u/trepasito16

making friendship bracelets for years mostly for my best friend. every year on his birthday i make him a new one with different colors and patterns. but we're in our 30s now he still wears them which is cool but i can tell they don't last. they stretch out, get dirty, eventually break.

been looking at metal options. like engraved bracelets or dog tags something that won't fall apart after a few months.

i know this sub is about thread bracelets and i love them. but has anyone here switched to something more durable for a long-time friend? feels weird to stop making them but also feels like we're getting too old for colorful thread

Started ADF about 6 weeks ago after months of trying other approaches that just didn't stick. The first two weeks were rough with hunger, but after that my body seemed to adjust. Down 11 pounds so far and my energy on fast days is way more stable than I expected.

Around week 3 I added oztrim after reading about it. It's not a supplement as such, it works more on appetite signaling and natural hormone function. Honestly wasn't sure it would do anything, but I noticed I wasn't fighting hunger as hard on fast days. Mental clarity has been better too, which I didn't expect at all. Overall just feel more in control.

Keeping meals simple on eating days, nothing fancy. Mostly whole foods and reasonable portions.

Has anyone else paired ADF with something to help regulate appetite? And did your hunger cravings actually get easier after the first few weeks?

A few months ago, I bought a portable basketball shooting machine for my 14-year-old son

Like a lot of parents these days, I was looking for anything that might compete with the endless gravitational pull of YouTube, TikTok, gaming, and whatever else teenagers spend six hours a day staring at

He'd been getting into basketball, so I figured it was worth trying. At worst, I assumed it would become another one of those "great ideas" that gets used twice before collecting dust in the garage

To be fair, he actually does use it quite a bit

What I didn't expect was that I'd become the one who couldn't stay away from it

At first I'd just go outside with him for a few minutes after work. Maybe rebound a few shots, pass him the ball, give some completely unqualified coaching advice that he definitely didn't ask for

Normal dad stuff

Then one evening he went inside for dinner, and I stayed out there

Just for a few more shots

Then a few more

Then somehow it was almost dark and my wife was standing at the back door asking if I planned on eating that night

Since then, it has sort of become a routine

I come home from work, tell myself that I am just going to be out for ten minutes, and suddenly it is already ten o’clock at night and I am in my driveway shooting basketballs under a porch light

The funniest part is that I haven't played basketball consistently in years

Back in high school and college, I played all the time

Pickup games at the park

Church leagues

Random runs at the local gym

If somebody texted and said they needed one more player, I was usually there

And then life just happened…

Work became more hectic

Weekend schedules became jam-packed

Home maintenance was required

The children grew up

With each passing year, I found myself spending less time on my hobbies and more time attending to things that had to be done

I don't think there was one specific moment when I stopped playing basketball

It just slowly disappeared from my routine

One year became three

Three became five

Eventually I got to the point where I'd see a basketball sitting in the garage and think I should get back into that someday

That’s how the story goes

And someday never comes around

What shocked me wasn’t the fact that I missed basketball

But rather how fast all those emotions came flooding back

The routine of shooting a ball

The sound of it hitting the concrete

Trying to make five shots in a row and then refusing to quit until you do

There's something oddly relaxing about it

No emails

No meetings

No notifications

Just focusing on one thing for a little while

But I guess that isn’t entirely wasted, since my purchase is far from being totally misguided. However, to be fair, I must admit that I seem to have purchased a new pastime

My neighbors could certainly see that. I am sure they witnessed a middle-aged man standing in his driveway late at night, wearing his dirty work clothes, and telling himself “just one more time” twenty times in a row

There could be a lot worse midlife crises

People get sports cars

It seems mine revolves around dribbling basketballs under a driveway lamp as though I had the knees of a teenager

planning a nice dinner for our anniversary. we usually go to places like cafe boulud or the breakers. solid every time. but this year i thought maybe we should do something different.

my wife has been hinting she wants to try a michelin spot. obviously theres none here so that means driving to miami or maybe broward if anything exists there.

but then i start thinking - is it really worth the drive back late at night. traffic. parking. all that. part of me just wants to stay local and avoid the headache.

anyone done the drive for a special occasion. how bad is it really.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately and wanted to get some perspectives from people who know this stuff better than I do.

We talk about supernovae and stellar death all the time in terms of data, light curves, and distances in light years. But I rarely see anyone break down the humanscale experience of what it would look like and feel like if you were on a planet orbiting a star in the final stages of its life.

For a red giant phase, would the sky just slowly get brighter and more orange over thousands of years, so gradual that no single generation would notice? Or are there stages where the change becomes dramatic within a human lifetime?

For a more violent end like a core collapse supernova, at what distance would you actually see the companion star explode before the shockwave or radiation reached you? Would there be a delay where you could watch it brighten for hours or days knowing what was coming?

I know we have no direct observation of this from a planetary surface, so a lot of this is modeled and theoretical. But grounding these events in human sensory terms helps people actually connect with how violent and strange the universe really is.

What does the science actually tell us about any of this?

it started a few months ago with this strange tenderness and swelling in my chest that i could not explain. i kept telling myself it was nothing but it got worse and i could not stop thinking about it. i finally went to the doctor and they said my estrogen levels were off. not cancer but the words still hit me hard and i felt scared and embarrassed at the same time.

i started reading everything i could find and came across dim supplements. i ordered the one from berkeley formula and have been taking it for about six weeks now. the tenderness has gone down quite a bit and i feel a little more like myself again. it is not perfect yet but it is the first time something actually helped.

i still wake up some nights worried but i am trying to stay positive and focus on what i can control. has anyone else gone through something similar with hormones and breast tissue? how long did it take before you felt real changes? i just want to know i am not alone in this.

We always see the same names recommended everywhere: VLC, 7Zip, OBS, and so on. But after years of building and tweaking my setup I've accumulated a handful of small, niche utilities I genuinely could not live without, and almost nobody I know has heard of them.

I've been using PowerToys for a while now and it still feels underrated to a lot of people outside this community. Same goes for Everything, which does instant file search, and Bulk Rename Utility when I need to sort through massive folders.

That kind of lightweight, purposebuilt software feels like the real advantage of being on PC. No locked ecosystem, no waiting for a platform update, just grab the tool that solves your exact problem and get on with it.

This community probably has some genuine hidden gems that never get talked about because they're not flashy enough to go viral. The kind of software that just quietly makes your workflow smoother every day.

So what are yours? Productivity tools, system monitors, gaming utilities, whatever has genuinely earned a permanent spot in your taskbar or startup folder. Would love to build a proper list from the responses.

We always see the same names recommended everywhere: VLC, 7Zip, OBS, and so on. But after years of building and tweaking my setup I've accumulated a handful of small, niche utilities I genuinely could not live without, and almost nobody I know has heard of them.

I've been using PowerToys for a while now and it still feels underrated to a lot of people outside this community. Same goes for Everything, which does instant file search, and Bulk Rename Utility when I need to sort through massive folders.

That kind of lightweight, purposebuilt software feels like the real advantage of being on PC. No locked ecosystem, no waiting for a platform update, just grab the tool that solves your exact problem and get on with it.

This community probably has some genuine hidden gems that never get talked about because they're not flashy enough to go viral. The kind of software that just quietly makes your workflow smoother every day.

late diagnosed at 28. been on meds for two years they help with focus but they don't fix the underlying stuff. i still can't start tasks. i still lose things constantly. i still feel like i'm failing at being an adult. ive seen a few psychologists and they're fine but they don't specialise in adhd. i end up explaining more than i get helped.

has anyone in australia found good adhd support that's not just cbt and planners? i need something that works for my brain

Every major wave of automation has pushed human labor toward things machines couldn't replicate. The industrial revolution displaced physical laborers but expanded demand for designers, managers, and artists. Steam looms put hand weavers out of business, yet somehow triggered a massive revival of interest in artisan crafts a generation later.

We're hearing a lot about AI eliminating entrylevel white collar work, and that's a real concern. But I want to explore the other side of that disruption. If AI handles the bulk of routine writing, coding, analysis, and data processing, does human attention shift toward valuing things that feel unmistakably human? Handbuilt furniture, locally grown food, live music, handwritten letters, bespoke clothing, smallbatch anything.

Some economists argue that as productivity rises and working hours potentially drop, discretionary time and spending tend to flow toward experiences and handmade goods. We already see early signals: the vinyl record revival, the sourdough boom, the explosion of craft brewing.

Could widespread AI adoption paradoxically supercharge artisan economies and human skill trades? Or will automation simply compress wages broadly and leave most people with less money to spend on premium handcrafted goods, regardless of their preferences?

What does this community think the cultural and economic landscape looks like for skilled human craftsmanship in a heavily automated world?

For years, discussions around live music have focused on rising ticket prices, dynamic pricing, resale markets, and how difficult it has become for many fans to attend concerts regularly. At the same time, some artists have historically made affordability part of their public image. Whether for ideological reasons, fan loyalty, or simple business philosophy, they treated accessibility as an important part of the live music experience rather than maximizing revenue from every seat.

What I'm curious about is whether that actually affects how those artists are remembered. When people talk about an artist's legacy decades later, do decisions around ticket pricing, fan access, and touring practices matter at all? Or does the music ultimately outweigh everything else? It seems like a topic that's becoming more relevant as live music becomes increasingly expensive and many fans are being priced out of major events.

How much importance do you think concert accessibility should have when evaluating an artist's overall legacy?

I have been building a vehicle tracking app and trying to integrate the official NHTSA recall API endpoint to check for active safety campaigns by VIN. The documentation seemed straightforward enough, but I am running into a lot of annoying data formatting inconsistencies and slow response times when pulling data for certain imported makes. My project must get clean, lightning-fast safety data without these random connection drops during peak times.

While searching for cleaner data pipelines, I saw that Vincario has a commercial VIN engine that some developers use alongside public databases. I am wondering if their system handles local government recalls better or if it just pulls from the exact same public data streams anyway.

Does anyone here use them for fleet data, or do you have suggestions for a more reliable workflow to query auto recalls? I want to know if I should just write custom error handling scripts for the official endpoint, or if paying for a dedicated vehicle data partner is the best option for a production app.

With all the buzz around Project Hail Mary apparently not using a single green screen shot, it got me thinking about how much practical filmmaking still matters to audiences. There seems to be a genuine hunger for movies that feel tactile and real, where you can tell actual craft went into building sets, costumes, and incamera effects.

Some films get celebrated for this, like Mad Max Fury Road or Everything Everywhere All at Once, but plenty of others quietly pulled off incredible practical work without ever getting the recognition they deserved.

For me, The Descent (2005) is one of the best examples. The entire cave environment was built on sets, the creature designs were fully practical, and the claustrophobic tension came entirely from real physical spaces and lighting. It never comes up in these conversations, but the craftsmanship is genuinely impressive.

What movies do you think are underappreciated specifically for their practical effects work or commitment to incamera filmmaking? Horror, scifi, action, drama, anything goes. Also curious whether people think this approach actually improves a film emotionally, or if it only matters to behindthescenes enthusiasts.

Most conversations about TV shows eventually come back to the disappointment of a series that started strong and lost its way. We talk about that a lot, and rightfully so. But I feel like we don't spend enough time on the opposite, shows that actually found their footing over time and became something special.

I've been rewatching some older series lately and it got me thinking about how some shows take a full season or even two to really figure out what they want to be. The Wire is an obvious example a lot of people bring up. Parks and Recreation is another one that almost everyone agrees hit a completely different gear once it reset after season one.

But I'm curious about less obvious picks. Shows where you stuck around almost out of habit or loyalty and then suddenly realized the writers had quietly built something genuinely great without much fanfare.

It doesn't have to be critically acclaimed either. Sometimes a procedural or a midtier cable drama just quietly improves in ways that never get discussed because the discourse moved on.

What are your picks, and what specifically changed that made the show click for you? Was it a cast addition, a tonal shift, a new showrunner?