#i have a 3d printer and this sort of thing is what that's for

[myothertardisisonthemun]

In just under 20 days, I am flying to Western Australia to see a solar eclipse.

Because it's so dangerous to look at the sun directly, I've been trying out sun viewing equipment.

Got to find something that won't give me a headache, or worse, damage my eyes.

I got these specialised eclipse binoculars a while ago. They're celestron, a mostly respected brand, and have all the right certifications. They are second hand though.

I feel fine after using them, if a little dazzled - sunlight gets in around the sides . I plan to 3d print something to go around them to block that, which hopefully will make them fine to use.

I have since found out that they're only supposed to be used when an eclipse is nearly at totality. So if you're using some yourself, please do your own research rathet than going of just this post

Even then, I'd like a second option.

This is an Aliexpress solar filter designed for my telescope. I don't trust it on the telescope.

Even holding it up to the sun while wearing sunglasses - (despite my eyes collecting a thousandish times less light than the telescope) - after a short time I feel like I've been at the beach all day without sunglasses.

I will not be bringing this to Exmouth.

Next up is the cheap, but more legit cardboard solar glasses from the astronomy shop in the city:

These use the same baader film tech as the filter above.

Despite being from a reputable source, these still feel too bright, and make my eyes feel funny. Even when combined with sunnies.

Just today, this arrived:

This is a pair of shade 14 welding glass lenses - nasa recommended, and the darkest ones I could get my hands on.

They're perfect.

They turn the sun into a much fainter greenish yellow ball.

It is soooo much easier on the eyes than any of the tools I tried above.

Now what I need to do is go and make something to use them in

[techav]

On Multitasking

Sharing a Computer with Friends

The Motorola 68030 was a decently powerful microprocessor for its day. It is a fully 32-bit processor with 16 general-purpose registers, separate instruction & data caches, memory management unit, 18 addressing modes, over 100 instructions, pipelined architecture, and was available rated up to 50MHz. It was used in computers by Apple, Amiga, NeXT, Sun, Atari, and saw further life embedded in devices such as printers, oscilloscopes, and network switches. It was the kind of microprocessor used for desktop publishing, 3D CAD & animation, photo & video editing, etc.

In short, the 68030 is a microprocessor that can do some serious work. That's part of why I like it so much. It's a real workhorse chip but as far as 32-bit microprocessors go, it's dead simple to build with.

But running a single quick & simple BASIC program hardly seems like an adequate exercise for such a capable chip.

There is a prevailing claim that the 68000 architecture was heavily inspired by that of the PDP-11 or VAX minicomputers — powerhouses of the previous generation of computing. These machines ran entire businesses, at times servicing many simultaneous users. Surely the 68030 with similar capabilities but significantly faster instruction throughput than the decade-older machines would be more than capable of handling such a workload.

As I've mentioned before, one of my end goals for my 68030 projects is to run a proper operating system. Something like System V, BSD, or Linux; a true multi-user system befitting of the 68k's architectural heritage. My programming skills are limited, and getting such a complex project running is still outside my reach. But I am learning, and slowly inching myself closer to that goal.

Recently I built an expansion card for my Wrap030 project to add another four serial ports to it. In the context of the old minicomputers, another serial port means another terminal, which means the ability to serve one more user. My new 4-port serial card should give me the ability to add four new user terminals.

If only I had software capable of doing so.

Excluding symmetric multiprocessing and today's multi-core behemoths, supporting multiple user processes on a single computer processor means dividing time between them. The computer will run one user's program for a little while, then stop and run another user's program for a little while. Do this fast enough and neither user might ever notice that the computer is paying attention to someone else — especially since the computer spends much of its time just waiting for user input.

There are a few ways to accomplish this, but the simplest is to just make sure that every user program is written to cooperate with the others and periodically yield to the next user program ("Cooperative Multitasking"). A good time to do this is whenever the program needs to wait for input from the user or wait for a device to be ready to accept output.

Enhanced BASIC (68k EhBASIC), which I have been running on all of my 68k computer builds, was written in such a way that lends itself well to this sort of cooperative multitasking. It runs a tight loop when waiting for input or output, and while running a BASIC program, it stops at the end of each line to see if the user has pressed Ctrl-C to stop the program. This means that EhBASIC never goes too long without needing to check in with slow I/O devices. All that would needed is a simple kernel to set things up and switch to another user's processes whenever each time one of them is waiting for I/O.

So I set about creating such a minimal multi-user kernel. On startup, it initializes hardware, sets up some data tables for keeping track of what each user program is doing, loads BASIC into RAM, then starts running BASIC for that first user. Whenever a user process needs to read data from or write data to its terminal, it asks the kernel to handle that I/O task for it. The kernel will save the state of the user program to the data table it set up in the beginning, then switch to the next user to let it run until it too asks for assistance with an I/O task.

The kernel works through all user processes round-robin until it loops back around to the first user. After restoring the state of the user's process the kernel will service the I/O task that user process had originally requested, and return to let that user process run for a little while again. So all of the other user processes get their chance to run while one is waiting on data, and each process makes sure to allow the others a chance to run for a while when they are in the middle of running their own program.

I was able to throw together a quick proof of concept using the EASy68K simulator. What followed was days of catching all of the tiny mistakes I made, such as saving register A0 to the memory location reserved for register A1, overwriting the value previously saved for A1 and effectively losing both in the process — an error which resulted in BASIC printing only the first three characters of its startup header followed by a long string of null characters.

Debugging was tricky. I was starting from the bottom. No standard library, no existing structure or frameworks to rely on. The kernel process relied on the very same registers the user programs were using. Any changes to register contents by the kernel would affect the user processes. I ended up adding assembly macros to print short statements and register contents to the kernel console to try to get some insight into what was happening. I was able to track when registers came out of the user context save/restore process different than when they went in to find where I had bugs in that process.

This was a challenging project resulting in nearly a thousand lines of very low-level 68k assembly code, all of which I wrote and rewrote multiple times before figuring everything out. I've written small pieces of assembly code over the years, but none which required such deep dives into the CPU documentation to discern fine details of how the chip operates. I got there eventually though and now I have an 8MHz 68030 homebrew computer with 2MB of RAM that can run four BASIC programs simultaneously.

I'm going to need more terminals.

[mysteryshoptls]

SSR Deuce Spade - Rabbit Wear Vignette

"To be perfectly honest"

[Clock Town – Deuce's Home]

Ortho: I can't believe you have a fully equipped workshop next door to your home, Deuce Spade-san!

Ortho: Ehehe, I'm excited to think that I might be able to dress up like a white rabbit like everyone else.

Deuce: I didn't expect you to want to dress up like a white rabbit, Ortho.

Deuce: I really hope they'll let us borrow their 3D printer and materials…

Deuce: …Well, guess there's nothing else to do but ring the bell, then.

[buzzes intercom]

Workshop Owner: Yes, hello, who is it?

Deuce: Uh, it's Spade from next door…

Workshop Owner: Spade…? Wait, you're not… DEUCE!?

Deuce: Yes, sir. …It's been a long time.

Deuce: I apologize for this unexpected visit. I was wondering if perhaps we would be able to use some of the equipment you have in your workshop?

Deuce: Of course, we will fully reimburse you for its usage…

Workshop Owner: What did you say…?

Workshop Owner: YOU HAVE SOME NERVE ASKING THAT!

Ortho: EH!? This guy seems really angry…

Workshop Owner: You'd run around with all those punks, causing ruckuses in the middle of the night and destroying all sorts of things…

Workshop Owner: Do you even understand just how much pain and suffering you caused the people of this town?

Workshop Owner: Deila-san came to apologize for you so many times, but that doesn't mean squat here. Get out of here, already!!!

Deuce: I AM SO SORRY FOR ALL OF THE TROUBLE I CAUSED BACK THEN!!

Deuce: I know that I have no right to make this kind of request. But I really want to help my classmate make a rabbit costume!

Workshop Owner: Your classmate? What does my workshop have to do with their costume, in the first place…?

Ortho: Nice to meet you, I am Ortho Shroud. I'm a humanoid!

Ortho: I'm a classmate of Deuce-san at Night Raven College.

Workshop Owner: A h-humanoid?

Ortho: Yep! I really wanted a white rabbit outfit so that I could take part in the White Rabbit Festival…

Ortho: But I can't wear clothes like a living person can, so I want to make my own special gear to wear.

Workshop Owner: I've seen a few human-like robots in my time, but not one that can as eloquent as you!

Workshop Owner: And on top of that, you want to participate in Clock Town's famed White Rabbit Festival. Hmmm, what should I do…

Workshop Owner: Wait, nope, no way! If I let Deuce use my workshop, he'll totally destroy it!

Ortho: DEUCE SPADE-SAN WOULD NEVER DO ANYTHING LIKE THAT!!!

Deuce: Ortho…

Ortho: Do you truly believe that Deuce-san would actually come face-to-face to talk to you like this, hoping you'd let down your guard?

Ortho: THERE'S NO WAY DEUCE-SAN IS SMART ENOUGH TO COME UP WITH THAT KIND OF CUNNING STRATEGY!

Workshop Owner: …When you put it that way, I guess it's true that he used to just show up out of nowhere and just tear about.

Workshop Owner: Does that mean you guys truly came here to just ask for the favor of using my workshop?

Ortho: That's right! Please, mister! Please let us use your workshop!!

Workshop Owner: Sigh… Fine. Out of respect for the little humanoid boy, I'll let you use my workshop just this once.

Ortho/Deuce: THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!

Workshop Owner: That doesn't mean I trust you, Deuce. Don't get me wrong.

Workshop Owner: If you get even one scratch on any of my machines, I won't let you get off so easy!!!

Deuce: I understand.

Workshop Owner: Tch… If word got out that I was letting someone like you in, that'd be bad for my own reputation.

Workshop Owner: You don't need to pay anything. Instead, just do what you came to do and leave as fast as you can.

Workshop Owner: Go and enter the shop from the rear entrance. You know where that is, right? Be quick about it.

[slams door]

Ortho: …Deuce Spade-san, are you alright? Even I can tell just from looking at you that you seem down.

Deuce: Maybe it's more… self-loathing than just being down.

Deuce: I enrolled in Night Raven College and have been aiming to be a model student, and I've been trying really hard with my club activities…

Deuce: I thought I had changed a ton, but that doesn't change my past, y'know?

Ortho: By the past, do you mean what he said about "running around with all those punks, causing ruckuses in the middle of the night and destroying all sorts of things"?

Deuce: Uhhhh… Please forget you heard about that! Also, I'd really like it if you didn't tell anyone else what happened just now.

Deuce: And my mom, too… I don't want to cause her any extra worry.

Ortho: Uh-huh, so it's that sort of thing. I got it. I can keep this a secret from the others.

Ortho: But in exchange, I'll have you help me with crating my new gear.

Deuce: Yeah, of course I will. Leave it to me.

Deuce: …But man, you're amazing, Ortho. I can't believe you persuaded him.

Deuce: You saw how angry he was, right? I totally thought he wouldn't let us use his workshop at all.

Ortho: I calculated that since he was running a blastcycle parts shop, then he'd probably have an interest in machines or robots.

Ortho: That's why I tried to appeal to him as a humanoid, to pique his curiosity.

Deuce: …Now that you mention it, I feel like his whole attitude changed when you mentioned you were a humanoid.

Deuce: …You calculated that, huh. I'm not really good at thinking and planning ahead.

Deuce: Even everything that happened just now is the result of me causing trouble for those around me without thinking things through back in middle school…

Ortho: Deuce Spade-san…

Ortho: You can do your thinking later! Right now, we need to get my gear done as quick as possible and go join the others!

Deuce: You're right, especially since he said to be quick about it… Let's hurry before he changes his mind!

[Clock Town – Clock Park]

Deuce: I sent [Yuu] a message saying where and when we're meeting up, but… They haven't read it at all.

Ortho: Maybe they haven't had the time to look at their phone, since Grim-san just keeps dragging them everywhichway.

Deuce: Can't be helped, guess we should go look for them. I wouldn't think they'd have gone that far, though...

???: NOM NOM NOM NOM!! Funyaaa～ I can't get enough of that strong flavor.

Ortho: Ah, that's Grim-san's voice. That saves us from having to search the whole park.

Deuce: Yeah, it helps that Grim's really loud.

Deuce: Heeey! [Yuu], Grim!

Grim: Hm? Oh, it's Deuce. Nice of you to come looking for me!

Deuce: Wrong! You're the one who ran off on your own, so we were all doing our own things right now.

Deuce: So, in about an hour, we're all going to meet up at the stall we were at earlier, okay? You better not be late.

1. I want you to show me around.

Deuce: Eh, me? Can I even do that…? But, sure, I guess. We can check out the area together.

2. We should wander around together!

Deuce: With me? …Yeah, okay!

Grim: Whew, that was delish～

Deuce: Looks like Grim just finished eating, too, so let's head off.

Deuce: [Yuu], is there something you want to see or do?

1. I want to look at souvenirs!

Deuce: I think I saw some stalls selling various stuff. Want to go check them out?

2. I want to move around some to help digest my food.

Deuce: I saw a stall a bit ago that had some kind of mini-game set up. Want to try it out?

Ortho: Sounds fun! I want to go with you guys too.

Deuce: Yeah, come along. That'll make it more lively and fun!

Deuce: They've got a ton of shops set up here, so the four of us can see all sorts of stuff!

[cheering on a street performer]

Grim: Nyahaha, that's so cool! That's way more amazing than Ace's magic tricks!

Deuce: You really like those street performances, huh. It looks like it'll go on for a little bit longer, but… Maybe we should move on now?

Grim: Ehhh, I want to keep watching.

Ortho: I haven't seen many street performances, so I think I'll stay and watch some more too.

Deuce: Okay. Then [Yuu] and I'll head off and check some other places out.

Deuce: We can meet up at where we were earlier when the time comes.

Grim/Ortho: Yeah! / Understood!

Deuce: Okay, then lets head over there.

Passerby A: Oh my, what cute outfits. Are you two from around here?

Deuce: Ah, yes, I'm from here.

Deuce: I just came home to visit with my classmates for the White Rabbit Festival…

Passerby A: Oh, so you're a Clock Town local. Then, I guess there's no need to warn you.

Deuce: Warn me? Eh, did something happen?

Passerby A: Well, not necessarily something, but… you know?

Passerby B: If you're from this city, then you should know, right? That there's been some bad characters running around.

Passerby A: It must have been what, 3… maybe 4 years ago? Anyway, a while ago, this terrible hooligan showed up.

Deuce: A terrible hooligan?

Passerby B: You never heard of them? Well, you two look like you were raised properly, so I suppose I'm not surprised you don't know.

Passerby B: There's this ill-tempered hooligan with bleach-blonde hair and a scary glare who'd ride up and down the city on their blastcycle at breakneck speeds.

Passerby A: I heard that whenever they got into a fight, they'd summon a cauldron and squash their opponents flat. Aah, so scary!

Deuce: URK!

Passerby B: I haven't heard anything about them recently, but… I can't imagine such a horrible hoodlum would've been able to fix their behavior.

Passerby A: Same. It was so bad that there even was a police officer who would always go on patrol even when off-duty.

Passerby A: Anyway, they are a troublesome delinquent. You two, take care so you don't get caught in their crosshairs.

Deuce: R-Right… Thank you.

Deuce: Whew, they finally left. Those ladies were really something.

1. That story just now… 2. Was that…

Deuce: Urgh, and I was trying to change the topic…

Deuce: Well, whatever. It's just you here, anyway.

Deuce: I think the person those ladies were talking about earlier was me.

Deuce: It's been a while since I enrolled in Night Raven College, but… I'm still being talked about.

Deuce: "I can't imagine they'd be able to fix their behavior" …Hm.

1. Even though we can see that's not true.

Deuce: Are you trying to cheer me up? Thanks, [Yuu].

2. It's hard to gain people's trust.

Deuce: You're right, it's just as you say.

Deuce: …Actually, I was told the same thing just a bit ago when Ortho and I went to the workshop next door to my house.

Deuce: I guess both the people who have met me before and those who haven't don't think that I could ever have fixed myself up.

Deuce: …But I have people outside of my family that believe in me.

Deuce: Remember what those ladies said? There was a police officer who would go on patrol even when they were off-duty.

Deuce: They worked over there… In the police station across the street from the park. And for some reason, they actually looked out for me.

1. Does that person still work at that police station?

Deuce: Nah, they transferred to a different city some time ago. I hear they've climbed the ranks and is some big wig now.

2. Let's go show them how much you've changed!

Deuce: As much as I'd like to… Deuce: They transferred to a different city some time ago. I hear they've climbed the ranks and is some big wig now.

Deuce: Isn't that awesome, though!? I wish I could have said bye to them back when they transferred, but… Back then I was just too hard-headed.

Deuce: I had decided that if I ever got to meet that person again someday, I would show them just how much I had cleaned myself up…

Deuce: But it hasn't really gone as planned.

Deuce: Even today, I wanted you guys to enjoy yourselves in my hometown…

Deuce: But I don't know anything about my city, and can't even show you around properly.

Deuce: And it wasn't until Epel said that I didn't have enough pride in my hometown, that I thought I should study up on the place…

Deuce: I thought I had changed, but maybe I haven't grown up after all.

1. That's not true… 2. (I don't know what to say...)

Deuce: Sorry! I didn't mean to talk about this sort of thing when we're at a festival.

Deuce: It's almost time to meet up with everyone else. Let's head back there.

[Clock Town – Clock Park]

―After the conflict with the Black Bunnies

Deuce: Okay, then I'll go register us, so everyone wait here.

Ortho/Epel: Got it.

Silver: Right.

Grim: I'll go with you. I worry leaving it to you alone, Deuce.

1. Yeah, I agree. 2. I'll go too.

Deuce: I don't know how I feel about Grim worrying about me, but… Thanks for coming with.

Deila: The registration for the Rabbit Run Race is near the entrance to the park.

Deila: All three of you, take care over there.

Deuce: There's the entrance to the park. Uhh, let's see, where's registration…?

Grim: Isn't that it?

Deuce: You're right… EH!?

Deuce: There's a line. There's a lot more people doing this than I thought there'd be…

Deuce: Well, whatever. Let's just line up at the very back.

???: WHAT SHOULD WE DO? AT THIS RATE, WE CAN'T REGISTER FOR THE RACE!

Grim: What's goin' on?

Workshop Employee: I thought I put it in my bag, but… My rabbit ears, where could I have left them?

Workshop Owner: Rabbit ears? Oh… Do you mean the headband that was left on the 3D printer back at the workshop?

Workshop Owner: Even if we were to run back to the shop now, we won't make it back in time to register...

Workshop Owner: It's a shame, but I guess we have to give up on participating in the race this year.

Deuce: On a 3D printer in the workshop… Ah, maybe it's the one I saw when Ortho and I were working on the printer just a while ago?

Deuce: Maybe… Maybe I can help her out with magic.

Deuce: I never got to thank him for using the workshop, either… I guess I can go talk to them.

Deuce: Ah, excuse me.

Workshop Employee: Yes? …Eek, Deuce-kun!?

Workshop Owner: Now what do you want? What, are you trying to harm my employee or something?

Deuce: No, not at all! I overheard that she left her headband, and…

Deuce: I'll summon it for you with magic! That way, you can register for the race, right?

Workshop Owner: You'll summon it with magic? Can someone like you who only has the brains to cause havoc really do something like that?

Deuce: I'm not that confident, but I think I can at least summon… But I still mess that up sometimes, too… But I'm going to try!

Grim: …I don't know how good this’ll go.

Deuce: Sh-Shut it! I have to focus, so be quiet.

Deuce: [inhale, exhale] …

Deuce: COME FORTH, RABBIT EAR HEADBAND!!

[rabbit ear headband magically appears]

Deuce: It's the same design as the one I saw in the workshop earlier. That means…

1. Congrats! 2. You did it!

Deuce: Yeah! I'm so glad it worked out.

Deuce: This is your headband, right? Please accept it.

Workshop Employee: …

Grim: This lady's completely frozen in her tracks… Maybe she's terrified of you!!

Deuce: Eh!? Oh no, is it because I just suddenly called out to you? Sorry, I shouldn't have done that…

Workshop Owner: I can't believe that that Deuce just successfully summoned something, and even took care to think of my employee's feelings…

[FLASHBACK]

Deila: Hey, listen to this! Deuce has been really motivated ever since enrolling in Night Raven College.

Deila: Just the other day, he sent me a picture of a certificate that he won as an award at a track meet.

Deila: It… does look like he's having a bit of a hard time with his studies and magic, though. But he's doing is best in the only way he knows how.

Deila: And recently, he's been really considerate, saying stuff like, "Aren't you tired?" and "Don't push yourself too hard"…

Deila: Sounds like he's made some good friends, too. I'm truly happy that he's enjoying himself every single day over there.

Workshop Owner: …Looks like Deila-san was telling the truth.

Deuce: Eh? Did my mom say something?

Workshop Owner: Yeah. She said that you had a change of heart and are doing your best now.

Deuce: My mom said that…?

Workshop Owner: Honestly, I couldn't believe that you actually cleaned yourself up, no matter what Deila-san said…

Workshop Owner: You've convinced me, Deuce. Thanks to you, my coworkers and I can enter the race.

Deuce: Since I couldn't thank you earlier for letting us use your workshop… I'm glad that I was able to be of help here.

Workshop Owner: Oh, don't worry, there's still a lot that you need to pay me back for.

Workshop Owner: But for today, you did good. Hey now, you thank him, too!

Workshop Employee: …Thank you for helping me. And, sorry for being scared of you!

Deuce: And I'm sorry for suddenly calling out to you and scaring you, too.

Workshop Owner: You're going to join the race too, right? Let's all do our best!

Deuce: YES, SIR!

Deuce: I "convinced" him… Huh.

1. You did it! 2. That's great.

Deuce: Yeah. I was worried that I hadn't matured at all, but… Thanks to that, I'm feeling a bit better.

Deuce: To be perfectly honest, I planned on just coming back here by myself.

Deuce: After swinging by to see my mom and the festival real quick, I was just going to jump on my blastcycle and go for a ride.

Deuce: If you, Grim or the others hadn't come with, I don't think I would have had a chance to talk with people in town.

Deuce: So… Uh, yeah, thanks for coming here with me!

Grim: Heheh, least I could do.

Deuce: For everyone who came here with me... And also for my mom, there's no way that I can lose this race.

Deuce: We'll definitely win! [Yuu], watch me go!

Requested by Anonymous.

[bigblueoctoling]

Thoughts about Suffer No Fools/Deep Cut in general

I really dislike this whole 'shiver and frye mistreat Big Man' plotline they seem to be making with deep cut. Like, from the start they've set up that Shiver and Frye don't really appreciate Big Man, but outright having their own duo group without him just kind of feels needlessly petty. Like maybe I'm looking into this too hard, but it's also, literally the only thing one is capable of looking into with Deep Cut's canonical information. Like... Big Man is already working at a disadvantage of being a male idol who isn't humanoid, it feels kind of pointlessly cruel to pit him alone against Shiver and Frye. And it's not like Shiver or Frye are any better for it.

They keep focusing on this one trait, the fact that Shiver and Frye are very very hostile to non-splatlandians. I would love to actually enjoy Shiver and Frye being openly aggressive, that's unique for an idol's personality, but rather than feeling tough, they just feel pathetic, trying way way way too hard to look intimidating.

Again, this isn't necessarily the fault of any particular writing of Deep Cut, but rather the complete and utter lack of any meaningful lore about them.

The squid sisters are hard-carried in the personality department; they get the entirety of Splatoon 1, 2, and 3's story mode to show off their personalities.

Off the Hook started out less interesting than the Squid Sisters, since they had to rely on newscasts, but even before Octo Expansion, the fact that Marina was an Octarian was an obvious huge deal from the moment she was revealed, with the splatfests revealing the gravity of Marina's abilities. Of course, then Octo Expansion happened- Octo Expansion feels very directly like it was created for the express purpose of fleshing out Pearl and Marina to make up for them not being in the main story mode. And of course we have Side Order that just doubles down on developing them.

Deep Cut's inclusion in Splatoon 3's story is just like. The most obligatory presence possible. Somehow, despite having direct boss fights, they leave absolutely zero impact whatsoever- it doesn't help that they don't sing their boss music, but they're also just there for no reason to steal "Treasures"- completely nondescript objects of no apparent value whatsoever that have no particular meaning to Deep Cut. No elaboration is given as to why Deep Cut wants this treasure in particular- Alterna is fucking littered with human technology that's infinitely more valuable than a bunch of random metal scraps. There are giant 3D printers just sitting around. And their dialogue is just... complete nothing. As stock as possible, there's nothing to gleam about any of their relationships from anything. Like...

A small aside: The reason why Squid Sisters and Off the Hook are such interesting groups is because of their group dynamic. Callie and Marie have a very deep bond that gets tested and validated after their separation, and Pearl and Marina are just a perfect duo. I'm not even a big shipper type of person but their relationship is so wonderful to see. But what even is Deep Cut's relationship? They're friends? With the way Shiver and Frye treat Big Man it feels like their entire relationship is pure business, and it's honestly more depressing than anything else.

Anyways, getting back to Deep Cut in the story mode, they say one unique piece of information about them- that they do this to help people who are suffering.

This is a fantastic direction to take Deep Cut, and would make their hostility towards inkopolis feel much more cathartic and justified.

They literally never mention it again or elaborate on it any further. Why? What are they even referring to? Poverty? Octarian oppression? General social imbalance?

The lack of elaboration about why Shiver and Frye are so prideful and so hostile, and what sort of suffering they care about, really stands out to me in Suffer No Fools.

Suffer No Fools feels like Shiver and Frye just aimlessly attacking strangers they're completely out of their depth with. The only thing we know Shiver and Frye care about is helping the misfortunate.

With that being the case, Off The Hook are literally the last people on the entire planet you should want to start beef with, even if it's just play-fighting- and in realizing this, I've realized something else about Off The Hook and Deep Cut:

Off The Hook already fills Deep Cut's niche.

Like... Pearl and Marina are the perfect duo in terms of representing social progress. Marina obviously has a very personal reason to care about impoverished octarians- she was one of them, she fought to get to the surface. Pearl, on the other hand, is the perfect emblem of an inkling, extremely privileged due to being born into great generational wealth. However, after meeting Marina, Pearl decided to put her all into using her privilege to elevate Marina's voice as much as possible. And, in doing this, creating Off the Hook, they have had a very real, tangible impact on the acceptance of Octarians on the surface. And this isn't even touching on Octo Expansion- they go out of their way to save Eight, of course, but since then, Marina put her everything into figuring out a way to save the sanitized octarians stranded in Kamabo Co.

Meanwhile, Deep Cut's actual contributions are left entirely unelaborated and unspecified. No known efforts to figure out anything about the Mammalian octarians, literally not a word spared about them.

What the fuck do they have to be proud for? What have they ever done for anyone? All I see are some stuck up egomaniacs who have no respect for anyone who isn't an asset in getting them more money. It honestly feels less like Shiver and Frye are these charitable robin hood figures and more like that was a lie to cover their asses.

...And, of course, I expect this to change in the next Splatoon game. It would be unthinkable for Deep Cut to just have no relevance again after getting nothing in this game. This is a very pessimistic outlook on Deep Cut. But they've given me absolutely nothing to work with, it's difficult to think that characters are good people if you only ever show them being unjustifiably hostile and greedy.

It just sucks. Shiver and Frye are my favorite idol designs, but they're constantly made out to be so fucking lame, and not even in an "underdog group of failures that cares about eachother" sort of way because EVERY DEEP CUT THING HAS TO BE THEMED ABOUT HOW DEEP CUT HATES BIG MAN AND EVERYONE ELSE.

[ponyguru]

The only sour note in today's excitement at the doll show was finding out that my 'starter BJD' I bought was in fact bought from Amazon from a company known for recasting, aka art theft. Like, IDK if the seller realized it was such a bad thing... but the way she phrased it was that SHE made the dolls (???), so I sort of assumed that she was an artist who worked with a casting company, or owned a 3D printer, or something? (I mean for all I know she could be an artist who contracts with a recasting company!) Literally my first question was, 'how can you offer these so cheap?' and she came back with 'well, I make them so I set the price!' And I guess from that I should have assumed she's actually a drop-shipper? :/ So idk if she's a scammer or just unclear, but either way I was not told the company name when I bought the doll. It wasn't until I saw the box (after I paid when the seller was packing up the doll) that I realized how cheap it looked, and red flags started going up. When I got her home and saw the Amazon sticker on the bottom of the box, I was like, ohhhh no.

So that was a big shame!! I can clock a knockoff MLP from a mile off, but I've only ever purchased one artist resin head, and admired BJDs from afar due to price and space. So finding a vinyl doll, which I know should be cheaper than resin even if it's legit, didn't immediately send up any red flags. I should be excited to have my very first full doll (wow!), but I know instead it comes with this huge headache. Urgh!

Anyway, I know there were a lot of young people at the show, and at least one of the other three dolls sold; I wonder if they were BJD noobs too, and didn't realize that they weren't getting a legit doll, or how recasts are viewed within that community? How would one even tactfully warn off someone from buying a recast? And I also wonder if because it's not a BJD specific event, if there's just no oversight to ensure that recasts aren't sold? I only saw one other booth with BJDs, but I think they were in a different room - and what could they do, even?

I'm still going to try and enjoy her, but it might take a couple days to shake off this funk. It just sucks that I can't just post photos of her without some kind of disclaimer, you know? Like, hey I know recasting is bad, I just didn't immediately assume this lady was lying, my bad!! She's cute but please don't buy one! :P

[dragon-in-a-fez]

I saw the post you did a while back about the electronic dice (firstly, super awesome and I love the way you got the random seeds).

I'm a computer science student but for the most part I only really do software. I have a raspberry pi pico and a breadboard but I've never been able to make it do more than light an LED, and I didn't understand how *that* worked. How do you get into that sort of thing? Or what was your path at least?

I started with software too, then I learned a bunch about mechanical and electrical stuff working on my car, and putting them together was kind of the obvious next step after that.

my early arduino projects were WS2812 LED things and simple single-motor contraptions. then in covid lockdown I built a 3D printer and my tinkering obsession amped up by several orders of magnitude.

[gemmahale]

Gemma's NaClYoHo 2024

I had too much free time on my hands this morning and I wanted a repository for all the posts I make beyond just scrolling the hashtag #Gemma's NaClYoHo.

What is NaClYoHo? National Clean Your House month. Spearheaded by @copperbadge, the intent is to do something for your household - chores, tasks, even life-related things like calling for appointments - every day of the month of November.

In Sam's words:

The goal of "NaClYoHo" is not actually to end up with a clean home; it's to spend the month of November addressing what you’d like to change about your living space.

For Kallen and I, a lot of this is going to be the maintenance tasks we've put off around the house. Being full time employed (me) and self-employed and disabled (him), a lot of things have been pushed off to "later." And later has become now.

There will be routine tasks sprinkled in here too (laundry, dishes, gathering trash, etc). We're making a wish list of things to purchase to improve spaces (shelves, bins, etc.) and will add those in as budget allows.

We're listening to the podcast Victoria's Lift while we do things. (Unless it's too loud, in which case...tbd.) I'm excited, because it's just enough spoop to keep me intrigued but not enough to wig me out. The podcast's description:

Part Twilight Zone but wholly unique, Victoria's Lift is an ongoing audio drama featuring a mysterious girl who guides visitors to their transformations. A dark place whose original luster is now lost to time, the unlikely, old Victorian building sits overlooked by most on the edge of Pittsburgh. Originally built as a luxury residence for some of the city’s most well to do residents, it now serves a different purpose. Within its dilapidated walls sits Victoria's Lift. Step inside and ride it to the floor chosen for your transformation.

But I'd really like to see:

Appliance maintenance performed

The garage I park my car in sorted

The kitchen functional and organized

The depot (Kallen's shop) functional - front half minimum

The storage space/laundry room downstairs better organized

My future office cleared and ready for furniture

Kallen's office reorganized

Kallen's printer room (idk what we're calling this room; it's half storage half 3D printer stuff) sorted

General house pick-up (this is mostly on me, the yarnie lol)

My yarn all catalogued and sorted (this one's an ambitious one)

The Daily Posts!

Day 1 - No post, rest (we didn't get home until after 8pm and were exhausted) Day 2 - laundry, dishwasher, trash, picking up Day 3 - Rest (I got my vaxxes and I went down like a rock) Day 4 - Laundry Day 5 - Bust. Day 6 - Emotional resting Day 7 - Waiting Day 8 - Grief Day 9 - Shopping Day 10 - Shelf building in laundry room Day 11 - Veteran's Day Day 12 - All day seminar Day 13 - Incoming

[mr-geargrinder]

Today is apparently Goop Dice Defect Day!

I've got my new 3d printer up and running properly now, and while cleaning up to test some new prints, I discovered a leaky purple die. This one was already set to the side because of some clear coat issues, but I discovered it had been printed with some delamination pin-hole gaps along the numbering. This was probably from one of the last batches I printed when the Mars 2 Pro was already having a pretty rough time. I tried to toss all the ones with obvious lamination issues, and this is exactly why!

It only took the slightest bit of pressure with a hobby knife to split the whole thing into two pieces. When a print gets any sort of defect like that, its just trash. Not even worth salvaging because there's no way to fix it or restore any sort of strength to the print once that that happens.

The second set was a hot car test. I've got a friend who lives in one of those terrible hellstates where it's normally over 100°F or worse. He feared that if he ordered a pair of goop dice from me that they would explode while sitting in the carrier's truck. So I took it upon myself to test that problem.

I do not live in a terrible hellstate, but today's temp readings say it's 93°F, but feels like 100. I threw a pair on my dashboard, in the direct sun, doors closed, windows up. An hour later, they had exploded. Not just cracked, but burst open. They were also extremely hot to the touch because they probably reached or got pretty close to boiling, I'd imagine.

This is obviously a more extreme circumstance, but one I would do need to consider, either way. I don't foresee too many people leaving their dice on the hot dash in the middle of an extremely hot summer day, but if they do get left in a bag in a car or in the back of an infamously hot delivery truck, this is still a possible problem that needs addressing. Plus I've gotta worry about what might happen in the opposite situation when it gets too cold!

Fortunately, the Mars 5 Ultra is up and running with a new build plate and that means I can run off test prints much more quickly and hopefully have a workable solution to the problem much sooner.

[donnerpartyofone]

In 10+ years of active job hunting, all of the interviews I have had are:

I applied for an assistant role at this hip-sounding consultancy and I got through several rounds of scrutiny with an HR person who seemed convinced I would get the job. Finally I booked an interview with the actual boss, and the second it started everything fell apart. I had an initial technical problem with the video call and that didn't look good, but there was already a bigger issue: She immediately started shouting at me for wasting her time because I had made a mildly self-deprecating joke to the HR person (it had to do with my work with horror media which is not to everyone's taste). She was yelling and yelling about how you NEVER, EVER SAY ANYTHING NEGATIVE ABOUT YOURSELF EVER, WHY WOULD YOU EVER, EVER SAY ANYTHING CRITICAL ABOUT YOURSELF EVER. Then she sort of parlayed that into interrogating me about my goals in life, with the implication that I must not have any. It was apparent to me that she knew before we even started that she was never going to hire me because she felt that I had shown weakness to the enemy basically, and I can only assume she booked the interview because she enjoys torturing vulnerable strangers, but it was very shocking in any case.

I applied to be a production coordinator at this startup founded by one of these guys with more money than things to do. They were supposed to make, like...inventions? This is a somewhat aspirational description: They had an early 3D printer and the idea was that citizens would send in their invention ideas and the company would print and sell them. They'd had moderate success with kind of a modular power strip, and I guess they just assumed ideas like that would keep coming. The interview lasted 4 or 5 hours. I was sent into a little windowless room where I was interviewed by one person at a time for a very long time. The first guy was this zany douchebag who bombarded me with problems to solve: WHAT IF A GUY CALLS AND SAYS HE CAN'T SEND HIS INVENTION BECAUSE DOESN'T HAVE A SCANNER? WELL WHAT IF HE DOESN'T HAVE A CAMERA? WELL WHAT IF HE HAS NO COMPUTER? WELL WHAT IF THERE'S NO LIBRARY NEAR HIM? WELL WHAT IF THERE'S NO POST OFFICE? WELL WHAT IF HE CAN'T WRITE OR DRAW? WELL WHAT IF HE CAN'T DESCRIBE IT? COME ON! YOU GOTTA THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX YOU GOTTA THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX YOU GOTTA THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX!!! The second guy was a sad sack manager who was subtly venting about how his staff didn't like him. The third guy was this chick who was openly throwing mad shade on the second guy, while also insulting me to my face. I forget who even else there was. It was like a police interrogation, by the fourth hour I didn't even know what I was saying anymore. I'm sure I would have confessed to murder. A month or two later I noticed I had all these voicemails my shitty phone never surfaced from the company trying desperately to hire me, but it was sort of a dodged bullet because they folded shortly after that.

I got a call back for an archivist position at a radio station. I only realized after the fact that due to being a humongous dumbass, my cover letter addressed the wrong company--a more popular station with a similar acronym--but I actually don't think that was the problem. The conversation was pleasant but I didn't have the exact technical abilities they wanted; they would have been willing to train me if they couldn't find anyone else, but that's not what happened.

At this point I'm really freaking out. I don't have the resources to go back to school or whatever and I'm not convinced that getting a degree or certification in a useful trade would really allow me to beat other candidates who are younger, more experienced, and with a more normal work/education history. Actually I DID get a certification in what I thought would be a useful trade before I even quit my old job to avoid drinking myself to death, but I've never gotten a call back for any relevant jobs--surely because I don't have any practical experience, it's all classroom shit and I'm not exactly internship material. Right when I quit my job I saw a career counselor, and I also worked with this corporate climber ex-colleague who gave me a lot of resume and cover letter advice, but none of that has made a difference. Recently a friend got my resume to his recruiter, he blew all this smoke up my ass about how great my resume is and how if I don't hear from the recruiter it's because she's a flake, and I really had to hold my temper because there is such abundant evidence that the problem is ME. I mean only psychos even call me back and most of them weren't interested anyway. I think unemployment is not available to me since I wasn't laid off or fired. I don't really know how temp agencies work, and I seem to have a lot of inconvenient handicaps, like I cannot do basic math, it seems pretty pathological. I don't really know how anything works, obviously.

I'm in this position because I thought preserving my mental health was more important than my job, and I foolishly assumed "something would work out" even though I had been looking for a new job almost that whole time. Also I followed a lot of well-meaning and extremely bad advice about "following my dreams" or whatever, which I actually had some unique and amazing opportunities to do--I mean if I didn't take them then I would still be wondering what-if--but I should have known never to take a chance on myself like that. I could, if I really wanted to, blame my family for not teaching me anything about real life, but the truth is that following dreams has paid off big time for every single person in our orbit except for me, so it's hard to fault people for just repeating what is personally true for them. I mean it's frustrating when someone asks you why you're looking for a job when you should just go get a book deal instead (!), but just because we're from the same family doesn't mean we're from the same planet. It's nobody's fault for assuming good things about me (although it does make me mad that they still won't face reality and everyone just thinks I'm "not trying"). But now I'm in danger and it's been coming for years, for most of my life in a way, and I don't know what to do. I apply for everything, but I look overqualified for the small things I might actually be able to do, and the jobs I do look qualified for won't give me a second look because I'm not THAT qualified really (and/or the market is flooded with people like me). I feel like I've hit up all the professional help I can find. Is there like...some sort of, I don't know what, psychologist that specializes in telling you how to get a job? I just don't know. HMU if you are able to explain to me what a job is and how to get one.

(That's mostly a rhetorical question unless you literally have specialized insider knowledge or your NYC-based boss is hiring or something. Please bear in mind that I am a middle-aged adult and I know how e.g. LinkedIn works. I have been using job boards extensively and elaborately for more than 15 years. As per my thesis, I have consulted many professional experts already. Please don't do the equivalent of reading someone's post wondering about something, and sending them a Wikipedia link to the topic like they've never heard of that before. Just please don't. I shouldn't have to say this but I know that I do.)

[hackedmotionsensors]

i didn't reblog the post but I do agree that the terminology for zines has gotten completely twisted.

ON THE OTHER HAND I don't think that selling them for say 20$ (which is what i sell my sketchbooks for) is unreasonable or unfair to still call a zine. I need to cover my costs of printing and the time I put into putting them together. yeah I can TECHNICALLY get a printer and print them myself but with the cost of printer ink and the lack of space its easier for me to just pay for someone to do it professionally but I'm also NOT making them at like....the HIGHEST QUALITY, LIBRARY BOUND, HARD COVER, IT COMES WITH A THOUSAND DOO DADS AND GIFTS. its just sketchbooks ofpreviously existing doodles and a few new sketches or sketches that I had before and colored in. Its essentially like selling a full print but in carryable size with some notes from me.

Its a zine but I call it a sketchbook because the idea of zines has changed for a lot of consumers. Thats not their fault bc those zines or anthologies DID start out in the "lets make a big ol book together because we are all horny for Reigen" kind of thing. A lot of times they're projects made from passion. I HAVE noticed that there's been a turn in the whole process of making them that both stresses out artists, requires kickstarters, and all sorts of shit that should be considered Artbooks. ARTBOOKS have always been on the higher end of things. There's nothing wrong with considering an anthology thats proper bound, and for a certain amount on a kickstarter you get extra things like stickers, charms, whatever.

But zines SHOULD go back to being simple little things. The cost to buy them shouldn't be lost UNLESS the artist wants it to be. If you print at home or using a schools printer and just print a bunch of cute little zines yourself then that should also exist and you can set your price point for whatever you want.

Its all semantics and personal preference at the end of the day but I do think that...yknow it wouldn't hurt if we could start calling the big project 50$ range books that often get run into the ground from bad leadership (or fun stuff like the organizer of the thing runs off with the money to play genshin) ...something other than zine. Like Artbook or Anthology. Or even Collection lol

Zine should be a small thing that you collect for fun and doesn't require a committee, a new discord channel, and a contract to make sure your organizer doesn't run off to play gacha (I'm sorry it still makes me laugh)

ALSO another thing about zines is that often times they were originally made to be alternatives to really closed minded book sellers. Like...its where a lot of the OG star trek fanfic/porn came from. Its a place to have your ideas put down. To explore narratives. Essentially Doujinshi can also be considered A TYPE of zine in that it literally means self published (not NECCESSARILY that its...yknow...bl or waifu porn lol Sometimes its just manga that artists put out before they can get published)

But lately there are a lot of zine projects (again...more actually like anthologies or art collections) that are REALLY REALLY closed minded even when the subject is SHIPPING.

So even the nature of CREATING the zines has changed a lot.

So yeah I agree with that post that I forgot to reblog. My only REAL gripe is that it doesn't mean that you should undercharge your work because you didn't print your zine at home or hand craft it like a youtube diy video. I did enough of that at art school I am not gonna bind a book or try to cut pages ever again if i don't have to lmao. CSP even has a zine preview so I can see the pages in 3d as if they were bound before printing lol

[nukenai]

So here's a TW for discussing a (year old) pet death but this story will just never get old for me.

On November 29th of last year, I had my dog Striker put down. He was old and I'd had him since he was a puppy, so it was hard, but he was also special needs on a level that far exceeds any human tolerance for Dog Problems (he had severe and random aggression issues, among 50 other things), so it was an interesting sort of feeling. It feels insensitive to say it was a relief but it was for both of us. He had been getting ill, so. Of course I miss the big guy, but man.

So I was pretty bummed out all day. I was texting my sister about stuff and she asked if I wanted to come over to hang out, and avoid some bummers. I said sure, since it's always fun to hang at her place.

So she's working on assembling her new 3D printer, and I start scrolling twitter. I see people hooting and hollering about something. I check the trending stuff, I see "THE BITCH FINALLY DIED". And I'm like, what bitch? Someone died? My sister goes "uhoh".

I look it up.

I cannot believe it.

I raise my wide eyes to my sister. I have a huge smile on my face.

"Henry Kissinger died."

WE STARTED FUCKING SCREAMING. WE COULD NOT BELIEVE IT. HOLY FUCK.

So then the joke started that Striker took Kissinger with him. He dragged him to hell and his punishment is to take care of Striker for all of eternity.

So it's sad that I lost my dog of 14 years. But we had 14 whole years together. That's a lot more than a lot of people get with their dogs.

But holy shit, how fucking funny. A day that will live in infamy for so many reasons.

[ssspringroll]

may I ask what kind of stuff do you knit?

ahh i knit all sorts of stuff, but mostly hats and socks! they're easy cuz they usually only take 1 ball of yarn to complete, so i dont have to stress about whether or not i'll have enough yarn lol

ill actually toss some photos under the cut ^^

(a sock before and after finishing (this was machine knit on a ~80s flatbed knitting machine))

(my favorite hat before i sewed the patches on lol, i dont seem to have a photo now that it's all finished (hand knit))

(a very open and boho cardigan thing i dyed myself (hand knit))

(fingerless gloves (machine knit))

(this is technically crochet, but potholders i made for my mom (tunisian crochet))

(this is also crochet but i love the way it came out so i have to include it lol (crochet))

(this is my favoriteeee shawl EVER it's a very similar stitch to the cardigan up there, but it's part alpaca so its so so warm despite being open and airy (hand knit))

Honestly that's just a very very small sample, most of my pictures are scattered about in places that are harder to track down lol

but i do have a blog specifically for posting yarncrafts, @catboymeowmeow

ALSO i have hand knit socks, and i am actually currently in the process of hand knitting some now, but i only seem to have pics of my machine knit ones. ALSO 'machine knitting' isn't like, say, a 3d printer, where you type in 'sock' and press go and it knits one. nah. it's much closer to like, a sewing machine. it makes the stitches, but you still have to do a lot of work with manipulating stitches and fixing mistakes and doing math and getting good tension and also it's kind of an arm workout lol. people hear 'machine' and think its effortless, but nope! it's actually a very labor-intensive process. I actually have some live streams archived here if anyone wants to see what machine knitting a sock is like

[rametarin]

A thought

Cybernetics and 3d printing and regenerative medicine are going to overlap in a way that some may consider disgusting, but is actually absolutely fantastic.

Okay, so. Currently, we grow agricultural animals for food, and byproducts, like wool. Be it sheep wool, alpaca wool, llama wool, cow leather, horn, etc.

We do not currently farm some animals, despite their superior quality, because doing so is difficult. Like spiders for silk. Yes we do have silkworms and things, but it's not the same.

Nature and animals have manufactured exotic things just as a consequence of adaptation and survival for hundreds of millions of years, and some extremophiles have devised strategies that fit into nature yet offered absolutely surreal amounts of mastery over any given thing. Be it gecko feet being adhesive free super sticky pads, or camouflage, or what have you, or the strongest teeth in nature belonging to a SNAIL.

And they don't use exotic ingredients; they just use common everyday basic minerals and ways to express them at ultrafine molecular levels that make them biologically. So.. It stands to reason, someone that can organize and program proteins and cultures of meat, could program structures to grow these things in controlled conditions.

If you're not picking up what I'm putting down here, I think we're going to have 3d printers that use animal proteins as a base in a chemical nutrient sludge to start them, and then grow those special parts of an animal like they're on a mutant specimen that just so happens to only be, for example, a sheep's skin. So you grow these absolutely enormous sheets of wool uniformly without the necessity of taking care of hundreds of sheep.

Now, logically there's no need for that; you're fighting with agriculture for blankets and shit. Unless you're a psychotic vegan trying to crash the natural grown wool market and ruin profit margins for sheep herders, there are so many better, more exotic and difficult to acquire things you COULD be doing with the technology. For example, you could have the 3D bio-printer make snake venom to make antivenins. You could have this synthetic pit made of viper DNA that is just a gigantic venom gland, literally producing as much venom as the entire family of snakes produce in a year, or have ever produced since nature gave us snake with venom as a defense mechanism.

Isn't that fucking wild?

Or how about an entire tunnel lined with bacteria and acid producing pumps leading to an enormous series of artificial bowels that do nothing but turn food waste into forms of methane that can be sequestered and made useful, dealing with the problem of breaking down bio-matter without intense heat, fires, smoke, or atmospheric contaminants? Dealing with every bit of garbage for unutilized calories and preventing it from just producing millions of tons of methane in a landfill, which pound for pound/kilogram for kilogram can be worse for the atmosphere and the environment than millions of cars on the road? Because organic structures made to exist independent of an animal could do that.

In theory there'd be no biohazard elements, it'd be as dangerous as having a goat die. Yes there's some risk of bacteria and shit, but. it's just a dead body, not a nuclear wasteland.

And speaking of nuclear wasteland; What about artificially generated biological containers for bacteria that consume radioactivity? Imagine some sort of techo-organic GI tract that could consume the Elephants Foot faster than that bacteria have eaten it where it currently lays in Chernobyl. Nuclear waste that would've taken tens of thousands of years, or centuries after vitrification, gone in months.

Organic 3d printing is so much more than just the ability to rapidly fabricate cloned hearts, nerves or any other organ.

[insipid-drivel]

Your follow-up to the horse info post is just as good as the first one, and I offer a sincere thanks because those sorts of posts take forever, and are a lot of work.

But the reason I’m sending this is because of the joy of seeing the horsey prosthetics. I was aware that injury didn’t and doesn’t mean instant euthanasia, but I didn’t know what advances had been made and it’s a lovely thing to be able to help a friend live their best life.

For instances where euthanasia is the only course of action, would that be something like a horse has sustained a break that has gone septic in a time prior to antibiotics? So the horse would likely die anyway and it would be more humane to put it down than to let nature run its course, I’m thinking. Or is that completely wrong?

Thanks again for all of the hard work you put into these posts and answers!

Eugh, infections are a really horrible and scary part of horse health crisis management, because they can be very touch-and-go depending on where the actual infection is and how early it's treated with antibiotics. Once sepsis has taken hold, there usually isn't a lot modern medicine can do but try to provide comfort measures through medications, and pump the horse with large-bore doses of IV antibiotics, stress-reducing medications to keep them from panicking and their bodies from working too hard, and fluids while hoping the immune system is still strong enough to put the antibiotics to use and win against a case of sepsis. Sometimes, the bacterial load in the body is just too much or the infection has caused irreparable damage to a critical organ like the heart, and there isn't any other way to show the animal mercy but to euthanize. Most cases of sepsis, before death, result in a comatose state before the body completely shuts down from multiple organ failure, and it's an extremely miserable way to die. So yes, when euthanasia is discussed with horses, it's primarily when there is nothing else that can be done to make the horse's quality of life better while its suffering is only going to get worse (usually resulting in death) regardless of veterinary science or a limitless budget.

The problem with antibiotics in general is that they take time to work. If you've ever been miserable from something like a UTI or a chest infection, you know waiting 2-3 days for oral antibiotics to fully kick in sucks (IV antibiotics tend to work much faster, but still take a bit of time to reach full potency), because the infection is still there and causing intense pain and discomfort. The reason it takes so long is because antibiotics stimulate an immune system into going ham on an infection and destroying it. If there isn't enough time, or the immune system is already shot, then antibiotics may not be enough. End-stage or late-stage sepsis in pretty much any mammal is pretty much gonna be deadly, because sepsis is commonly called "blood poisoning" and kills by causing multiple essential organs to stop working in rapid succession - brain, heart, liver, lungs, etc. - like fairy lights on a string going out one by one after the first light fails. "Too far gone" happens, and that's when euthanasia becomes an open subject, because there's nothing left to anticipate for the animal but more suffering before they're going to die of their infection/injury.

Good vets will ALWAYS try to fight until the bitter end to provide options and other forms of intervention in saving an animal's life from disease or injury, but they also are specifically trained to know when a situation is just too beyond what they're capable of addressing and when continuing to try to treat an animal is only going to prolong its suffering before it inevitably succumbs to death. That's why prosthetics are becoming a thing for horses now! The cost of 3D printers have been going down, more designs for prosthetics are being published, and better materials are being employed for optimal horse comfort and recovery. Most injuries that result in a disabled leg in horses are caught and treated rapidly by owners and vet teams with no serious infections setting in, and so the main reason euthanasia has been employed for leg breaks and cases of amputation was more for preventing the horse from suffering without a mobility aid or prosthetic. Now, humans are catching up and figuring out what materials and structural designs work best in prostheses for horses, and we're seeing a huge increase in cases of horses surviving and living long, happy lives even after losing a leg!

[interdimensionalburnout]

@geminidoomed Okay so!

Saintworks offers a sorta complex pricing plan with our vending machines. There's a communal kitty, where the users of the paid services can cough up some extra cash into a big fund (that Saintworks will match at double), and I use that to keep the prices equitable.

Basically, if I have to charge for it, like guns and certain pieces of gear, the fund helps make it so people aren't being gouged by the markets. Because the free market is a fringe market made up of secondhand goods like that.

Except, right, I've been doing a separate nation-building thing where UBI has been a big smash-hit, also.

At the intersection of these accessible vending machines, their pay-what-you-can models, and Bandame's Universal Basic Income, there's a sort of... advanced 3D printer I could be offering the people of the planet. Something that would -if we could work out the logistics, which are daunting- turn my extremely hostile, anarchic hellworld into a post-scarcity, extremely hostile, anarchic hellworld.

Some of the other Hermes I've talked to have experimented with the kind of tech we'd need before, even.

[smoqueen]

Hey, congrats on your wins! How does one even get into combat robotics stuff? I know programming but not much electronics. Is it mostly a college team thing, or do I just sort of build a 'bot and show up to a tourney? Good luck in future rounds!

many get started in high school or college, academic clubs - i did not, when i attempted in high school they made it very clear i would never work on the team and that i would be making posters etc.

you just build a bot and show up. i “just showed up” to these tournies because my brother got me into it “seriously” and he has a 3d printer for our TPU bots.

there are kits available to start!! not only are the kits very effective and relatively cheap, but they have dedicated communities who will help you set everything up, and troubleshoot, etc. they are relatively modular -

Mako’s second iteration (brothers bot) was a modified kit. the chassis, motors and batteries all stayed the same - wheels too - and we added our own fork configuration. special new armor, and a movable servo arm with a sawblade spinning on the end. but it was still “born” from a kit.

1lb weight class fights are very accessible too. i don’t know what competitions are near you but they tend to also be very spectator friendly and EVERYONE is very willing to talk, teach and help you get into it