Really tuff one for me. Definitely sloppy.

I know its nothing fancy or crazy, but I wanted to challenge myself to not use a video or anything to figure some simple little thing.

I took like a good couple weeks worth of a break because I lost motivation, it was reignited because I had to purchase a new yoyo

Almost took my Leaf to the face today.

First time coming back to this trick since I learned it a few months ago, so close to getting it fluid. I keep getting excited when I hit the flow and it makes me raise my arms 😅

The New York Times writer M. Gessen is widely known for their award-winning writing about totalitarianism, terrorism and the erosion of human rights. Now, M. is examining a more personal target: their least favorite cousin, Allen. For decades, they saw Allen as a fool, a pompous ‘international businessman’ who bragged about shady deals. But then Allen is arrested for trying to put a hit out on his ex-wife, and M. cannot wrap their head around the news. He’s just an idiot, right? Not a would-be murderer?

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-idiot/id1884735227

I work for myself and between driving and working solo I go through a lot of audio content. I’ve been crushing audiobooks lately after feeling uninspired with podcasts, and now the pendulum is shifting again.

Comedy is so therapeutic, love the laffs, lmk what makes ya laff out there.

Also I’m always down for a captivating binge series, of pretty much any kind, if you’ve found it that interesting!

Thanks!!

What’s your favorite podcast channel and why do you like it?

Looking for recs!

Hi all!

I’ve seen a few Redditors mention the ‘The Walkers: The Real Salt Path’ which Chloe Hadjimatheou’s podcast about the scandal surrounding the author Raynor Winn and how true her memoir is. As with most of her podcasts, it’s very insightful, well researched and wide ranging.

BBC Sounds have just released their own podcast about the Salt Path Scandal, called Secrets of the Salt Path. I’ve listened to one episode and it doesn’t really cover much new ground and feels a lot less substantial than The Walkers. Has anyone listened to more episodes? Does it offer anything new? And just out of interest, why would the BBC want to create something that is essentially a rehash of something that’s already out there and relies a lot on Chloe Hadjimatheou’s research without her direct involvement in the podcast?

Edit to fix a typo on Raynor’s name!

I used to like The Prosecutors in spite of their political leanings because I thought they fit those standards. But in a recent podcast, they used Grok to fact check something and that was my sign that they can’t be trusted to use reliable sources. Any suggestions?

I listen to a lot. Podcasts mostly, some books. I genuinely love it.

But recently I started noticing that nothing sticks. I finish something, find it interesting in the moment, and then it’s just gone. On to the next one.

I’ve tried taking notes, highlighting books, building Notion systems. I never go back to any of it. It just sits there.

The only thing that actually helped was talking about it out loud. Not even with anyone specific, just saying it. Something about hearing yourself speak forces you to question the ideas, poke at them, start forming an actual take. Writing never did that for me.

Does anyone else have this problem? How do you actually sit with something you just listened to?

Mine are most of the books by Freida McFadden. Every time I finish one I think, “that was so dumb, I’m never reading her again,” and yet I keep doing so when I get bored enough. I at least need new bad authors.

Edit: oops, I didn’t even end my question with a question mark. I blame Freida McFadden.

I don’t have any hate in my heart for Iran, and I don’t have any faith our leadership cares about us. I need a book to read to help my mind settle down. I think this war is of our own doing and is folly for everyone involved. I feel trapped. I’m not allowed to speak up. My family wouldn’t understand my feelings. I feel I am slowly waiting out eventual doom.

A book won’t change any of that but maybe it can help reframe my mind.

Title.

I’ve been putting together a list of things I would like to read at some point, and realized that it is heavy on high fantasy and sci-fi. So I want to broaden my horizons and find things that are outside the bubble I’ve trapped myself in. Though I will gladly take more suggestions for fantasy and sci-fi books, too.

Thanks.

I need scifi book recommendations. Some requirements for the book I want to read next: MUST be written by a woman; MUST be of HIGH-QUALITY (great writing, tight plot - no bibles please, and realistic characters); has no stupid banter and shallow humour.

Books I like: Murderbot (has banter but also a very appealing character and smart plot), The Sparrow (great prose and a great mystery at its centre), Hail Mary Project (physics and tight plot; I did miss the prose here and humour was sometimes annoying)

I want NEW book recommendations, so books written in the past five years, if possible. I don’t want super long books or books written by men.

Thanks!

EDIT: I added many recommendations to my list, thanks to all for giving me suggestions! :)

Thank you in advance

Hey everyone! :)

I’m starting on a “read around the world” challenge where I read at least one book from each country of the world, or at least try to.

My only rule to that is that the book has to be written by and the story happens on this country. Fiction or non-fiction are okay, but I’m not looking for fantasy really, I want to learn more about real places, culture, music, food, history.

So I would love to hear some suggestions of your favorites!

Edit: Gosh, thank you so much, everyone! I’ll try to read all the comments and check all the books, thank you very much for the suggestions!

It can be difficult to find unpopular and great games because Steam mainly suggests the same titles over and over again

I love the idea of cozy games, but how they work usually rubs me the wrong way :

- Days are often way too short by default

- You can only save when you sleep, and most of the time you cannot sleep when you want, and even if you can, you lose the day.

- Sleep is mandatory, and the weakling you are playing will just pass out every day at a perfectly reasonable hour only to wake up in their bed because someone else who obviously wasn’t asleep dragged them there.

- The energy thing, that depletes way too fast, and won’t even replenish to full if you undersleep.

This combined makes for extremely irritating games. When I’m doing something I don’t want to stop just because bedtime is nigh, and even less so if the whole days is 20 f’ing minutes. Plus, sometimes life happens and I just need to quit the game, andI’d rather resume where I left. I don’t care abotu save scumming, I just want a “save and exit” option.

So, what I’m …

Hi all, so my partner has a kid who is a bit of a gamer, but typically only plays trending games for the memes or just overall low effort button spam games.

I’m a gamer myself, and have attempted multiple times to introduce him to games that would teach him problem solving skills or challenge his critical thinking, or maybe even just story based games that would teach him some kind of lesson or an appreciation for storytelling. I have given him access to HUNDREDS of high quality indie, AA, and AAA games, and he has zero interest in them. Minecraft is a good one, but he doesn’t really play them with any other purpose other than trolling his sister in couch coop.

He had an interest in Undertale for a while, but when I watched him play it, he skipped all the dialogue  🫠 We played Brain Age Academy for a couple days but he got bored of it quick.

No interest in Hollow Knight, no interest in most Mario games, no interest in Stardew Valley, Portal, RPGs, or even Action games. …

I’m so burnt out on “chosen one” narratives. I don’t want to save the world, discover I’m the prophesied warrior, or have NPCs worship me.

I want games where I’m just… good at my job. A mail carrier who delivers mail really well. A detective solving cases because that’s what detectives do. A ranger managing a park. Someone with skills and responsibilities, but the world doesn’t revolve around me.

Bonus points if:
- The story acknowledges other people are also competent
- Success comes from preparation and skill, not destiny
- I can fail without it being apocalyptic
- NPCs treat me like a colleague, not a messiah

I’ve played: Return of the Obra Dinn (perfect example), Unpacking, A Short Hike, Death’s Door

Platform: PC, Switch

What else fits this vibe?

There’s a lot of examples of how videogames use environment, colors, music, etc. to sneakily guide the player towards a certain path, item, or to teach them about a certain game mechanic. Is there a game that subverts this? I’m not talking about literal “spikes are good, coins are bad” type “unfair” genre games like Danger Dan or I Wanna Be The Guy.
I’m talking about a game that would use environmental geometry to guide the player’s eye AWAY from the incoming enemy. Rock patterns and shrubbery that would lead you into a grassy spike pit that you would’ve seen from any other angle. Battle music that kicks in to throw off your concentration. A shining cross that’s surrounded by groups of petrified enemies shielding their eyes from it, that when used on actual enemies makes them go into aggro mode. Does anyone know if this kind of game exists/existed anywhere?

So I just played BioShock for the first time and damn, I loved it. The whole vibe/aesthetic is amazing, but that “Would you kindly” twist seriously blew my mind.

Do you guys know any other games that pull off something similar? Like, where something you’ve believed the whole time suddenly gets flipped on its head?

It doesn’t have to be exactly like BioShock, just anything that has that same kind of mind-blowing twist or mechanic behind it.

I figured it’d be simple sequential block coding similar to scratch which I have good experience in with variables, checks, math, etc. but everything is so unintuitive. I figured I could just do “get current location” and make a location variable, then check if they were equal, but I can’t without latitude or longitude. I thought I could just check if an app was running in the background, but I can’t. Why is it like this? Was there some design intention I’m not seeing?

TL;DR: Siri but with a 200 IQ

• What it is: A custom iOS Shortcut that replaces Siri’s brain with Gemini 3 Flash.

• Why it’s better: It has Conversation Memory (it remembers what you said 2 minutes ago), it’s lightning-fast, and it actually answers complex questions instead of just showing web results.

• Cost: $0 (Uses Google’s generous free API tier).

• Setup Time: 2 minutes (No coding required).

• Best Part: Works hands-free via the Action Button, Back Tap, or even “Hey Siri, Gemini.”

Hey everyone,

Like most of you, I’ve been waiting for Apple to actually make Siri smart. While we wait for iOS 18+ features to fully roll out, I decided to build my own solution using the Gemini 3 Flash API (released March 2026).

This isn’t just a “text-to-Gemini” shortcut. This is a full voice-to-voice experience with conversation history (it remembers your previous questions!), extremely low latency, and it’s completely free to run on Google’s …

With the new action “Manage Shortcut Lock” added in the recent update of “Actions” iOS app, you can now check whether multiple instances of the same shortcut is running.

Preparation:

1. Download “Actions” iOS app
2. Create a new focus mode named “Action Button”

First Method:

Setup:

1. Create or download the Shortcut “Multi-Button”
2. Create or download the Shortcut “Action Button Focus”
3. Set Action Button to run shortcut “Multi-Button”
4. Setup an automation to trigger shortcut “Action Button Focus” when turning on “Action Button Focus”

Note:

1. The action in red box in the third pic (third action of “Multi-Button” shortcut) is optional. This is to prevent accidental focus mode automation from triggering if you have other focus mode shortcut set up. Feel free to remove this action if you do not have any focus mode automation setup.

Debug:

1. If there is no response after …

Hi 👋

I just created this shortcut that I wanted to share with you : https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/2c1a385c8249436296673180ec2c0499

Note :

- I use Apple Intelligence (ChatGPT) to run it. But you can adapt it using your own chatbot

- the prompt uses french, polish and english languages. Feel free to use your own \^\^

What it does :

- ask for a text you want to translate

- can translate in French, English, Polish : it detects the language and will propose you the various translations, except of course for the original language

- when you click on a line this copies it in your clipboard

The game changer (for me) : I call the shortcut from the Action button while writing on Reddit or speaking to my polish family-in-law in Whatsapp

Update on my hidden actions shortcut: I’ve now created a repo containing so far more than 70 hidden actions for iOS 26 and macOS 26, with dedicated shortcuts for each action along with detailed information about them:

https://github.com/paralevel/secret-actions-for-shortcuts

Some time last year, I made a post about the current situation and future of my All Media Downloader shortcut.

Today, I’m sorry to announce that the shortcut is no longer free to use. I’ve been battling with this decision for a very long time.

The shortcut started as a tiny utility I used to download and cross-post content from social platforms. Today, it handles hundreds of thousands of downloads every day. In the very early stages, I used to scrape content from social downloader websites. As it grew, I knew that was going to hurt the owners of those platforms financially, so I had to reverse-engineer the social platforms myself and get the direct media download URLs.

It was going well until we reached thousands of downloads daily. Then proxies came in, because server IPs were getting flagged.

I later started a scraping business, and it was doing well. I bought proxies for the business and shared that usage with my AMD shortcut. AMD kept growing, and so did the cost of running it. …