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    1. What are your favorite home remedies or comforts when you're sick?

      Despite vaccination, it seems I got the 'flu (not terrible so far). I have my own non-prescription comforts and remedies for the sore throat, cough, upset stomach, fever, aches, and so on: Ginger,...

      Despite vaccination, it seems I got the 'flu (not terrible so far).

      I have my own non-prescription comforts and remedies for the sore throat, cough, upset stomach, fever, aches, and so on:

      • Ginger, lemon, and honey tea
      • Ricola cough drops, zinc lozenges
      • PeptoBismol or TheraFlu (if I want to be knocked out)
      • Scorching hot shower with eucalyptus or lavender oil
      • Chicken broth with rice and thyme
      • Electric heated mattress pad cranked up to high

      There's little peer-reviewed evidence that any of these make a difference in the course of illness. There's marginal data on the effectiveness of ginger as an antinausea remedy, zinc as an immune booster in people who aren't deficient, and eucalyptus, lavender, and thyme oil components as antiseptics/antibiotics/topical anesthetics/cough suppressants. I'll be the first to concede that I practice all these remedies to give me the illusion of control of suffering, and comforting self-care.

      I'm curious as to what home remedies others have tried, why, and how effective or comforting you think they've been.

      Has a medical professional ever recommended a non-prescription remedy (not counting Tylenol/acetaminophen) or activity to you for a viral or bacterial infection, or told you to stop a home remedy? Did they give a reason why?

      Is there a family, folklore, or alternative medicine tradition that you're following?

      Does your home remedy make you feel like you're more comfortable and/or in greater control of your health?

      14 votes
    2. Recommendations needed: Favorite “comfort” movies

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      Hi Everyone,

      I am looking for recommendations of your favorite “comfort” movies. Movies, I don’t have to take too seriously and can be watched over and over and can fall asleep to.

      As an example a few of mine would be:

      MoneyBall
      Jesse Stone movies
      Dave
      Avengers Infinity War and Endgame
      Star Trek Generations
      Major League
      Clear and Present Danger
      Ghostbusters Afterlife
      Batman Begins
      Batman Returns
      Grinch animated movie
      Indiana jones dial of destiny
      Rocky balboa
      Moonfall
      Goldeneye
      X-men 1 & 2, Days of Futures Past
      Rainmaker
      Runaway Jury

      40 votes
    3. CGA-2026-01 🕹️⛵🛡️ REMOVE CARTRIDGE ⏏️ The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      Welcome back, Heroes of Wind! (For the sake of full disclosure I myself am not yet a Hero of Wind, but should be within an hour or so...)

      Hopefully everyone enjoyed their second consecutive month on the high seas as much as I did - I'd say at this point, we can basically consider ourselves a pirate club!

      I had initially planned to actually plan something to write about in this post, but due to taking on way too many things this month I unfortunately haven't really had a chance to do any research beyond my own (almost) completion of the game. Hopefully any Wind Waker veterans in here will be able to help us out with any important insight that I am certainly overlooking!

      For me, the most notable thing about The Wind Waker is how strongly it influenced the most recent two Zelda games. I'd say it seems to be the game that contributed the most to the modern Zelda formula. The freedom it offers you in being able to simply choose a direction and start exploring is a feature that is more or less missing from most 3D Zelda games. Also, the sheer scale of the world is really only comparable to BOTW and Tears. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the Koroks - I had no idea that was a Wind Waker thing!

      While I had heard about it in passing, actually seeing the underwater kingdom in this game was a strangely nostalgic experience. The way they tied in the old angular Link statue was very cool; I imagine it is safe to assume that an extremely long time passed between Ocarina of Time and The Wind Waker to allow for such evolutionary toon-ification.

      I wish I had had more time to finish exploring more thoroughly and compile a list of secrets. I just finished exploring the map today, and know there are still plenty of things that I have yet to see. So instead of rushing through the last dungeon, I decided to post this for now, then come back to share more thoughts in the comments later.

      Next month, join us as u/Kawa guides us on a trip to the lagoon... the Racing Lagoon!

      Month Game Host
      February 2026 Racing Lagoon u/Kawa
      March 2026 Kaeru no Tame ni Kane wa Naru
      (The Frog for Whom the Bell Tolls)
      u/J-Chiptunator

      Until next time, you filthy bilge rats!

      2 votes
    4. Let's talk orchestrated objective reduction!

      My special interest of late has been something called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reduction the TL;DR is: One of, if not the, most missing piece of quantum mechanics is...

      My special interest of late has been something called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reduction the TL;DR is:

      1. One of, if not the, most missing piece of quantum mechanics is answering the question "what is measurement"? You've probably heard of things like the double slit experiment which lead to weird things like quantum erasure where one can seemingly cause a photon to retroactively determine which path to take. Spooky stuff! However, these experiments all follow the basic idea of "when something is entangled, it follows probabilistic rules defined by the schrodinger equation, then a 'measurement' happens, and the entanglement 'collapses' and only a single, 'real' value is well defined"
      2. Roger Penrose, a nobel prize winning physicist, has, since the 1980s been arguing that because entanglement implies that a particle exists in two places at once prior to measure that this places gravitational pressure on the fabric of spacetime in two places at once and that measurement is a gravitational event where spacetime "heals" itself by collapsing the wave form, and making it so the particle is finally only in one place.
        Penrose further expanded this, to enormous controversy, that consciousess itself is a measurement event. He wrote a book, "The Emperor's New Mind" then a follow-up "Shadows of the Mind", neither of which I've read, but have had summarized to further develop these arguments.
      3. This was, for lack of a better term, a crackpot theory. There wasn't anything testable or falsifiable so it was brushed aside. Crucially, to the point it gets its own paragraph,
        The overwhelming opinion of the physics community, to this day, believes that quantum coherence is not possible in "wet, warm, noisy" environments like the brain.
        It is, to this day, believed that, the quantum world is a thing that happens only at extremely small scales, and that's why quantum computers all start with the assumption of cooling the material to near absolute zero with as few additional perturbations as possible.
      4. However, there were 2 findings I find extremely motivating to combat this assertion. First, leaves. Leaves are quantum objects and photosynthesis is too efficient to be explained by classical mechanics alone: https://berkeleysciencereview.com/article/2021/11/30/plants-do-the-wave/ Second, birds. Birds that use the magnetosphere for orientation do so by becoming quantumly coherent with the ions in the magnetophere using a protein in their eyes so they literally see the earth's magnetic field using the blue cones of their eyes https://mitadmissions.org/blogs/entry/birds-are-real-and-so-is-quantum-physics/
      5. Enter Stuart Hameroff. Hameroff was a working anesthesiology for some 20 odd years. He read The Emperor's New Mind and reached out to Penrose. He, of course, was very intimately aware of the deep biological processes that make the different between a conscious, aware, thinking human being, and a piece of meat that can be safely operated on. He believed that https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microtubule structures in the neurons were responsible for consciousness.
        After further research, they both began to believe that these microtubule structures in human neurons were capable of what others believed were impossible.
        Quantum coherence in a wet, warm, noisy environment.
      6. This was still crackpottery until quite literally (IMO) last year. A group of biological researchers showed experimentally that the exact networks of tryptophan microtubule structures in neurons do exhibit super radiance (the same kind of quantum coherence leaves show) https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.jpcb.3c07936

      To me, this is the most exciting piece of science I think I've seen in my life. The implication is that human (and other) consciousnesses are literally a byproduct of our ability to maintain and calculate quantum states in a wet, warm, noisy environment. It feels like a genuine push for us to finally move past the age of information, past the age of computation, and into the age of consciousness.

      Another aspect of this is I really, deeply, believe that the substrate necessary for AGI is either necessarily biological, or, at the very least, can only be done efficiently in a biological substrate. Notably, a human brain takes 20 watts to exhibit generalized intelligence. No nuclear reactors running data centers, just a Twix bar. This last bit I honestly leave mostly as a point of discussion, because there's an enormous amount of interesting implications and avenues thereof.

      What y'all Tildeans make of this? Anyone else been thinking about this kind of stuff?

      19 votes
    5. Midweek Movie Free Talk

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

      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.

      3 votes
    6. Tildes Minecraft Weekly

      Server host: tildes.nore.gg (Running Java 1.21.11) Verification site: https://tildes.nore.gg BlueMap: https://tildes.nore.gg/map/ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TildesMC Plugins and Data Packs...

      Server host: tildes.nore.gg (Running Java 1.21.11)
      Verification site: https://tildes.nore.gg
      BlueMap: https://tildes.nore.gg/map/
      Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/TildesMC

      Plugins and Data Packs Data Packs:
      • Terralith - Overworld terrain upgrade
      • Nullscape - End terrain upgrade
      • Age Lock [Vanilla Tweaks]
      • Armor Statues [Vanilla Tweaks]
      • Bat Membranes [Vanilla Tweaks]
      • Cauldron Concrete [Vanilla Tweaks]
      • Cauldron Mud [Vanilla Tweaks]
      • Custom Nether Portals [Vanilla Tweaks]
      • Husks Drop Sand [Vanilla Tweaks]
      • Mini Blocks [Vanilla Tweaks]
      • More Mob Heads [Vanilla Tweaks]
      • Player Head Drops [Vanilla Tweaks]
      • Silence Mobs [Vanilla Tweaks]
      • Wandering Trades [Vanilla Tweaks]

      Plugins:

      • BlueMap - Provides a live 3D rendering of the game world
      • Clickable Links - Makes http URLs in chat clickable (only for registered players)
      • CoreProtect - Records all block/container/mob changes (Anyone can look up changes with /co inspect)
      • DebugStick - Gives the ability to craft debug sticks in survival
      • DistantHorizons - Provides distant LOD map data to players running the client mod
      • EasyArmorStands - GUI for editing armor stands
      • Hexnicks - Enables Tildes usernames to be displayed
      • hsrails - Allows for 4x speed rail travel
      • LuckPerms - Locks down unregistered users
      • Otherside - Fix for mob farms involving Nether portals
      • Rapid Leaf Decay - Increases the speed of leaf decay by 10x
      • WorldEdit - Used for occasional admin stuff
      • WorldGuard - Prevents unregistered users from changing anything in the world

      The server operates on a soft whitelist. Anyone can log in and walk around, but you need a Tildes account to gain build access.


      We recommend you install our mod web-chat so that you can chat while in your web browser. It turns the server into an old-school chat room.

      25 votes
    7. What creative projects have you been working on?

      This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on. Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just...

      This topic is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for users to discuss creative projects they have been working on.

      Projects can be personal, professional, physical, digital, or even just ideas.

      If you have any creative projects that you have been working on or want to eventually work on, this is a place for discussing those.

      12 votes
    8. What have you been listening to this week?

      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...

      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.

      6 votes
    9. Looking for a simple lists app

      I've been using Google Keep (check boxes mode) for my work and personal to-do lists for a while now, and it's almost perfect for my use case. I love the simplicity and lack of options gumming up...

      I've been using Google Keep (check boxes mode) for my work and personal to-do lists for a while now, and it's almost perfect for my use case. I love the simplicity and lack of options gumming up my process, and specifically I like the UI of having nested subtasks that all move with their head task when you reorder the top level tasks. That is to say, when you drag a headline task, all of its subtasks "roll up" inside it and "unfurl" when you drop the task into its new location. The fact that it syncs across devices is also really great, but not necessarily a deal breaker.

      What is becoming a deal breaker is that you can only have 2 levels: top level or nested. I want more nesting levels, but with the simple touch-and-drag UI to which I've become accustomed.

      Have any of you heard of/used an app such as I've described? I have issues using bigger, more fleshed-out apps because all the features distract my goblin brain, and the friction of having to use various touch menus or the keyboard on my phone to adjust indent levels keeps me from getting crap done.

      Thanks in advance!

      Edit: for now, I have settled on Workflowy. It seems to offer the most similar functionality with an acceptable number of interactions to do the things I want to do. Thank you to everyone who offered their experience!

      20 votes
    10. Tips on getting an op-ed published?

      My wife and I are having a baby just 1.5 months from now (hooray!). And our insurance provider, Anthem Blue Cross, is cutting coverage to our local hospital network and maternity services in 10...

      My wife and I are having a baby just 1.5 months from now (hooray!). And our insurance provider, Anthem Blue Cross, is cutting coverage to our local hospital network and maternity services in 10 days (boooo!). The entire process of finding out about this (via the news, not our insurance or the hospital) and getting continued coverage has been an absolute nightmare. We jumped the hoops, sent in all the required paperwork, and even got the billing department at the hospital involved. We're still only covered if we happen to be lucky enough that the doctor who is named on the continued coverage agreement happens to be on call at the time of delivery, otherwise it'll be out of pocket to the tune of $10,000 of dollars. At this point it feels like we're betting it all on red.

      The response to the United Healthcare shooting illustrated just how frustrated people of the US are in their healthcare system and I'd like to do my part to continue to keep that topic front of mind in the American psyche. I've written up a little op-ed on our experience and I was wonder if any Tilderinos have managed to get one published before. Any insight would be very welcome.

      8 votes
    11. What's a culture shock that you experienced?

      Could be from a place you visited or moved to. Could be from a community or group you joined. Whatever it was, there was something new or unfamiliar to you, and you had to wrap your head around...

      Could be from a place you visited or moved to. Could be from a community or group you joined.

      Whatever it was, there was something new or unfamiliar to you, and you had to wrap your head around that something that you weren't used to.

      What was the culture shock, how did you respond to it, and how do you feel about it now?

      45 votes
    12. TV Tuesdays Free Talk

      Warning: this post may contain spoilers

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

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

      3 votes
    13. Does anyone else find CBS News particularly stressful?

      I may be in the minority on Tildes who still watches cable news. My mom is the one who puts it on and I'll usually ignore/forget about it when I'm home alone, but I find it's a good way to keep...

      I may be in the minority on Tildes who still watches cable news. My mom is the one who puts it on and I'll usually ignore/forget about it when I'm home alone, but I find it's a good way to keep track of major headlines. Also, our usual choice of national news, ABC with David Muir, tends to end every broadcast with some feel-good story which is just... really appreciated in these times. (Though tonight they played a soundbite of Martin Luther King Jr.'s final Sunday sermon, and the choice of that particular soundbite feels very pointed.)

      A couple months ago YoutubeTV and Disney got into a contract disagreement though, so ABC was removed from the lineup for a bit. For a while we watched CBS News, and... Something about it just genuinely stressed me out. Of course the news is very stressful lately, but usually I can deal with it. At worst, I leave the room for certain stories that make me particularly angry.

      Something about CBS just left me really agitated and stressed though. I can't say what it was exactly, maybe the delivery, or a heavy focus on the worst parts of US politics? All I know is every night I was getting increasingly worked up, the way I only ever did with the most absolutely infuriating news stories, until we switched to NBC until ABC returned to air.

      This came to mind again after my mom put on CBS last night since ABC was starting late due to some sports program. It agitated me until I just snapped.

      So my question: does anyone else find CBS particularly stressful compared to other cable news? If so, does anyone have any ideas on why that is? And are there any regular watchers who've noticed a shift in tone? I never really watched CBS before, but I'm wondering if maybe it's somehow tied to Bari Weiss's influence given the stuff with 60 Minutes.

      22 votes
    14. I recently finished the Cradle series by Will Wight and have post series depression. What shall I read next?

      I cannot recall the last time I devoured a series so quickly. I loved Cradle. The characters were so colourful and endearing, the plot was permanently escalating at a pace the resonated perfectly...

      I cannot recall the last time I devoured a series so quickly. I loved Cradle. The characters were so colourful and endearing, the plot was permanently escalating at a pace the resonated perfectly with me, and honestly, I found the writing style to be spot on.

      And now I've left feeling rather empty... (perhaps rather on point!).

      Others who have enjoyed this series, what else did you love?

      To give a sample of books I've enjoyed recently: Children of Time, Stormlight Archive, Kingkiller Chonicles, Dungeon Crawler Carl, Red Rising.

      22 votes
    15. Any beautiful and/or interesting magazines you like?

      I always loved magazines. Like, real paper magazines. Lately I realized that I can find digital versions or scans somewhat easily and it sparked a new obsession. I'm weird, I know. But there are...

      I always loved magazines. Like, real paper magazines. Lately I realized that I can find digital versions or scans somewhat easily and it sparked a new obsession. I'm weird, I know. But there are so many beautifully designed magazines, such as the Japanese travel-related Transit or the men's lifestyle Brutus. Even their websites are beautiful and worth visiting. There's also this independent Brazilian retro gaming magazine called Jogo Véio that is almost like a love letter to the classic video game magazines.

      I think I've been craving creativity lately, in a World of AI slop and "content" creators. So any magazines you like? What do you like about them?

      21 votes
    16. I am kinda curious about the demographics of Tildes

      not sure if this is the appropriate sub group for this question or if its even allowed but figured I'd try. I am curious the demographics of tildes users. You can be as specific as you feel...

      not sure if this is the appropriate sub group for this question or if its even allowed but figured I'd try.

      I am curious the demographics of tildes users. You can be as specific as you feel comfortable.

      I am in a dude in my 30s in Canada who works in software development.

      48 votes