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!

G'day,

Like most people I suspect, when I'm working I love having music on in the background.

One of my go-tos is Tool (and A Perfect Circle) because it offers the perfect mix of "wall of sound", great clear vocals, sharp interesting drumming, and guitar work that slaps and moves around instead of playing the same sound over and over again (also I am not a musician so I have no idea what the proper technical terms are for these things).

I stick YouTube Music on a Tool Mix and it's a pretty bad selection with a heap of stuff I really don't enjoy (I dislike growly or screamy voices, sad muddy instruments, or where the "wall of sound" is basically just feedback that drones on and on, etc).

I've tried going with "prog metal" and "prog rock" and "alt metal" as genres but that seems to cover a LOT of variation. No matter how many thumbs down I give there's always the screamy dudes and high pitched guitar whining popping back up.

Are there any bands that are Tool-like I can seed my selection with? The big focus being if there's vocals you can actually hear and understand them, distinct instruments that are actually playing a tune, and drumming that does something more than just maintain a beat in the background.

Some other bands I enjoy that I feel are similar enough are My Sleeping Karma, Kadavar, Witchcraft, Smote, and Riverside.

What have you been watching and reading this week? You don't need to give us a whole essay if you don't want to, but please write something! Feel free to talk about something you saw that was cool, something that was bad, ask for recommendations, or anything else you can think of.

If you want to, feel free to find the thing you're talking about and link to its pages on Anilist, MAL, or any other database you use!

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.

If you were in a long (10–15 years is long to me) relationship but split around that mark, could you share?

Specifically what led to it, how did you know it was the right thing to do, how did you do it, and how did it go? How long did you have to think about ending the relationship before actually doing it? How did the other person react? How did you deliver the news?

And how did you handle the aftermath, both emotionally but also materially (splitting all your things, deciding who keeps what trinkets, finding separate accommodations, etc)?

I’ve been going through rough times for quite a while and I think I might have had enough… I’d like to learn from others to better understand where I’m standing.

Edit: this is not an abusive relationship, nobody is in danger from the other person, and there are no children involved. Just the feeling that it’s not working out anymore, that’s it’s become harder and harder over the last 4 years, that partner can’t accept my shortcomings while expecting me to accept theirs, and very poor decisions that led us down a path we’re having a hard time recovering from (materially and emotionally). Like something broke that can never be put back together.

Also, we’re not married and are renting. We file taxes separately and as far as the law is concerned common law requires some paperwork which we never did. So if we split we just walk away with what each has, we “only” have to figure out how to divide the stuff we owned together (appliances and that kind of stuff)

AI has to be among the largest and most devisive things in the world right now. What's more, I suspect that tension will continue to grow in the time to come. It's unavoidable that we'll see that same tension reflected here in our small corner of the internet.

So I think maybe we could take stock of where we believe the boundary of AI capability lies. In the spirit of bridge building, I also encourage that you try to think about the answer from the "other side" point of view as well.

If you're a "sceptic", what do you think AI can still be good for, and what sort of changes to its current paradigm (technical, legal, social, etc.) would allow you to entertain its use?

If you're a "believer", where do you think AI would likely still fall short (even accounting for future improvement), and where the news cycles are likely overestimating its capability?

Edit: "capability" includes potential impact as well (like whether it could actually put a significant portion of human out of jobs, etc).

Tildes is a very serious site, where we discuss very serious matters like jacob geller, kidneys and firefox. Tags culled from the highest voted topics from the last seven days, if anyone was befuddled.

But one of my favourite tags happens to be offbeat! Taking its original inspiration from Sir Nils Olav III, this thread is looking for any far-fetched offbeat stories lurking in the newspapers. It may not deserve its own post, but it deserves a wider audience!

Update us on your progress in TIMASOORCOANOLPRTHYOALSTMO Timasomo so far!

• What did/didn't you get done this week?
• Anything go according to plan?
• Anything go off the rails?
• Any successes or struggles to share?
• Do you need feedback or help on anything?

This is your topic to share anything and everything you want about what you’ve made so far.

Family league was foiled, so couple of us are just looking for randoms to help fill out a Yahoo league. There was a few members active on here during the season last year so figured there might be some interest.

Was originally thinking of solely a Tildes fantasy football league but don't think there's enough people for that lol

Look, I love putting on drifting, moto, and especially rally races in the background, just for the ASMR of it all, beautiful noise while I work especially. But, I have never been able to get into the competitive side, basically actively watching or thinking about it. Is there any hope? I want to enjoy actively taking part in this, but haven't found an “in” into this, to really get it, and I've tried for years.

Edit: should be noted that I am not exactly competitive, I enjoy watching and listening to golf, and that's about it for me on sports in general.

As in, you think it’s still worth watching even if someone has never seen (and potentially never will see) any other episode from the show.

It’s good enough that you think it can stand entirely on its own.

Tell us what it is and why you think it meets the mark.

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?

I'm finally moving out of my student flat and into an apartment with an actual proper living room. Most things are starting to get sorted, but we have no idea about TVs. Neither of us has owned one before, and our parents' ones were obtained before the advent of smart TVs, so this is completely unfamiliar territory to us. I'm basically asking for some recommendations for things to look at, not necessarily specific models but just... what brands to avoid, what featured to look out for, that sort of thing. Here are some things we want:

1. No ads in the menus or as screensavers.
2. The TV should work as an actual TV, access to channels is included in our internet subscription. That comes with some sort of box, but we don't have it yet so no idea how that actually connects.
3. Able to plug in consoles, hopefully that's a non-issue but want it noted.
4. We don't really use streaming services all that much, but we do use YouTube and Spotify, and both of those I'd like to be able to use on the TV. I pay for premium on both of those and that better work ad free on the TV too. Apart from that the only other streaming service I pay for is Dropout, and it would be nice to be able to access that somehow as well but I'm not sure how that would work (browser??)
5. I have a lot of downloaded and manually sorted media. Movies, series, a lot of anime especially. I would like to be able to access these on the TV. At the moment this lives in a dropbox and gets watched from my laptop, but that's not a good solution (I'm constantly afraid they will eventually just nuke my account, plus it's kinda expensive). I believe what I need is a simple NAS system? Advice on that specifically might be a separate topic but for the time being, I (a) want to be able to stream stuff from my laptop to the TV, ideally without a cable, and (b) it should be future-proof for when I get a NAS.

What to look out for? Can we just grab any TV we like the look of or are we limited to a handful of options?

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?

I frame this in the affirmative because we would not be here if we did not agree. I have only been engaging actively with Lobsters and Tildes recently but find it more enjoyable than Lemmy, Piefed, Mastodon, etc.. Why is that? I believe the fediverse is a cringe circle-jerk of Linux and echo-chamber liberal-not-leftists. Lobsters has the same tech-leaning of the fediverse but it is much more interesting and technical. What then makes Tildes more interesting? Quality or lack of fediverse cringe?

Curious what you all think?

Since getting into Reddit since 2014 or so, that is been my main source of forum activity. Since Reddit proved to not be a good site, I have tried to find alternatives.

Edit: I think Tildes best feature I have recently enjoyed is that the feed is based on activity which can include super old posts that have a new discussion. I like that this allows me to see what is being discussed now while also limiting discussions to one post. This is much nicer than having to search through tons of threads of the same topic.