About 2 weeks ago I learned how to make yoyo strings and have been hooked ever since. I recently built a rig which allows me to make more advanced strings, like fade effects, and I have been loving it!

available at bigyoyoart

Just curious lol.

It’s a refreshing trick for the weekend!

Thought this flowed nice

Started college so I haven’t had much time to yoyo :(

Please I just need one episode. That’s it. Can you remember one that was like, woah, I’ll never forget this?

I’m trying to trick myself into going to the gym by picking a podcast I only listen while I’m there. I mostly listen to left wing politics adjacent podcasts (a bit fruity being my current favorite), but for this I need something that’s gripping in a different way - like a treat.

I just finished Love Trapped and am looking for something new to start. It doesn’t have to be a similar topic, just has to be a serialized story where I’m so excited to know what happens next that I’ll go to the gym just to listen to it. I prefer person-centric stories, compelling characters, and good journalism.

EXCLUSIVE: In a significant threat to ad-funded shows, Spotify is testing a new feature in its app that will let users skip the ads in podcasts.

Full article here.

Hello! Can anyone recommend podcasts that will help me power through the more mundane aspects of my day?

I’m a SAHM of 3 and news podcasts, music, audiobooks, and youtube videos are just not doing it for me anymore.

I’m looking for something I can get lost in while doing laundry, dishes, packing lunches, etc.

I like true crime, horror, mystery, maybe some sci-fi, or any genre you think is really worth a listen. ​

Thank you so much for your time and recommendations.

I drive a lot for work and I enjoy listening to deep dive type podcast. Over the past few months I’ve seem to run out of podcasts to listen to and every time I get on here to look I see the same ones being suggested. I’ll put a list of shows I’ve listened to and if you have a recommendation please comment. Seems like there are no more good podcast out there. I don’t really enjoy many BBC podcast just find them very dull and kind of boring. (Just my opinion), but if you have one that you think I may like then I’ll give it a shot. Also I’ve listened to almost of of the Dateline, ABC 20 20, Dateline Originals.

Here’s my list
Murder in Alliance\*
Murder in Oregon
Murder in Apt. 12
Up and Vanished\*
Culpable (all seasons)
Down the hill
Cold\*
In your own backyard\*
Freeze Frame\*
Cousins by blood\*
Blink\*
Undetermined
Accused
Murder in the moonlight
The Piketon Massacre
The Tylenol Murders
Live and Die in La all seasons
Counter Clock all seasons\*
The Bakersfield 3\*
Burden of guilt all …

I am enjoying investigative style true crime podcasts but I’d like to switch it up from murder/miscarriage of justice type stuff. I listened to the Kill List last year and really enjoyed it.

I’m talking about something that is very shocking and honestly a bit scary. It can be from the genre of horror, sci-fi, thriller, fantasy, or action. It can be something that made you feel like this was a bit too much.

This is a slightly strange request, but I’m trying to figure out why I have such a hard time connecting with female protagonists in prose fiction even though I’m a woman and I love plenty of female characters in manga, webtoons and light novels.
I don’t think my problem is female protagonists themselves. I think I’m tired of stories where being a woman becomes the organizing principle of the character’s entire existence.
Even in bizarre/speculative/literary fiction, I keep running into stories where the surrealism eventually becomes a metaphor for patriarchy, female bodily autonomy, the male gaze, domestic oppression, etc. Or the heroine’s arc revolves around proving herself against men, escaping men, being underestimated by men, defeating men, showing that women can do X too.
I’m just craving female protagonists who are given the same freedom male protagonists often get to be bizarre, pathetic, selfish, obsessive, funny, metaphysical, monstrous, foolish, theatrical, morally strange, …

I’m trying to articulate a very specific reading experience, and I’m struggling to name it. So I’m hoping this makes sense.

Books that have given me this feeling:
The Calamity Club & The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Unsheltered by Barbara Kingsolver
The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield
The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Under the Same Stars by Libba Bray

What I’m looking for:

1)A book I can completely fall into

These are often longer books (I don’t mind a doorstop), but the big thing is total immersion where you can’t stop reading/listening with:

-strong sense of place. I want to picture the setting so clearly that I’m still thinking about it later on

-Characters that feel so real and even when they make messy or frustrating choices, they feel fully developed and alive.

2) I can’t stop reading, but not in a thriller way
I read a lot of thrillers and romance, and this is almost the counterweight to both:

Thrillers are fast, immediate, focused on what’s happening RIGHT NOW …

It’s a trope across all storytelling media that I actually don’t hate at all when done well (Last of Us and Dungeon Crawler Carl for example!) but I feel like it’s everywhere. So I’m mostly curious, are there any books that flip the trope on its head?

Whatever your interpretation of “opposite” might be. Could be a simple gender swap, or maybe a young person guiding an older person, or the old guy is the quippy funny one and the little girl is the one who’s seen too much shit and has their walls up. The big dangerous journey and one character healing emotionally/spiritually one way or another seem like an essential part of the trope, sometimes with a smack of “chosen one” in there. Editing to add: please don’t take “opposite” too literally, it was just the simplest word I could fit in the post title to get to the point. I mostly want to see some more unique interpretations of the trope.

Open to any genre but I gravitate toward sci-fi/fantasy and apocalyptic stories.

Could be any, I want something thats makes me wow damn how can a human brain think like this its so witty and humorous and idk just awsome you know
help me find few books cause i feel my brains been dead i want something really stimulating

Any genre works I am open to any it just has to be one book which really made yall go damnnn

suggest me smth that is a literary masterpiece, doesn’t matter if it’s considered by everyone or just you. no specific genre, give me emotionally heavy, give me fun light reading, give me romance, thriller, philosophical and every other genre. i just wanna read a book that’s simply beautiful.

some books that fit the type (I can’t remember all it’s like 5 am rn im too sleepy to remember all the names lol):

sweet bean paste

as long as the lemon trees grow

a prayer for owen meany

a little life

the kite runner

circe

the song of achilles

before the coffee gets cold

orbiting jupiter

yes ik most of them are like emotionally heavy but i mean they don’t all have to depressing lmao.

i’m autistic so i find comfort in games i can get familiar with and spend hundreds if not thousands of hours playing.

games i’ve enjoyed…

Death Stranding 1&2
Balatro
PowerWash Simulator
Overwatch but i get really frustrated with toxic teammates and the lucky dip of matchmaking.

i’m on PS5. thanks :)

UPDATE… Thanks everyone who suggested games. i’ve decided to go with Hades and i’ve added a few to my wishlist to purchase when they’re on sale.

I’ve been getting into Helldivers 2 recently, gathered about 65 hours in it over the span of about less than 20 days (holy chud I know) and I love how the game lets you know that you’re just another soldier, and that the Helldivers are “expendable” to super earth.

Another game that I feel captures this quite a bit is Battlefield 1 (also I think I should mention, I heavily prefer war games centred around the World Wars, or have WW-esque themes)

Any suggestions you guys have?

P.S: Games on PlayStation are heavily preferred too, I do have a PC, but it doesn’t run perfectly :/

Not necessarily the newest or most popular game.

What’s that one game where you tell yourself “I’ll play for 30 minutes” and suddenly it’s 3 AM?

I’m looking for a game where exploring the world is actually rewarding. Not just collecting 500 identical items on a map, but places that make you stop and think “wait, what’s over there?” Hidden areas, weird locations, secrets, environmental storytelling, anything like that.

Hi all love the idea, dungeon diving, getting better gear and upgrading, upgrading your place or restoring town, I find sandbox progression loops to be addicting but I find farming and cleaning very boring. I tried fields of mistria which I liked more but just do not really click with farming. I honestly love being able to upgrade my base/ town/ gear as well. Is there any games like these 2 with less farming?

My wife and I want to find a game that we can play together. The problem is, our tastes are vastly different. Everything one of us has found, the other isnt interested in.

She likes cozy games. Hello Kitty Island Adv, Fields of Misteria, Stardew Valley, Moonlight Peaks, ect

I prefer rpg, action, survivals, or strategy games. Palworld, [any Bethesda game here], Baulders Gate, the occasional shooter, ect

Idk what else to add. Hopefully all you good people have some great suggestions for us. Thank you

Update/ Holy heck you guys came through!! Im going to send this to my wife for her to look at. We started our week and a half long stay-cation today. You guys rock :)

Update #2/ Yall keep coming with them. My wife is actually interested in some of these! Good vibes to all

Hey everyone,

A little while ago I shared a Shortcut that automatically logged my expenses from bank text messages.

A lot of the comments were basically saying the same thing:

“I’m waiting for Shortcuts to work with notifications.”

Previous post:
https://www.reddit.com/r/shortcuts/comments/1uozzlj/i_saw_shortcuts_could_run_automatically_when_a/

Looks like that wait is finally over.

In the latest iOS 27 developer beta5, Shortcuts can now run when a notification arrives.

That means if your banking app sends a notification after you pay with your card, you can use that notification to log the expense automatically.

No more relying on SMS.

I updated my shortcut to use the new trigger, and it’s been working really well so far.

Setup (iOS 27 Beta)

1. Add the shortcut below.
2. In the Shortcuts app, press and hold the shortcut and tap Edit.
3. Tap Automation at the top.
4. Choose Notification.
5. Select your banking app.
6. Turn on Run Immediately.

Done.

Shortcut …

For iMessage, I currently use two Keyflow toolbars: one for shortcuts and another for frequently used emojis.

My first toolbar includes an OpenAI shortcut that takes the text I have typed and cleans up the spelling, grammar, and punctuation before I send it.

I also have an Evernote action. For example, someone might text me something I want to remember later, or send me an idea that I need to process when I have more time. I can quickly save that information to a specific Evernote folder without leaving the conversation.

Another button lets me create a reminder directly in the Reminders app.

Inside Reminders, I use two additional toolbars. The first includes actions for inserting formatted text, saving information to Evernote, creating different types of reminders, and accessing other useful options.

The second toolbar is focused on formatting and construction-related inputs. For example, instead of manually typing parentheses around a quantity like (6), I can simply type 6, tap …

Every iPhone user has done this. You copy an address someone sent you. On the way to the maps app a friend sends a joke, you copy that to forward it, and the address is just… gone.

Back to scrolling up through the thread to find it again.

Or the worse one: you’re pulling five things out of a doc (a name, a code, an email, a link, a number) and you have to go back and forth five separate times, because iOS only ever remembers the last thing you copied.

That ”only the last one” thing drove me nuts, so I spent way too long in Shortcuts building a fix. 😅

Imagine getting a superpower: everything you copy on any device is still available on your iPhone, iPad and even Mac together.

What it does

👆 Double Back Tap saves whatever is on your clipboard right now.

🤫 It does NOT open any app. No flash, no bounce out of what you were doing. You stay in the conversation.

📝 Text and screenshots both. Copy a paragraph, copy a screenshot, same double tap.

⌨️ To paste an old …

the app i use to block tiktok and all of the other distriscting ones is opal and thr shortcut works pretty great

I built a small open-source project called NotificationIsland that lets you trigger custom Live Activities from the Shortcuts app.

You can enter your own title and message, choose an app icon, and have it appear on the Dynamic Island.

Currently supported icons include:

🟢 LINE
🟣 Instagram
📧 Gmail
💬 Messages
🪩 Retro
🌱 Pikmin Bloom
🦉 Duolingo
📈 Investment Master
🏦 Taishin Bank
💚 StressWatch

The notification automatically disappears after 5 seconds.

Example workflow:

Shortcut → Enter Text → NotificationIsland → Dynamic Island

The project is open source:

GitHub: https://github.com/panda-island/NotificationIsland

Shortcuts: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/022b6230e2f149198026cb6d905cfaa1

Setup:

1. Click the below link and create an account. It should open to the API page. You’ll need these keys later.

sightengine api dashboard

1. Import the below shortcut. You’ll need to paste in your api info in the locations specified in the screenshot above.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/e98c34178e8b4f9689430ff7296b61f7

1. That’s it. You can activate the shortcut by saying “hey Siri, check AI”

The shortcut works by taking a screenshot of the screen, sending it to the api, and returning the % probability that the image/frame is AI. The screenshot is not saved.

I’ve found that it works reliably and is pretty accurate. Works with images and videos.
You get 500 checks/day and 2500/month on the free plan of sightengine, so it’s more than enough.