Field testing my printed yoyo (bearing design).

At 70 grams, it’s heavier than I like.

Overall, I’m happy with it. Just a bit more tinkering before I can call this one done.

ADD: Holy Donut! Thank you everyone! ❤️❤️❤️

Quite a while back I had a comment on my YouTube video for this trick(one of my favorites) to make a tutorial. I finally got around to making it, so this will, I hope, help anybody who wanted to learn these elements. Here is the link to the YT upload too in case you want to watch in 60FPS. https://youtu.be/aGkco8an93o?si=4xD76OjhLY6Dk9iI

Looking for new things to listen to, most of my current favorites are beginning to be sell outs and are starting to feed misinformation and propaganda.

What podcasts do you listen to to fall asleep? Here are some suggestions. The Sleepy Bookshelf, The Sleepy Bookshelf: Just Jane, Sleep With Me, Phoebe Reads a Mystery, Drop your suggestions in the comments and let’s sleep soundly .

So, my mom and I are driving 4 hours to my dad’s final resting place, then 4 hours back. My mom is a very kind woman, but she is completely inundated with her political beliefs and when there’s not an immediate topic of discussion in front of her, she just wants to talk at you about what she’s read or heard. And I do mean AT you. Politics or no, she’s not the best conversationalist.

I’d like to enjoy listening to something lighthearted and entertaining with her and avoid being talked at the whole time.

Other than Gilmore Guys, none of the podcasts I listen to would be her cup of tea. I thought of How to do Everything and Wait, Wait Don’t Tell Me, but would love other options.

I feel like hour long episodes would be good but I’m open to whatever.

ETA: thank you all so much! I’ve got a playlist of great options for any mood or interest of hers.

I read an article shared on r/longreads by the Atlantic: “The dark side of mindfulness” which talks about people experiencing psychosis that is believed to be brought on by meditation. Lots of discourse around it and obviously a thread discussing it on the sub. In this thread I was recommended a podcast on the topic! Super exited bc I love when something I’d love to hear more about is in podcast form.

POD 1: ASTRAY - “India Syndrome,” a psychosis said to effect Westerners seeking spiritual enlightenment in India, is identified as the cause behind a suicide and a disappearance of two Westerners drawn to India, and led astray there.

THEN

I shared the article in another group and someone else posted ANOTHER podcast on the topic!

POD 2: UNOLD: THE RETREAT Season 1 - “Madison Marriage receives an email from a desperate father named Stephen. Over the past five years, he says, his twin daughters have changed drastically. They were bright and outgoing, with exciting …

I’ve been doing hella Uber Eats lately and I’m getting tired of listening to music the whole time 😭😂
What are y’all’s FAVORITE podcasts?? I literally don’t care what genre. True crime, funny, drama, relationship stuff, random stories, educational, anythingggg. I need something that’s gonna keep me entertained while I’m driving around 😭
Drop your best recommendations pleaseeee 🫶🏽

My brain loves becoming incredibly active the moment I get into bed. Suddenly I’m replaying awkward conversations, thinking about random questions, planning tomorrow, or wondering about things that absolutely do not matter.

I’m looking for podcasts that are interesting, funny, and low-stakes enough to distract me without feeling like I’m supposed to learn something.

Basically, I need someone else’s deeply unimportant thoughts to replace my own.

What podcasts work for you?

Okay so I’ve been reading fantasy and was looking for recs with a female character with a personality (no flat trophy archetypes) that doesn’t hate on/look down upon/eschew things like ribbons or jewelry. The amount of fantasy books where I read and get to the inevitable “she put on trousers and splashed her face with water because she didn’t waste time on beauty because she’s not shallow” section is insane and I’m sick to d-e-a-t-h of it. I’m likewise open to recs where she’s pretty! I’m likewise sick of the “I’m the plain one with the straight brown hair no figure and (insert stunning eye color here)” protagonists. Some examples of books/characters I adore that avoid these archetypes are Cleonia Bellos from Falling Kingdoms, Isi from the Goose Girl, and Evangeline Fox from Once upon a broken heart. (I also love books with a fairytale vibe!!) Tysm!!

Hello!

You all helped me a few months back find books for Shirley, a 95 yo. patron here at my library.

I’m back again with more patron help.

We have an Amish family (mom, dad, and 6 children) who love to come in and read. Today, Mr. said they’ve noticed the shelves are becoming newer books (new director, weeding, and shelving style) and he’s worried about appropriate books for his family.

I assured him that we are keeping the beloved Amish books. They enjoy authors like Thornton Burgess, Zane Grey, and Clive Cussler.

They take offense to Amish fiction, as most of it is centered around Lancaster communities, which are different orders (types) of Amish, and frequently written by english folk (non-Amish perople). It would be akin to us reading an AI book about humans.

Mrs. enjoyed ‘The Help’ by Kathryn Stockett, Susan Mallery, and Linda Lael Miller. She also takes out lots of herb books, too.

Mr. Likes Cussler and Ralph Connor.

The kids ages range …

I have a few thick books coming up on my reading list (700+ pages) and I’d like a few “palate cleansers” to sneak in between them. What are your favourite books under 250 pages? Any genre, not too fussy as long as they’re a damn good read!

I feel like this type of book does not exist but I want it to and I want to read this fall. DCC , ready player one , hitch hikers guide and project Hail Mary are some of my favorite books. I love the humor within it.

I recently had to read East of Eden by Steinbeck for a book club, it was something I would of have never chosen for myself but I am loving it, I’m almost reading it slowly because I don’t want it to end. Are there any suggestions for similar books, classics but easily readable and immersive.

Hello, I’m looking for books where a man and a woman are or become close friends and they never become a couple at the end of the story or at any point in the story have/feel/think of romantic things for each other.

I need something that hooks you instantly and keeps you going for one more turn or run. Hades and Balatro completely ruined my sleep schedule last year because of how fast you jump back in. I play on PC and do not mind the genre as long as the core mechanics feel rewarding without endless cutscenes. What is keeping you up way too late right now?

Hello, I’m looking for an RPG where you start weak but progress through being a world-level threat.

Some great RPGs I’ve already plays (so don’t get recommended again)

• Baldurs Gate 3
• Divinity Original Sins 2
• Tyrany
• PF: Wrath of the Righteous
• Guild Wars 2
• Path of Exile 1 & 2
• Dragon Age: Inquisition
• V Rising
• Witcher 3
• Cyberpunk 2077

You start as literal weak, not just in-theme weak but you literally feel it. Like you try to avoid difficult fights as much as possible.

Middle game you start becoming reliable, so not everything can one-shot you but you still have to be careful of strong enemies.

Mid-late game you’ve become a legend where people talks about your achievements, people recognize you and fear/respect you. Only thing can harm you is world-level threats.

Late game you’ve become the literal world threat itself, can fight head to head with beings you once feared the most. Can scorch the world just with a flick of a finger.

Some extra …

I’m looking for recommendations for games that have the extraction part of extraction shooters, as well as the ability to tinker with your gear between runs. I also would like any recommendations to be single player or PvE. I’m mainly looking for games that branch out into genres other than shooter, but feel free to throw in some shooters if they’re really good or do something really interesting.

So as an example something like Pacific Drive would fit really well. Since that has the extraction element and the tinkering with your car between runs, but instead it’s a driving game. (I’ve also played SPTarkov and Escape from Duckov, so those don’t need to be recommended.)

Edit: Thanks everybody. That was a lot of suggestions, so I couldn’t respond to each one, but I will check all of them out.

And I don’t mean like a difficulty setting which has perma death, I mean a game which has only one difficulty and if you die the game resets. Not rogue-likes which let you carry over progress for better runs but a straight up one run, do or die game; bonus points if the game is an rpg. I want to fear dying in the game, a game where I really have to think hard whether I should make a run for that item between high level mobs or risk losing my character. A game where I would genuinely be spooked if I got jumped by a high level mob, as the fear sinks in that I might lose hours of my progress.

edit: I would prefer it to be not randomly generated, I like intent behind my deaths not an rng roll, I like learning the map I am playing and surprises that the developers intended

I’m looking for games that aren’t

A. AI slop

B. Not just visual novels or slide-show style games

Thanks

we play on PS5 and Switch 2. we’ve played a few PS studios games already (GOW, Horizon, a few action adventure single player games in that realm),

Female protags are a bonus, but not a necessity

Edit: Sorry forgot to mention; She gets nauseous from first person games, so games like Skyrim are unfortunately a no-go.

https://preview.redd.it/tj51xdza44oh1.png?width=455&format=png&auto=webp&s=4b36a5a4bd4f0202eea0a2e6cade250614fcd377

I’m sorry, I haven’t been on Routinehub in literally forever but I saw this email in my inbox today and I’m just appalled. What do you MEAN there’s a subscription that costs 115$ a YEAR? Oh but they’re so generous! They’re offering me a discount because I posted my shortcuts on the site almost exclusively during its infancy! And now the site is ad-riddled, vibe-coded garbage! Thanks so much, guys.

https://preview.redd.it/dcskzzjr44oh1.png?width=640&format=png&auto=webp&s=ba2c56593a496e6b8751c0712afc7282186b54ae

I’m not joking, look at this. The site was not like this when I used it. It used to be much cleaner, faster, and felt less like it was designed as some kind of ponzi scheme to scam me. The owner legitimately refused to put banner ads on the site because of real-time bid tracking, and only did once …

testing out the newish siri ai shortcut generator and it decided the best way to determine the time was to ask the cloud model what time it is? Waiting for next keynote where they brag about how many people are using ai in their shortcuts and it’s just this

my prompt was something along the lines of ‘action button turns on flashlight during the night and voice memo during the day.’

if anyone knows of a way to have shortcuts actually change the action button behavior rather than running a shortcut that chooses between behaviors let me know.

The Shortcuts app makes you build everything in a straight line and if you have a complicated shortcut with menus inside ifs inside repeats, it would become very hard to follow and edit.

I have made a MacOS shortcuts editor where you lay the actions in the shortcut out properly instead. You can see the shape of what you’re building while you build it.

Basically, if you know about n8n, that’s where my inspiration is coming from.

https://preview.redd.it/69dzgi516ynh1.png?width=2560&format=png&auto=webp&s=2ddb61d5b45dc769611e4e02ef76ae44fce94cc5

The app currently covers the most common actions (totally 393 actions as of now). If there are some actions that you would find useful, please let me know, I will try to support them.

Caveat: due to Apple limitation, my app can’t run a shortcut, you need to copy it back to the Shortcuts app to test.

Everything e.g. editing, creating new shortcut is free except pasting back to the Shortcuts app. It’s free …

Note: The shared shortcut and Numbers template are currently in German. The spreadsheet labels, categories and formulas use the German Numbers/iOS terminology.

I built an Apple Pay → Numbers expense tracker using iPhone Shortcuts and Apple Numbers.

Every time I pay with Apple Pay, a personal automation is triggered and the available transaction data is automatically added as a new row to a Numbers spreadsheet.

The tracker currently stores:

* Date and time

* Merchant

* Transaction name

* Amount

* Currency

* Card used

* Transaction information

* Category

* City/location

* Full address

The location is taken from the iPhone’s current location when the automation runs. The shortcut extracts city, street and postal code and combines them into a readable address.

Example with fictional data:

Exampletown | Example Street 12, 12345 Exampletown

All transactions are stored in one continuous table. There is no separate sheet for every month or year. The transaction date is used to …

I’ve been playing around with Shortcuts and ended up making this little expense tracker for myself and my wife. We call is “Galla (cash box) Expenses”

The basic idea is that we keep ₹10,000 cash as our monthly spending money for groceries, bills, ad-hoc expenses, etc. Whenever we spend something, the shortcut asks:
- How much did I spend
- What was it for

It then subtracts the amount from my saved balance and shows me how much is left.

I’m also logging every expense into Apple Notes, so I have a simple record of where the money went. I’m using a separate note for each month.

The balance itself is saved as a text file in iCloud Drive, so the amount doesn’t reset every time I run the Shortcut.

I also made a small second Shortcut to create the new monthly balance file and monthly Notes entry.
Nothing particularly fancy, but I wanted something that was quick, private and didn’t require opening a separate budgeting app every time I bought something.

Sharing a few screenshots in case …

I’ve made a shortcut that populates an album with all the photos taken on today’s date in the last 20 years (while removing the rest).

The idea is that you make an automation to run the shortcut everyday on a certain time. You make sure that it asks to confirm so that the notification can sit in Notification Center and you can run the shortcut at your leisure.

This way you get to go over all of your photos day by day over a year and delete duplicates or other photos you don’t want keep while enjoying the memories of seeing where you’ve been on this date in the last years.

*in order for this to work you must create an album called “On This Day” (you can use a different name but you’ll have to update the shortcut accordingly).

*2 caveats:
1. I am not sure if it’s possible for photos on iOS to not have date metadata, but if it is then they won’t ever show in the album.
2. I couldn’t manage to get the shortcut to open the specific “on this day” album so it just opens the photos app and …