We've all heard about solar PV panels, but that's not the be-all and end-all of technologies which could make buildings more efficient and less harmful to their environments. May I ask what else have folks got up their sleeves?

Dimensions of environmental friendliness

All good technical discussions start with a host of term definitions and context statements, so I'll attempt to start this one off on strong footing! I figure that anything which checks one or more of these checkboxes (reasoning included) works, but please feel free to colour outside of the lines -- this is just a kicking off point. Note that anti-ticking a checkbox is fine; everything has trade-offs, and sometimes paired solutions can negate each others' downsides. Magnitude is always a factor, too, since this field is rarely black and white.

(no need to bring receipts, mind; I'm sure we can keep this light hearted so as to avoid digging into comparative EPD critiques :3)

• Low embodied carbon (the kgCO2e emitted per a cradle-to-grave analysis (EPD, often) of a product),
• Low operational resource consumption (anything which works as well as an inefficient equivalent, but uses less energy/consumables -- LED vs. incandescent bulbs, heat pumps vs. nat gas furnaces, insulation vs. no insulation, etc.),
  • Includes water conservation, too!
• Durability over design life (per the Canadian Wood Council (they're ... a little biased), the median service life of buildings is <90 years, so adjust amortization periods accordingly),
  • Includes things like wildlife-urban interface-safe materials, as well as clay bricks and whatnot.
• Sustainability (if we can't do it for more than a century, let alone a few decades, it's probably not worth the sunk costs),
• Low environmental toxicity (no point trying to save the environment if it's all a toxic swamp afterwards),
• Supportive of local ecology (built environments tend to be biodiversity deserts -- cobblestone boulevards, brick walk ups, and tin roofs are hostile everything but pigeons and rats. Think native planting, green retaining walls, planted pavers, etc.).

(full disclosure: I'm probably going to borrow several of these at some point, so this is a half-discussion, half-I'm-outsourcing-my-research post 😅 hopefully that's acceptable ...)

Hey there Tildes -- just checking in to see if any of y'all use Fusion for work or for hobby projects?

I've been using Resolve for a while with personal projects and have used Premiere for work for years. I have basic understanding of After Effects as I've had to use it off and on for work for many years (though, it's been a while since I've had Creative Cloud subscription) and now I'm just moving everything to Final Cut for simple stuffs and Resolve for work or big projects. Hoping to move to exclusively use Resolve since I got a new M5 iPad and their iPad app seems nearly complete (feature-parity with Desktop).

If anyone has good understanding of Fusion, how did you learn? Could you point me to specific sites/creators/etc.?

Thanks!

Hello!

I need some advice about work. I'm 34 and I have a child. What direction do you think I should be looking in job-wise? Because of AI, I'm not sure whether it's worth staying in IT and on top of that, my department was recently shut down at my company, so I'm out of work.

My goal is to be able to rent a decent place, cover health/medical costs, food obviously and to take my child on holiday at least once yearly (I couldn't affort it before).

I'm based in Europe. Right now I'm actively learning to knit, just in case.

Could you suggest what kind of work you'd recommend so that I can be that "man of the house" for myself and support myself properly? If it matters: I'm celibate and I don't plan to enter into a relationship, but I need to get my child on their feet and I honestly have no idea which way to move.

My salary has always been low, I'm tired of it and I'm responsible for a child. So I'm ready for anything. Ready to learn anything, do anything!

Thank you!

What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)

Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.

You can make a chart if you use last.fm:

http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/

Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.

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And what do you write about?

Currently, my personal website is under my real name. I'm asking this question because I'm about to rebuild it (as is tradition), which gave me some energy to write about a recent personal event, and I'm realizing that I'm not comfortable with writing this under my real name. So I'm here, wondering what to do with my personal thoughts that I want to share, but not too loudly.

If you own a personal website or blog, what do you do? Do you use a pseudonym for everything? Are you ok with publishing personal stuff under your real name? Do you have two blogs to separate things?

Is anyone else in a part of the US where there are a ton more fireworks this summer than ever before? It can't be just my neighborhood. Literally every night since the beginning of June, someone is setting fire to their (presumably inversely proportional, that is to say, increasingly diminishing) disposable income. The prices of everything are higher than ever—gas, food, housing, everything—and yet. What is going on out there??

Went on a guys trip to Johnsons Shut-Ins the last week. Go ahead and Google what happened there last night. I don't really know the point of posting this here but I feel like sharing.

It started raining around 11pm. The tents held up fine for a while.

I remember waking up at one point to hard rain. I checked the tent but things seemed fine. That was probably about midnight or 1am. Around 2am I woke up cause something felt wrong. The tent was moving and shaking.

I opened the door and saw chaos. It was like looking at the sea in a storm, and I was being carried off by the rushing water. We were swept into a shelter, where I was able to find footing to grab my kid (I was telling "GET UP, GET UP NOW" the whole time) and toss him onto a table out of the water.

I managed to grab quite a bit from the tent and toss it on too and then wedge the tent between two trees.

I then saw the other tent from my group float past. I couldn't help them.

My kid is crying, a torrent of rising water is at my feet, and I spotted that the bathroom shelter nearby was higher up. I grabbed my kid and had to fight my way through the raging water worrying I'd drop him with any misstep. I made it across and we were the first ones there.

Slowly others came. First my FIL and then other campers tricked in. We didn't know what had happened to my bil or my nephew, just they they'd been swept away. My FIL had been sucked out of the tent when he opened the door.

Another family we could hear yelling across the water. A father and son stuck in the trees. They showed up later at the shelter, apparently the son had been pulled away from his dad but wedged on a tree and was able to escape. The dad went back to find the rest of the family. They were all ok.

A few hours later, my bil and his son showed up. They'd been pinned by the current to the trees for at least 2 hours. Hypothermic and exhausted, but safe.

Dawn came and the rain stopped. We gathered what ever else we could find and then left through flooded roads.

I have an older kobo (Kobo Libra H20) and have been using Calibre, and basically manually plugging it in and syncing books over to it.

I'm wondering if anyone knows of any good ways of doing wireless sync?

I've looked into KoReader but not sure exactly how involved that would be to set up. I am comfortable setting up something "SelfHosted" as long as I can easily spin it up and spin it down, I don't currently have any computer I leave on 100% of the time.

I've seen previous topics here, and Booklore looked interesting, but when I went to track it down it looks like the website is down (the GitHub is still there though), and apparently lots of controversy surrounding it in some reddit posts...it looks like there is maybe a fork of it (Grimmory), but I'm wondering if anyone here has experience with it or anything similar.

I'd prefer something without a lot of AI/LLM use, but not sure how realistic that is.

I only read eBooks, not manga/visual novels, and I don't listen to audiobooks so I don't necessarily need anything with support for any of those.

I would also be fine paying for something, but preferably only a one-time fee not a subscription.

I primarily read books on my Kobo, but it would be a "nice to have" if I could somehow sync to my iPhone (or Apple books) and iPad, but not required (and I don't need it to sync progress between devices, as I'd pretty much only be reading on one at a time).

Additional "nice to have" would be the ability to add books from any device.

Any suggestions? Just use Calibre content server? Or is there something "better"?

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

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

This is a recurring post to discuss programming or other technical projects that we've been working on. Tell us about one of your recent projects, either at work or personal projects. What's interesting about it? Are you having trouble with anything?

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It’s time for annother edition of our biannual Game Giveaway topics! Share games with the community and get rid of those extra bundle keys you have lying around.

Before you participate, please make sure you read the rules below.

Rules

-Gifters

Post your available games, the platform and method of delivery, rules for your giveaways (e.g. first-come first-serve, random draw, etc.), and any additional info or requirements. Feel free to get creative!

-Giftees

Request giveaways. Please make sure you follow the gifter's posted guidelines.

-Guidelines

Anyone can choose to be a gifter, giftee, or both! Giveaway rules are set by individual gifters, but there are handful of guidelines everyone should follow:

1. No grey market keys! Only give away games from reputable sources. If you're not sure what this means, please ask.
2. Requests for games should be done in this topic, but if the gift is a key, those should be delivered by PMs only. Please don't post keys publicly in this topic, even obfuscated ones.

If you're new to these, check out previous giveaway threads to see how these usually go.

I've been slowly convincing myself that I want to go to Africa, mostly because I haven't done a solo trip in a while, but also because I haven't been to Africa at all yet! Some of my team members are in Ghana and they sent me pictures of it, and it looked amazing. I definitely would love to go! I'm thinking of going during the week of Christmas only because it's probably my only time I'm available for the rest of the year. Any tips or places that I should be looking at?

(I also have some Scandinavian countries, Prague, or Scotland/Ireland on my docket, but I've been to Europe so much these last couple of years and I figure I'd need something new)

Hello, I am using a throwaway account since I don't want this account publicly associated with the rest of my Internet persona. Some identifying info will be fudged for the sake of keeping as anonymous as possible.

Me and my partner of nine years have been constantly fighting about little things these days. The fights have started from shallow stuff. From my perspective, it usually starts out of silly things. One recurring thing is that sometimes, working from home, I want some hugs every now and then during the day. The problem is he's watching Netflix or whatever and doesn't want to be interrupted midmovie. He complains I asked for them too frequently, which is fair. But I think the cause is when he does accept my proposal to hug, I'm just the one hugging him and he's still watching the movie. Gives me a tap in the back of what objectively could be a hug but there is just no emotion.

Alright, getting annoyed is one thing and should be easy to fix. However, he does some variant of "escaping the conversation". Whether it's leaving the room suddenly or answering questions in what I think is bad faith. All of these, in his head, I know he has a rationalization. Leaving the room, according to him, is good for calming down. And he's read that somewhere. Can't refute that. But what I try to explain, and am probably not explaining well, is that he just can't leave me like that because it feels like he doesn't care about it. I find it very disrespectful, it makes me angry, and it just elevates what could have been a quick discussion to some big blown-up fight where no one is really sure anymore how it started or why it dials up to 11 very quickly.

I've recently started opening up to friends out of desperation. He "does not like" that our friends know about our business. Relationship troubles and all. I understand, and I tried to respect this wish for the nine years we've been together. But now I'm desperate, I did start talking about it with friends. They gave me a lot of insights that I didn't have before and they pinpointed that the biggest obstacle we have is proper communication.

In the beginning, I talk and let him talk. But his responses are one-liners like "yes" or "sure". Which is completely ambiguous if it is in agreement to what I just said or if it is just to signify that he's listening. This gave me the tendency to talk more. Because either the conversation finishes there, which according to him is already concluded because he agreed to what I wanted. The thing that is lacking is some sort of feeling of warmth or empathy. In principle, "yes" already does the "admin part" but "yes I understand what you mean and I will try to do better" takes care of the emotional side. This is something that I have tried explaining but unfortunately in vain. Maybe it's his blind side.

I don't think anything of what he's doing is malicious or intentionally done to make me angry. I think it's just how he is. I don't think he realizes it. And as someone who cares for him, I hope he does.

The status now is that we are "broken up". I'd like to mark that with an asterisk because our fights these past few weeks end up with someone saying they want to break up. It has since elevated to "we are breaking up". It's getting tiring. I know that this relationship is down in the gutter. However, I am still optimistic for that Disney ending where we all realize our problems and live happily ever after.

But yeah. I really don't know what I want in posting this. I think I just need to pass the time since we are both currently in the same apartment. It's big enough that we have our own rooms for these trying times. Advice and analyses and opinions are certainly welcome. Obviously, there's bias for me since I wrote it. So yeah. Open to anything. Thanks for reading in any case.

Hey there, I’m an uncle to a soon to be 15 year old niece who recently got into sewing and has a starter sewing machine. (Hope it’s ok that I post here!)

I want to get her something for her birthday next weekend that has to do with sewing or similar since that’s what she’s expressed interest in. She’s never really had hobbies before but seems genuinely interested in modifying clothes and up-cycling (I think that’s the term) thrift finds.

Can someone help me with ideas on what I could get her? She is relatively new to things and she lives in Texas (US).

I’m ok spending up to $150. Could go higher as I’ll just split costs with her dad or grandparents if the gift is excellent.

Update: thank you all for the thoughtful suggestions! tildes always comes through with advices/tips/ideas for me! i ended up buying Gingher 8” Fabric Scissors, Kai seam snips (detail scissors?), Clover seam ripper, 3-pack of pink Singer tape measures, and a grumpy cat tote bag. i think i’m going to take her out to the thrift store to grab some clothes she can work on too. next year if shes still into it i think me and her dad will go in on a nice sewing machine someone mentioned in the comments. thanks again everyone!

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