Im only about 2 weeks into throwing but ive been doing this routine everyday. I feel like theres some good foundations practice doing this. GOD bless all of you

My new project with The Lord of the Rings :)

July Yoyo Sharpness V2
I’m really impressed by how silent and smooth this throw is. Practically zero vibe, light and powerful. Simply wow!

Weight: 65.2 g
Diameter: 55.9 mm
Width: 47.5 mm
A6061

… throwing an Atmos Gumball over Happy Imaeda … 🎶🪀❣️

When did we collectively accept that paying for Spotify, YouTube Premium, Netflix, Disney+, Max, and half a dozen other streaming services wasn’t enough?
Podcasts used to be one of the last truly open corners of the internet. You could discover a new show, recommend it to a friend, and listen without hitting a paywall halfway through the story.
Now it feels like every platform and every creator has launched yet another subscription.
I used to listen to The Rest Is Politics almost every day. Then came the premium paywall. I understood the business logic, but it completely changed the listening experience. Recently I started Tortoise Investigates. I listened to the first two episodes of a fascinating series, only to discover that the rest was locked behind yet another subscription.
The most frustrating part is that many of these podcasts already have multiple revenue streams. They run advertising before, during, and after episodes. They have sponsorships from major brands. They often …

Here are some long-form podcasts with high production value that I’ve really enjoyed. I’m especially drawn to podcasts by investigative journalists, as well as well produced, story-driven series to enjoy while listening on my headphone.

Maybe there are some summer listening tips here for you, if you got any tips for me let me know!

The list is sorted by year.

2026

We call her Emma: Tortoise Investigates by Chloe Hadjimatheou. Asma grew up in London known as Emma, as an adult she was the First Lady of Syrria married to Bashar al-Assad.

Foundling: Tortoise Investigates: This is one of these stories that you can’t make up. A foundling in search of her roots, a compelling story with a lot of plot twists

Hunting the Suicide Salesman: CBC: About a suicide drug readily available on the internet, the people who discuss is it on a forum. Loved ones trying to intervene, and also what interventintions might help in suicide prevention.

The Secret World of Roald Dahl: …

I’ve been listening to “The Rest is History” since I found it in 2022. What’s yours and why you keep listening?

This podcast is often recommended when people suggest a good podcast to start.  I was doing a search for Josef Fritzl, the Austrian man that locked his daughter in a cellar for 20+ years and had 15 children with her. His name came up in some of the reading I am doing on trauma and captivity, and I wanted a nice overview.  This podcast came up.  I always wanted to give it a try so I made the attempt.

I am not a wilting flower, and my humor tends to be dark; I am seldom offended by anything.  But FFS…these guys were horrible.  They turned such a ghastly and devastating event into a total punchline.  There were more jokes than story narrative.

I think if a different topic, I would probably not be so bothered.  But this topic….for me, rape is never funny.  For these guys, this is all it was about.

Are all their episodes like this?  Can someone rec good episodes of this podcast?

I love an investigative journalism pod. My recommendation for anyone that loves the genre is “searching for soldier dad” by BBC sounds. About British soldiers fathering and abandoning children in Kenya whilst on training in the country at the military training base there.

Feel free to give me a recommendation.

Enjoy

What’s the best podcast single episode you have listened to this year?

Hiiiiii, I’m looking for your favorite books that not a single person you know has ever heard of. I‘m especially interested in smaller/newer authors, or obscure books by otherwise well known authors, etc etc. I just feel like I’ve exhausted so many of the things you can pick up at any ole Barnes and noble and want something that’s completely out of nowhere.

I just really love the indie book stores near me that sell local authors because you can‘t really find those sorts of books anywhere else, but I think they’re just as good if not better than some of the big names.

I very much prefer fantasy, but feel free to suggest any other genres as well, but fantasy, mystery, thriller are my bread and butter :)

EDIT: you all are amazing! I have so many new books to track down. Keep ‘em coming, I love this!!!

Throughout school, I’ve only been good at the sciences and math and English was more of a left out subject because it’s a second language to me, and now that I’m in uni, I feel like I’ve missed out on reading proficiency of over middle school level. When I try to form an opinion that I believe is “deep”, my train of thought and reasoning ends abruptly in the middle, and my arguments mostly sound like unorganised dot points and jargon that end inconclusive. I guess what I’m asking for to put in simple words is just “make me smarter!!!” lol
I’d prefer fictional books that allow me to do this rather than a comprehensive reading guide, I’d rather learn this skill more hands on and in my own manner than following a manual.

edit: thank you community for great advice and recommendations !! I’m gonna be very busy learning to write essays and finishing my list on kindle

I’ve read Piranesi, I’ve read House of Leaves.

I am in desperate need of more books that scratch the same itch.

Books about places outside of reality where things work differently, strangely. Books about people exploring those places.

Thank you.

EDIT: thank you so much everyone! My list is so full now. I can’t wait to read all these books!

EDIT: for the love of god, stop trying to be funny about this in the comments. i don’t like him either. this post is about my struggles with mental health issues and i don’t want to be reminded of him. + it’s really telling how you view disabled people if you’re comparing some guy with a disability to one of the most intentionally cruel and evil people alive rn. stop. please. oh my god.

Title. For context, I could also be considered disabled (PTSD, OCD, visual impairment).

I’m in therapy regarding trauma dealt by adults with SEVERE learning disabilities and the like (abuse from people that didn’t “know any better”/were babied by their caretakers into becoming genuinely terrifying people). I have an extremely hard time feeling empathy/sympathy for people I’ve grown to be incredibly afraid of, and I feel very uncomfortable around people who can be “unpredictable” in their actions due to their disability. I don’t want to be like this, and I don’t want my thoughts to start reflecting in …

My 8.5 year old son likes scary/creepy media, but if he detects that it was written for kids, he’ll nope out immediately. So, a YA or adult book that is scary/creepy, but also not completely inappropriate? Somewhat fast paced is also a plus; he isn’t quite ready for long slow burns. I know, I’m asking a lot. But thank you!

Edit: Holy shit you guys are amazing. We’re gonna be reading for months!

hey, everyone. this past week I’ve been really tired, so after work I’ve been either sleeping or doomscrolling. sometimes I’ll watch one episode of my current tv show, which I don’t see an issue with (nor with sleeping. I need the rest) but I had finally got rid of the tiktok addiction to only use it maximum an hour per day and that has gone down the drain since my work time has increased

I decided to pick up the diary of a wimpy kid. read them as a kid and I know, I KNOW how ridiculous they are. but the content I see can be just as much and I just want the opportunity to go back to my hobby and setting time for it without feeling like it will be more tiring than the doomscrolling.

has anyone tried this? going into children’s books since they’re easier/shorter to pick your reading habits back up?

anyone who currently reads middle grade, do you have any recs? I don’t want anything longer than 300 pages that aren’t illustrated because I …

I’m done with telling myself I’ll get through my backlog someday. I’m tired of not finishing single-player games because their stories don’t interest me.

I need a forever game. Something I can chip away at each evening after work for the foreseeable future.

I love a grind. I love relatively intricate systems. I love difficulty that can be overcome by investment. Unfortunately, a lot of these “forever” games are games such as WoW - which I used to love, by the way - but as adulthood compounds its responsibilities, I simply cannot commit to the social requirements many of these games require.

Hence my conundrum.

I’m seriously considering OSRS because on paper, it’s the perfect game for me. However, I fear the gameplay might be too point and clicky for me.

Anyways, I’d love to hear your suggestions.

i’ve been working a lot lately and don’t really have the energy for super competitive or high focus games anymore

just looking for something i can play at night that feels calm but still has some sense of progression. not completely idle, but also not something that punishes you for zoning out a bit

i love roguelites. i’ve been playing Ragnarok Breaker a lot lately, and it’s probably become one of my favorite games to just chill with. i also enjoy games like stardew valley and runescape. open to pc or mobile, preferably something i can play in short sessions.

what would you recommend?

I love games that start off feeling pretty normal and then slowly get creepier the further you get into them. Not games that are trying to scare you every five minutes with jumpscares, but ones where you slowly realize something’s really not right.

Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened is probably my favorite example. It starts out as a detective game, then gradually gets more unsettling until it turns into Lovecraftian horror. Dredge was another one I loved. At first it’s just a chill fishing game, but the atmosphere keeps getting weirder and more uneasy the longer you play.

I’m not really looking for games that are horror from the very start. I like when the creepy stuff sneaks up on you and the tension just keeps building.

Any genre is fine. I don’t mind a couple of jumpscares here and there, but I’m not after full-on survival horror. Also not really into card/deck-building games.

Would love to hear your recommendations. Thanks! :)

After watching Odyssey, I woupd like to jump into a game or two which has a strong Greek mythology theme

Ideally games that are on steam

I have Hades and Hades 2 and am looking for something which is more open world RPG

When I say Melee god, I’m meaning one guy who is able to carve through crowds, but not in an overtly over the top way. Games like Ghost of Tsushima, Shadow of Mordor, the new God of Wars, and the story mode of For Honor are what I’m talking about.

I had a random idea and wanted to know if I’m reinventing the wheel.

Capturing things on my iPhone always feels a little repetitive. If it’s an idea, I open Notes. If it’s a task, I open Reminders. If it’s a movie recommendation, I save it somewhere else. It all works, but I feel like there should be a faster and more enjoyable way to capture everything.

I’m thinking of building an iPhone Shortcut that acts as a single “capture anything” entry point.

It would let me save:
• Notes
• Ideas
• Tasks
• Read/Watch Later

The goal is to make the whole process as effortless as possible. If I share a link, image, PDF, YouTube video, or screenshot, it should understand what I’m saving, optionally extract text, let me set a reminder if I want, and save it with as few prompts as possible😅

Before I spend a weekend building this…
• Is there already an app or Shortcut that does this really well?
• Are there apps with better widgets that I should be looking at instead?
• Is there a feature you’d …

When I switched to iOS from Android, the biggest issue I faced was tracking unknown numbers calling me.

On Android it’s as easy as installing Truecaller and forgetting about it.

On iPhone… not so much. Unless you’re willing to pay 🥲

So I got curious and started digging into how Truecaller works. I reverse engineered some of the Android app’s network requests (for educational purposes btw) and found a few interesting endpoints.

A few days ago I was also exploring iOS Shortcuts. It’s literally programming without code.

Then a random idea came to my mind:

Why don’t I make my own version of Truecaller for iPhone? (obviously using their endpoint lol 😏)

I designed an iOS Shortcut that:

-> Takes a screenshot

-> Extracts text using OCR

-> Parses the phone number using regex

-> Sends the number to a Truecaller endpoint (routed via my own proxy)

-> Gets the caller’s name and shows it in a popup

Simple enough, right?

Wrong.

I then ran into another issue.

iOS won’t …

A few days ago, I shared a hacky iOS Shortcut I built that takes a screenshot of an incoming call, runs OCR, and pings Truecaller’s API to give me free Caller ID on my iPhone.

(Read context here if you missed it)

My inbox blew up with people asking the exact same question: “Wait, how did you get the Truecaller API endpoint in the first place?”

The short answer: I reverse-engineered their Android app.

The long answer: It was a massive headache. The app uses SSL Pinning and TLS fingerprinting (JA3) to actively block scripts. If you try to catch the traffic with standard Burp Suite or hit the API with normal Python requests, their firewall instantly throws a 429 Too Many Requests error and blocks you.

Here is the TL;DR of how I bypassed it:

1. I dropped standard proxies and used HTTP Toolkit with Frida on a rooted emulator to hook the app’s memory at runtime.
2. This allowed me to intercept the raw API request before the app encrypted it.
3. To bypass their Web …

I wanted a quick way to check my Etsy sales without opening the Etsy Seller app, so I built this widget for my iPhone.

It shows:

• today’s revenue and order count
• monthly revenue and order count
• a 31-day revenue chart
• red, amber, and green indicators based on daily revenue

It does not use the Etsy API or any external server.

The workflow is:

Etsy sale email → Gmail forwarding → iCloud Mail → Shortcuts automation → monthly CSV file → Scriptable widget

The automation receives the subject line of each Etsy sale email, extracts the USD amount, and appends it to the CSV file for the current month. The Scriptable script then reads the file, calculates the totals, and displays the results in the widget.

It has been running reliably with real sales.

https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/dc01b1c311aa4b658aa7655436003da5

I use a free tier (quite generous) of a VPN app that doesn’t allow one to choose a preferred country/server for all connections. It just connects to a random country under their list of free servers.

I needed to know what country it connected to without having to go into the app every time.

Unfortunately this Shortcut can’t run automatically because there’s no automation action available for “when VPN connects” or “when network changes” etc

What the shortcut does:

1. It pulls up info from https://ipwho.is (which shows as .json by default)

2. Grabs the following details (ip, city, country and emoji of the country)

3. Shows those details as a silent notification (no vibration nor sound)

P.S: if Apple ever adds an automation action for VPN connection/disconnection, this shortcut would be perfect to use.

Get it here: https://www.icloud.com/shortcuts/72e932964cfa415d989d4113d9d32d6b

Here’s a quick recap of the dynamic widget I built(with bug fixes/new features) to react to your life, inspired by Pixel’s At a Glance that I posted last week:

🌩️ Severe weather warnings

📅 Live calendar countdowns with travel time

📍 Arrival greetings

🔋 Low battery alerts

🌡️ Air quality, UV, and temp swing alerts

📈 After-hours stock recaps

🎂 Birthdays, reminders, and holidays

🌙 Minimal “Wind Down” screen using real weather data

What’s New:

🔒 Lock Screen Widgets: Fully supported and smart enough to avoid showing redundant data.

💊 Upgraded Pills: Data displays inside the pill with a new “Outlined” mode built for iOS tinting.

I’ve also upgraded the Shortcut Live Context Sync integration. Plus, there’s a new transparent background option that blends seamlessly with your Home Screen in both Light and Dark modes.

Everything runs locally in the free Scriptable app with zero tracking. The project is open-sourced, and the README will get you …