocobean a few months ago. It's also how we started casually talking here every now and then in the first place, even though we're actually pretty different people. That said, somewhat annoyingly, tildes's UI is far from ideal for this. Conversations are always async because of how tildes works, the tildes UI itself encourages long-form responses as well, and it gets really annoying to scroll through PMs after you hit around a dozen long-form messages. Which pretty much means that you'll have to move to talking a different platform, ideally somewhat early on.
Also: consider joining the next iteration of the tildes minecraft server when it starts; it's a great place to have actual, normal conversations with tilderiños and you're more or less guaranteed to meet many people - maybe it'll even help you befriend some of them!
Minecraft makes me sick, Its something about the 3d graphics and the way everything moves, not sure.
If anyone wants to play Terraria, Id be down for that.
Also, I play OldSchool Runescape.
If you haven't yet, I'd suggest disabling view bobbing in Minecraft. I find that helps me, along with bumping the default FoV up a smidge. You could also try playing in F5 (third-person) mode, though that might make certain actions a lot more difficult!
Tbh you can also legitimately just use it as a very inefficient IRC channel most of the time. @creesch and @Teaearlgraycold even made a mod that will broadcast the chat to localhost:8080 when you are logged in so you can chat with folks without needing to actively play all the time. I did that a lot during last season
I'm not a Minecraft fan, but I love that mod idea.
Download link in case you ever decide to check it out ;) https://modrinth.com/mod/web-chat
If I may be so bold I’d say it’s good software
My wife has the same issue with 3D games, especially first person games; she get nauseous from even watching them being played. I personally just don't care for MC much and have always preferred Terraria. I'm still a burnt out on it from the last time I played through it for the twentieth time so I'm not quite ready to commit to playing again.
Agree that this UI is not the friendliest to make friends (sorry). And Minecraft is a great idea, but there might be people like me who don't play games.
I wonder if this can be a recurring post, or stickied, with automatically showing new comments.
I guess it's not a bad idea to have this reposted every once in a while. Maybe once every two months, or at most monthly.
Yeah, good call. I was on the fence about joining the MC server last time since I dislike the idea of the things I build vanishing after some time, when the server shuts down again, but I'll keep it in mind for the next round.
P.S.: Your thread link is giving me a 404.
Woeps, fixed.
FWIW, there's a torrent active for both season 1 and season 2's worlds, and most of the active MC players have that world stored somewhere in an external drive or wherever - so you'll still have access to those for a trip down memory lane!
FYI, the "fixed" link now just leads right back to this topic :P
I can confirm that her yapping is the best
I'll make the start. I'm mainly looking for a discussion partner at the moment, not a playmate (though I could be down for that too).
General interests
Games I regularly play right now
Musical interests
Other things about me
Nice! You're the only other Tildes user besides myself and @Grzmot that I've ever seen mention Billy Talent. I assume you're a fellow Canadian too? Because I don't think they're very widely known outside Canada.
They're one of all-time my favorite bands too, and also one of the very few bands where I can listen to every album of theirs from start to finish without ever feeling the need to skip any songs. The only other bands I feel that same way about are Queen, Pearl Jam, Linkin Park and SOAD, which should give you an idea of my overall taste in music. :P
I love Billy Talent, they were my favourite band when I was a teenager.
I went to a Christian high school, and they made us "memorize" Bible verses weekly for our religion class. Probably 90% of the class would write out the actual verses beforehand on a separate piece of paper, then proceed to write what is basically a Lorem Ipsem during the test and swap the papers to hand in the one with the correct version on it. Our friends were also responsible for marking before we handed things in.
Anyways, one day I was having trouble coming up with filler content, so I decided to write down like 3 different Billy Talent songs. When the time was up, I gave my paper to one of my best friends.
He gave me his paper to mark, which hilariously also contained several songs worth of Billy Talent lyrics. Naturally we both got great marks 🙂
PS - After not really listening to them for years, this song made me remember why I used to love them:
Forgiveness I+II
Hah, nice! And yeah, a lot of their lyrics are actually incredibly well written for a punk band, and they often rail against oppression and injustice so I'm not surprised you got good marks using their lyrics.
Red Flag is still my personal anthem, and sadly just as relevant today as when they released it 19 years ago. :/
My favourite is Cure For The Enemy. Also incredibly and perpetually relevant...
Yeah, I have had a contentious relationship with my own father, so that one always hits me in the feels too. :(
Dead Silence is such a great album in general though. Viking Death March, Surprise Surprise, and Crooked Minds are still especially relevant these days too, unfortunately. :/ And in retrospect, it's actually remarkable how many Billy Talent songs are. :P
Yeah, I was going to say – it would be much harder for me to find a Billy Talent song that isn't still relevant than to name the ones that are (at least as far as the songs criticizing society go – BT does have a few songs like For You or Afraid of Heights that don't do that, but I still love them too).
Not Canadian! Not even close, actually – I'm EU. I can't speak to Billy Talent's popularity outside of Canada (I don't listen to radio music or anything like that), but I believe the way I discovered them was waaay back, like 20 years ago or so, when FPS montages were still a common thing, Red Flag was one of the songs that was frequently used as the background music for some of those montages.
Agree completely! There are very few Billy Talent songs that I skip. Same for Machinae Supremacy and LP. Looks like we have pretty similar song taste!
Ah, nice. I didn't realize they had made much inroads into the EU, other than in Germany. Is that where you're from? (no need to answer if you don't want to, I'm just curious)
Their first 3 albums went 4x Platinum in Canada so they're super popular here. All of the band members are from Ontario, which is where I grew up and am currently living again too. And most of them also went to Our Lady of Mount Carmel secondary school, which was about 20 min from my own high school. Ben also worked at 102.1 The Edge in Toronto, which was my favorite radio station back in the day. And when their debut album came out 102.1 played it practically non-stop, so that's how I first heard them, and I've been a huge fan ever since. :)
I only know Billy Talent from an ex, and that was an overall bad situation so, while I'm aware of them, I wouldn't find myself talking about them and haven't listened to anything in over a decade.
That said, even my favoritest favorites usually have one skip. That's a crazy long list of loves and I'm honestly impressed.
What data center and server are you on for FFXIV? I'm over on Famfrit on Primal. Maybe we can run some instances together! Though I usually just stick to the non-high end stuff.
I've always had a few online friends - since I used to be quite active as an artist on instagram, that used too be my crowd, but now that I'm 25 the crowd there just skews too young for me. So here's my introduction:
I'm Ruby (they/them), as mentioned before I'm 25 years old, and I'm a graphic designer by trade. Looking for any means of conversation, if you're local to the Central Europe Tri-State we could even hang out (Grand Est / Baden-Württemberg / Northwestern CH)
General interests
Writing, design and the abstract notion of computers. I've written four novels (and published none), love to world build and do concept art. I'm a big believer in the IndieWeb and am part of the XXIIVV webring, and am looking for likeminded people to build a little circle of other IndieWeb accomplices. If that's not you though, we can still be friends! I'd just like to know more people in that area.
Media I'm currently on
Other things to know
I use and love my Mac every day, and I'm almost treating it like a deck builder rogue like - I collect apps, the more specific the better - and I love managing my tasks and personal knowledge (I set up a Linear.app instance for my apartment) and I love gadgets probably a little too much (I'm one of the few people that bought the Even G1 smart glasses, even though I definitely don't need them).
You can contact me any way you see fit - Tildes, Bluesky, Email, and you can look at my website here: https://rmv.fyi/ (desktop preferred, mobile works but is still WIP)
Thanks for making this thread!
I also finally got around to watching the sopranos. On season 3 and ive very much been enjoying it.
Sounds fun, here we go!
I am in a very similar camp to you on a few things. 34/M/US, also like to go to random park benches and stare into space. Married with 1 kid, 2 dogs 2 cats. Similar career situation although I started programming at 27. Have been interested in launching a SaaS as well but never had a good enough idea to stick, just switched from being an EM at a late stage startup to an IC at a pre-seed. Lately my hobbies have been learning to play piano and running.
I'll be perfectly honest, from this list we have absolutely nothing in common, except that Taiwan is our favourite country. What drew you to Taiwan/ what do you love about it??
Haha nothing wrong with that!
We had a Taiwanese friend that invited us to visit. Fell in love with the culture, food and infrastructure. The second time I visited I stayed for a month, working remotely from coworking spots. Stayed in Taipei and Kaohsiung. People were so friendly, my fondest memory is going to see whatever star wars movie had just came out and a random guy came up and was like "hey, I've got a case of beers, wanna watch the movie with us and drink?". The temples and parks are so beautiful in Taipei (and Beitou District is such a cool area), and the beach + art district in Kaohsiung was awesome.
I honestly think Taiwan is the hidden gem of Asia, and I'm torn between wanting more people to know about it and enjoy it and wanting to keep it all to myself! I lived in Taipei for a year as a student and I fell in love with it. I was fortunate to be able to travel most of the island and while I loved Kaohsiung, Tainan, Qiao Liu Qiu and other places, Taipei has such a special place in my heart. It's hard to describe, but I visited again last year and just felt like I was returning home, somehow.
Completely agree, I felt more at home in Taiwan than I do in the US. So many parts of the culture and and lifestyle align with me. Did you study at NTPU?
No, NTU. My Chinese is passable but not enough to take classes in Chinese, so most of the courses I did were in English (barring language classes), so I'm sure I didn't get the full experience but I really enjoyed it!
I know it's a major drawback for many but honestly one of the things I miss the most is the weather. That and the bubble tea I think haha. Fortunately I've made a few great friends there so always have a good excuse to go back.
Taiwan is also my favorite country in east asia. Nice choice!
Completely agree with this. I don't have kids (or any plans for any in the near future), but this is definitely also one of my fears. I'm guessing most of us grew up in a world where smartphones either didn't exist yet or were still considered luxury goods. I honestly don't know what kind of person I'd be if I'd been exposed to the full breadth of the internet at that kind of age... probably not a better one, especially with the state of the internet today.
And the worst part is, you can't even control or curtail your kids' phone/internet usage either, because then they'll either be ostracized by their peers, or their peers will be in full control of your children's exposure to the internet, which is really not something I would want.
I'm totally with you on being fed up with the intense enshittification of modern tech. It's lead me to become more and more tech averse, which confuses everyone since I am also a programmer and have been writing code since I was 8 with my TI/994a and our IBM XT. I am quite lucky that my company is small and as the principal engineer, I have an oversized say in our technical direction.
I was telling someone recently "I'm in software, so of course I hate tech", I think we have so much exposure to the ugly that it's really impacted us more than most. Thankfully I also made all the technical decisions for our application (ie no bloated frontend framework, microservices, etc), but there's always battles that you can't win and just kind of sigh at ("this needs AI!").
That rings far too true. My CEO has always been, let's just say enthusiastic about AI. Since we've been in an AI Hype-wave the last few years it's been worse than ever. I've been just internally rebranding anything even slightly adjacent as "AI powered" to keep things moving along.
Reminds me of a "AI Powered" toaster I recently saw. Put some if statements in it and call it AI to keep the board happy haha
I'm Chris (he/him, 33M, South-West England.)
Both a PC gamer (main games I play right now are League of Legends and World of Warcraft) and someone who regularly likes to go out and do pub karaoke, which is something I started getting into two years ago.
I don't really have any online friends who I actively speak to at the moment (used to have a few), and for reasons I don't fully want to get into on a public forum (currently unemployed, been dragged into some relationship drama and feel guilty about recent events), I want to spend less time with the karaoke group.
Open to DMs.
Let's give this a shot.
Any good podcast recommendations? Also been feeling like learning more and more physics. If I didn’t go for computer science, I think astronomy would have been my field of study. Also, German speaker that’s learning Spanish (among others) here :D
I feel you, I'm also very interested in astronomy, it was my gateway to physics. Here's what I can recommend for you:
Check out Mindscape hosted by Sean Carroll, if you haven't already. Might be up your alley!
Thanks for the recommendation! I did check it out (I think last year) but something about it didn't click for me. Can't remember what it was and it was a bit odd, because I do like Sean Carroll.
Fair enough! Not every ep does it for me either.
Do you listen to the Ologies podcast?
What's your favourite science podcast?
Not heard of that one before but I'll give it a listen :)
My Favourite is The Skeptics Guide to The Universe. It's the main way I keep up to date with science news and I've been listening to it for probably over 15 years now. I like the dynamic between the hosts and the way subjects are presented. Also, the consistency is incredible, they haven't missed an episode since I started listening (Probably haven't missed one at all) and they publish every week. There have been podcasts that I stopped listening to either because they ended or the direction changed to something I didn't enjoy but I foresee myself sticking to this one for many years to come.
That sounds right up my alley, I will definitely check it out. I definitely agree that consistency is key for many podcasts success. I have a long commute so I mainly listen during it and build a routine. If they are inconsistent it's hard to build that routine.
Ologies is great. Allie Ward is the host and she is lovely. Each week she talks to a different ologist, like gynecology, radiology or fearology, etc. You learn a ton from experts in their field each week. I bet you'll like it.
I get it, I like my routine and I also mainly listen during my commute. So Monday mornings are SGU listening time :)
I want to get back into MTG but looks like things have changed a lot since i played back in the 90s
I used to play around the 2000s and things have changed, but the basics are pretty much the same. What made me fall in love with it this time is playing commander. While I enjoyed playing standard, I never felt it was that interesting for many reasons. Commander is more casual, but still has a bit of competitiveness, I love that you can use pretty much any card in your deck, and the fact that you can only have one copy of each at most means that you generally can't bruteforce your way to a victory. It also means that you don't have to spent tons of money to make a decent deck (Though that option is always there).
The hardest part about the game, as I feel is with any other in person game, is finding a consistent group. I'm lucky that I found some people at work that are also into it and we get to play every week or so.
A fellow game sales enjoyer, I see. I'm the same way. I never buy games at full price unless there's a substantial risk I'd end up getting passively spoiled about story or other content by browsing the internet. I waited half a year for the Final Fantasy XVI PC version to go on sale before I bought it, despite being a big Final Fantasy fan.
What are the last games you purchased and what did you think of them? Any recommendations?
Last sale I bought:
I think a few of those I might have picked up from some of the game threads here, I'll sometimes go and chuck something on my wishlist after reading their comments. Of these I've only played Spiritfarer and it was really good, a lighter take on the crafting genre (Which is my favourite) with an amazing soundtrack and great writing. Besides this one, I'm currently playing Bloodstained and having a lot of fun with it. Before these I played Dave the diver which I loved, great crafting/management game with tons of unexpected minigames. It is very odd that I play multiple games in a row that I would recommend, I can be quite fuzzy when it comes to them. I wasn't always like this but at some point I realised I got limited time and there's way too many good games out there to waste my time with ones I don't enjoy.
Spiritfarer was very memorable for sure. I'd never have thought I'd be so invested into feeding fries to a mushroom child whenever he wanted.
I played Bad North on my phone and it was a great experience! I recently started another Hard campaign that I'm hoping to poke away at slowly over the next couple of years when the moods strikes me.
If you like physics and science podcasts with a bit of humor you might enjoy The Titanium Physicists? The host is a physicist and has a bunch of others he invites on to have a conversational discussion of something with the guest lay person.
Also, haven't tried it out myself, but Card Forge has a mode that is similar to the single-player Shandalar for MtG with support for modern cards.
Both solid recommendations, but I'm a bit sad the podcast is dead. Do you think it's worth going through the back catalogue?
And yes I use Card Forge, I got a bit bored of the adventure mode but did play for a while. I now use it more to playtest decks before building them :)
I'm not sure how quick physics gets outdated and it's been some years since I listened so I can't say for certain, but I'd say it's probably worth trying? Their 80ish episodes is a decent amount of content.
The vibe was very familiar to having smart friends in a different field talking about their interests. Definitely not as polished as something like a 3blue1brown, but for me personally I look for podcasts to be enjoyable and less rigorous since I'm not always listening attentively.
And sometimes the eccentricities make it memorable! I'll never not think about the universe, myself, and my eyes being made of bees when thinking about vacuum energy.
I might have found it from the also-dead-but-enjoyable Weekly Weinersmith, by Zach (of Saturday Morning Breakfast Cartoons fame) and his wife. From what I recall they did a decent amount of metascience discussion, and between that and the Bad Ad-hoc Hypothesis Festival I got an appreciation for the Weinersmith.
Same with SGU (the first podcast I ran into?), long time appreciator of their mission. It was probably a bit formative for me since I found them fairly young and had a parent into all manner of woo (irridology, reflexology, prophetic dreams, horoscopes, etc.).
Keeping the trend, a last recommendation if you're interested in neuroscience would be Brain Science Podcast.
Thank you, so much stuff to add to my list! I'll check out Brain Science but I'm not sure if that's something that will make the rotation, on the surface looks more in depth than I can handle in that area. I do listen to Inner Cosmos, but I'm not sure if I would call it strictly a neuroscience podcast; it does have some of that with perhaps some psychology thrown in.
hello 👋 i’m 35/m/Texas (as of tomorrow), USA
hobbies, interests
i make music. it’s my favorite thing. i’ve posted a few times about it here and have enjoyed people’s responses. going through a change in music so have pulled a lot of it off the internet but will share with tildes when i finish my next project — it has contributions from other tildes users! i make various kinds of “electronic music” but usually ambient, noise, drone, experimental, and sometimes try to make more fun music. i went to school for audio engineering and wish i had focused more on that but making music for myself is great too. i do need to figure out how to market it in some way that’s not awful.
i also create video art that usually goes with my music or with web projects. i am a video editor by trade (among other things, i guess) and like to have little long-term editing projects. currently starting to work on a project about corruption in televangelism, with a focus on the ones that i grew up seeing. grew up in the birthplace of mega churches and all that.
i like to watch movies and tv series and especially documentaries. i used to be way more motivated to watch things (at least 1 movie a day or 2-4 episodes of a series) but other things in life have gotten in the way. sometimes i just watch endless youtube videos about public transit in cities around the world.
i have a lot of experience with very basic web design (html/css/some vanilla javascript) and have been happy being able to create websites for my music and video projects, a few clients here and there, and always changing personal websites/portfolio. i bought a fun domain name back when a lot of “new” TLD were coming out.
i listen to a lot of music. i also love when other people are really passionate about music and spend a good amount of time talking about/sharing/recommending music, even if the music doesn’t end up being my thing. it’s just nice to see people openly enjoying something.
speaking of, that’s why i like tildes so much. people really do tend to post about things they enjoy or projects they’re working on. my only other online social experience is reddit and it’s harder to find that kind of thing. i don’t post here as often as i’d like but i do enjoy reading everyone’s posts and comments.
if anything i mentioned is interesting, feel free to PM me!
Also weighing in on this thread because I find it an interesting exercise to go through the process of deciding what is worth conveying to other people in an online introduction.
me_irl
I'll start by saying that I see "the internet" in its contemporary form as a largely dissociative thing. Like, something that is outside of or separate from my lived reality. I don't like that this is the case and I would much prefer to use it as an avenue for fostering real-world relationships, however I consider modern social media to be "enemy territory" in the sense that I cannot exist as an autonomous denizen of the internet within the box provided by a platform like Instagram. That, and it wants to harvest my attention span for profit.
So, who I am on the internet is essentially an alcoholic who works at the bar. I spend much of my brain power trying to solve address problems in the contemporary open-web (i.e. how to give people a comparable UI/UX experience while undercutting capitalist profit motive), however that inevitably leads me to places like this for niblets of dopamine and pseudosocial interaction to supplement my lack of a genuine in-person interaction.
Me, IRL
Who I am off the internet is a male-bodied human approaching 30 years old. I have laser-cut business cards which say "professional volunteer", alluding to my goals of spending an average of 25 hours each week in service to my community. To accomplish that, I have essentially zeroed out my cost of living - with the help of my parents, of course. Most of the money I make goes to paying bus fare so that I can get to the places where I volunteer, however I also bike around the city weather permitting.
My goals over the next several months are to leverage the connections that I have made within my city in order to bootstrap a circular economy using the Lightning Network. Tildes generally dislikes Bitcoin so I won't get into it, but I want to see it deliver on its original intended use case and I am working to make that happen. I am learning Haskell so that I can work on building some of the more fine-tuned components of this system. Monads still confuse me.
In my parents garage, I operate a garagecafé where I invite people from my neighborhood to come hang out. I give out free coffee and bake bread to share with people that visit. Everything is done by donation and the money I receive is generally spent on helping me to do what I do. Sometimes I buy a drink at my friends' cafés to support them, but that is probably once or twice a month. Once again, most of the money goes to paying bus fare.
I love music; my taste is centered around 2000s indie rock but I have definitely done my homework. I am running two open mics next week, which I'm very excited about. I write originals but most of the music I perform on stage at this point is pop music. People go wild for stuff like Take On Me and Against All Odds, and I'm happy to deliver.
Well, I think that about rounds out my character profile. I like talking about what I do but I prefer actually doing it. Unfortunately I am perpetually burnt out. If anyone here happens to exist in the Kitchener/Waterloo region then I'm happy to invite you to any of the events I'm running, but I don't really want to spend any more time on the computer than I already do - too busy grinding XP in meatspace, you know?
This is a random collection of things about me. My friends have had kids and/or moved away, so I would be happy with anything. Gamer friend, random chats, IRL friend. Whatever.
Me:
That's probably too much. If you read this fair, thank you! Drop a reply or send a DM!
Did you work out before or did you go from not working out at all to finally working out?
I went from not working out at all. I have exercised at various points of my life, but I was never able to develop a routine that I stuck to until last year!
I have the exact same coffee grinder and I have a Moccamaster Technivorm. it is far and away the best coffee maker I have ever used and it is the only drip coffee machine that makes better coffee than our other fancy methods like siphon, french/aero press, chemex.
I'm so jealous. I tried to order one during the pandemic but after waiting months I cancelled my order. We received our Kitchen Aid coffee maker from family during Christmas so I couldn't justify getting it anymore.
How is the pot size? Is it enough for only 3 mugs of coffee or is it closer to 4 mugs? How much coffee do you grind to water ratio with it?
Before I continue, I'd like to stress that my wife is actually the supreme lover of coffee in this home, I just make it and get the cool coffee makers for her. Even though I make the coffee and iterate to make it taste better, I don't generally get too detailed in my measurements and write everything down. I cook this way too, I bet it would drive some people mad.
So, as far as the details about the coffee maker, the pot is 1.25L (that's the "10" mark on the reservoir), but I usually fill it to the "8" line which is 1L and ends up with three good sized mugs worth of coffee. Their documentation says it should be able 15 grams of water per 1/4 liter (which is roughly a tablespoon), but I have found that with the coffee we get that it needs to be a little more than that with closer to 4.5 tablespoons being ideal, maybe 4 and 2/3, but with 5 being too much. That's obviously personal preference and also depends on the type of coffee you drink (we prefer a lighter roast). Bonus tip: I had recently read that adding a tiny amount of salt with the grounds cuts the bitterness. I tried it out and it worked out really well. You don't taste the salt at all, it just cuts the bitterness a bit. I just have a course salt grinder nearby and give it maybe have a turn.
Appreciate the info. I'm mostly interested in volume anyways. Most days myself and my wife each have 2 mugs of coffee each, so I imagine we might need to have slightly less in each mug.
Yeah, half the fun is dialing in the grind size and amount of coffee to make the best coffee, at least for me. We stick to medium to dark roast, so bitter is a feature, as long as not too much, but that's a great tip!
I remain jealous!
I bought it for her years ago as a birthday present and it has held up extremely well. I know it is over the top in price and there is possibly some placebo effect in our love of the coffee it makes, but I hope you can get one some day.
Maybe, but it is also consistently highly rated with a strong warranty made by a company that has been around for a long time, so probably not just placebo! And I will own one one day! Thanks for sharing your experience!
For the record, I'm always open to new friendships (online or off), but this forum is just a little bit too public for me to be fully comfortable sharing a lot of details about myself in one post. I do love the idea of making friends here, though, as this is probably my most visited online space.
Writing a public introduction is definitely not a requirement to participate! It's completely okay to just wait for people to write their posts, then to send a DM to anyone whose post piques your interest. That way you'll keep your conversations completely private.
Fair enough! I will for sure be following along. Also anyone officially has permission to DM me if they have seen me post elsewhere on tildes and think that I might make a good friend. 🙂
Anyone play osrs?
I do! F2P though
Neat, just starting out or actually trying to max in ftp?
Trying to max all skills, but very off and on playing wise. I'm at 847
I imagine its a lot slower in ftp!
I "play" by doing some very low effort high volume item merching across a few F2P accounts. I usually log in once a day/every couple of days and check the GE on my accounts.
I'll eventually purchase some bonds and play for a bit, but I want to wait until I have ~100 mil GP so I can buy 2 bonds and have a month to play so I:
I know a ton of people who play this way, was always interesting to me. I just pay for membership on two accounts, its the only monthly subscription Ive got and I’m grandfathered in at $10
The flipping is somewhat fun for me and I've enjoyed doing some F2P content since I didn't have members as a kid.
I admittedly played RuneScape to sell GP to kids in my school so I could pay for WoW. I enjoyed RuneScape as a whole back then but wanted to play WoW with my brother. Looking back I should have just paid for membership since I could have made more GP and also would have had more fun since we only usually played WoW a few months a year due to then subscription and being busy with sports and other stuff.
I try not to spend any money on gaming these days, and don't want to feel like I owe my frienda who do play the game by letting them pay for my bonds. Extra money goes towards my family and our savings for the time being.
The high volume merching also takes very little time, besides sitting semi AFK with a character to get the 20 hours of gameplay so I can have them not have trade restrictions.
Yeah of course its fun! I know so many people who do that, definitely a particular flavor of osrs player haha.
I’m the flavor that gets lvl 98 in all of the skills so I can max by lvling everything at once… way more unhinged than merching.
Oooh, hullo!
I live in the city within a park, and love making experimental music (and sometimes visuals), outside of my day job as a designer.
I love exploring nostalgia, dissociation, hauntingness of things and spaces, chaos in order, urban design, moving/thoughtful/beautiful cinema. I'm particularly curious about how one lives, explores and makes decisions that are more...subversive, and I'm a big fan of spontaneity and intuition!
Feel free to dm to chat more 𓅖
Anyone fluent in Korean, or learning it? I'm looking for study buddies, or people to practice with, in just about any text format (Discord, Tildes DMs, email).
I'm late to the party, but lets do it!
I'm drg, 36yo guy (he/him) from Brazil.
Brief bio
I'm an economist and a nerd, father of a young boy.
I used to pass my time in front of a computer. Got my first one when I was 7, lived alone from 17yo to ~26yo, I didn't have a TV back then, when I got home i just sat at my desk and stayed in my computer.
Used to have lot of online friends who I talked to using ICQ, MSN, ICQ and on forums. When I was younger, I used to play PC games, starting with Doom2, Age of Empires 2, byt got really hooked on Counter Strike, which I played a lot as a kid and as a yound adult. Used to tinker a lot with Linux and computers in general (when I was a teenager, a nice afternoon for me was to read the Gentoo handbook and to install it on my computer, for example).
Since becoming a father, I have very little "alone time" and I just don't sit that much in front of a computer anymore outside work. And now with WhatsApp (the main form of communication here in Brazil), there are few people (at least me age) who has any kind of IM outside it. I also stopped playing games on the computer. Now, when I have some time, I sit in front of a computer and I have no idea what to do with it. I don't have online friends anymore and I have no idea how to make them, but I miss it.
General interests
I like music a lot, rock and metal stuff. Rock in general as in Queen, Bee Gees, Supertramp, Dire Straits, and more "strong" music as in Dream Theater, Kamelot, Nightwish and so on.
I also enjoy reading fantasy in general. LOTR, Brandon Sanderson (I love Stormlight Archive, I just started reading the original Mistborn trilogy a few weeks ago) and similar books.
I always wanted to try TTRPGs, D&D and stuff like that but I haven't found anyone to play with until very recently. I moved to another city and I discovered the father of one of my son's friend is also a nerd who loves D&D and was starting an AD&D campaign, and he invited me. I enjoyed it a lot, but didn't like much his friends outside of the game, more like rightwing people, and we used to play at the middle of the week, ending the sessions much later than what I'm used to go to bed, so it was difficult for me to continue it, and I dropped from the game. I have been reading a lot about TTRPGs in general and would very much like to try different ones, like Daggerheart.
Other thins to know about me
English is not my first language, but I can read and listen to it very well.
More to the shy side
I forgot how to use social websites/forums! I mainly just lurk nowadays :(