#new thread cause the old one was getting tedious

[polrification]

"Why do birds fly?" -Kevin Kaslana

[catalists]

Chrome’s shadowgast fic rec list, vol 1

Well, well, well, if it isn’t the consequences of my own obsession with wizards. I might make another one of these eventually if y’all keep churning out absolute bangers, but in the meantime, here is a list of my top Shadowgast fic recs.

One rule here: I’m limiting this to one fic per author--but many people on this list have a broader oeuvre you should definitely check out.

Your disclaimer: this is not a full literature review, but rather my personal favorites. Caveat lector!

* = fic is rated M or E

sleeping in the shadow of an other self by nonwal | @nonwal

Essek has a moment to consider that gravity-based trust exercises have never worked for him, and then the spell hits. He leans back into it, falls, falls.

(In which Essek is resurrected by the Mighty Nein and framed for innocence.)

Okay, listen. If you haven’t read it yet, you’re missing out. There’s a reason it’s at the top of the list. 30k of absolutely phenomenal characterization of not only Shadowgast but all the M9 and the coolest plot to ever plot. Not only a fantastic first read, but a phenomenal re-read as well.

multitudinous echoes awoke and died in the distance by mousecookie | @ariadne-mouse

Caleb takes a step forward and stumbles.  As he catches himself he realizes something very odd.  His hands are shadowy and translucent.  His whole body is a shadow, in fact.  If he holds his palm up to the sky, he can see the stars twinkling faintly through it.

Sharp talons of panic dig into his chest.  He feels solid - if he grabs his own wrist, he has mass, but it is wrong.  Everything is wrong.  What is happening?

Prepare Fireball, commands a voice in his head.  

The voice is familiar.  

It takes him a moment to realize it’s familiar because it’s his.

An absolutely fabulous pre-relationship fic, written before the end of the show but you wouldn’t know it from how perfectly it nails the dynamic. Ariadne has written a ton of other fabulous Shadowgast fics and I encourage you to read them all--I’m just limiting this list to one fic per author to try and cover more ground.

Great Minds by bluebirdsongs

Essek uses more high-level dunamancy in battle, and Caleb tries to reverse-engineer it when he can't sleep. AKA What if we were both wizards and I cast Tether Essence on us to save your life?

This is a gorgeous fic, both for how it handles Caleb and Essek’s conversation--with profound deftness--and for the treatment of magic-as-math. A beautiful exploration of both dunamancy and Caleb and Essek.

to make a cradle of your palm* by renquise

Essek offers Caleb his spellbook, open to the page of a new spell.

As Caleb suspected, his adaptation of Essek's gravity spell was different in its conception, for all that the result was the same. The architecture of this similar spell speaks of a different thought process, a different set of basic assumptions. It is beautifully engineered, efficient in its use of components and energy: a simple spell requiring only a length of silk thread and yet capable of reaching over a great distance and causing great damage, if applied with intent to harm.

“If you would like, you can, ah. You may—" Essek gestures at his own throat, a quick, inelegant spread of fingers. "Test the application of pressure that the spell exerts."

It takes Caleb a moment to register what Essek is proposing. He is a delicate speaker, as always.

Oh man, this one just goes for the jugular (ha) in the most perfect way. The prose here, like everything renquise writes, is absolutely masterful, and the tension between Caleb and Essek is exquisitely rendered.

fist-fighting with fire just to get close to you by kaeda | @the-kaedageist

Caleb caught Essek’s eye across the dome, and Essek returned his small smile. “It would seem that it is trickier than expected to keep things on a…private channel,” Essek thought at him.

“Unfortunately,” Caleb replied.

“Unfortunately for all of us,” Fjord interjected.

(Spoilers for campaign 2, episode 138)

Kate has a fabulous gift for getting the Mighty Nein’s voices exactly right, and this fic is no exception. This takes the hive mind/telepathy of the eyes to its hilarious, heart-warming, logical conclusion and it’s an absolute joy to read.

(perhaps i may) elaborate by demonstration* by marsastronomica | @marsastronomica

After the second fight, they rest again. There’s still time left in the day, and they may as well push as far as they can. Essek and Caleb find time between action to talk. And negotiate.

This one is an absolute banger. The flirting! The tension! The incredible intense game of chicken that Essek and Caleb are playing this whole fic...it’s amazing, you can hear the dialogue in their voices, this is another one that I read and then had to tell everyone about. And now I’m telling you about. Go read it, it kicks ass.

I’ve been lost before (and I’m lost again, I guess)* by toneofjoy

Caleb has plans to take down his old coaches. Essek has secrets. They climb rocks, make new friends, explore professional boundaries, learn about consequences, and maybe even fall in love. It’s the Shadowgast climbing AU.

AUs can be a tough sell for me, but this one’s not. Half the joy in this is the fabulously vivid world that is built by the author who absolutely knows the ins and outs of competitive climbing and expertly shares it with the reader. The other half is the beautiful growing relationship between Caleb and Essek, which is a consistent joy to read. It’s still a WIP, but I promise it’s worth reading along.

the other things that make us* by saturday_sky | @saturdaysky

Essek returns, when he can, to the sanctuary of Caleb's home. The peace of it is a balm against the tedious peril of the road, which has more misery to share than Essek had ever thought. It's nice to have a place where he can lose himself: in a book, in arcane study, in the confusing allure of Caleb's smile.

It's nice. And the cats miss him, Caleb says.

[First chapter is a complete story. Second chapter will be a follow-up epilogue to it.]

This one hurts in the best possible way. I can’t highlight my favorite bits without giving it away, but the emotional beats of this absolutely beautiful post-canon fic are top-notch and the reveal of information is perfectly executed.

darkness to me is only water to the sea by treeviality

Essek knows how his story ends. There is a place in Rexxentrum where executions are carried out, wooden steps leading up to a wooden platform. There hangs a noose, swaying lightly in northern wind, while polished cobblestones shine bright in golden light.  

There will be birds, Essek imagines, and when the lever is pulled and gravity takes hold of him one last time, he hopes they take flight.

This now-AU take on Essek being arrested is lyrical and beautiful and the author has a tremendous grasp of language and also how to rip your heart straight out of your chest and then gently replace it.

---

And, if you’re still looking for fic, I have a few, but one of my favorites is:

we never do go over (we always gotta go through) by Chrome

In the last fight with the Tombtakers, Essek Thelyss bends reality to keep them all alive and pays the price. As he copes with the aftereffects of his own magic and the party takes the long journey back to the surface, Essek and Caleb finally confront what they are to each other.

or,

Five times Essek woke up with level(s) of exhaustion and one time he didn't.

[lightneverfades]

What if Variant Loki meets Variant Tony Stark after the timelines diverge, creating a new universe? And Tony is brought in to assist Loki with fixing the timelines?

More posts here <3

“You’ve captured Stark then,” Loki narrowed his eyes, his voice lacking any emotion, or so one would have thought as the Asgardian King stood before.

Looming behind King Loki was a green eyed Tony Stark, fully entranced under the god’s spell. A stream of emerald green magic trailed around his pupils, and although his lips were twisted into a smile, the emotion did not reach his eyes.

“And you’ve managed to escape... how tedious,” King Loki drawled, looking almost bored. With an exasperated sigh, he turned to look behind his shoulders at the spellbound man, and that was when a small smile took its shape. Both dopplegangers caught sight of each other and the tension was thick in the air.

Variant Loki raised an eyebrow, “I thought you said you were going to trick him, not bind him to you. That was the plan, no?” 

King Loki chuckled, “Yes, but then things change.”

“Really? I don’t see why you needed to? I save your realm, and you leave me to escape the TVA. That was the deal. And Stark, well...” Variant Loki’s gaze settled over Tony, who stood behind Loki obediently, “...he means nothing to me. A nuisance and a distraction, always getting in my way.”

Variant Loki almost saw Tony flinch but it could have been a trick of the light. 

“The thing is, Variant, while you exist, my realm is in danger. I cannot simply let you run amok, even if I wished it. Do so, and the TVA will always come to clean up the mess you have made,” King Loki said, his tone of voice becoming colder, dripping with condescension. 

I do not ‘run amok’! What is he playing at, Loki thought with a frown, annoyance creasing the lines in his forehead. 

This was supposed to be easy; find his doppleganger, entice him into tricking Stark enough to trip him up, then leave the mortal behind so that he could be on his merry way. Why did his other self make things harder for him?

“You may not be special, but he is, don’t you see?” King Loki said as he circled Variant Tony, whose eyes shimmered as if shards of emerald were gleaming within them, capturing the light. “Haven’t you noticed the traces of power on him?” 

Variant Loki frowned even further, “What power? There is nothing special about this mortal; he’s just an overly confident, foul-mouthed charlatan. If he had any inkling of magic in him, I would have noticed.”

King Loki was now treading his fingers through the air, wisps of magic surrounding Tony as a thin thread appeared around him and connected with the man, as if he were some sort of puppet and Loki were the puppet master. A somewhat translucent image formed and flickered like an old movie.

It was a figure of Tony Stark wearing what looked to be a gauntlet in his right arm. Embedded in each knuckle was a stone, and Variant Loki recognized the power each of them held, especially the one that glowed amber.

“The infinity stones...” King Loki breathed and the desire was evident in his voice. “If I had them in my possession, then no one would ever consider defying me. I will be more than a god. And this mortal has been touched by it; all his timelines converge so that he ends with the stones in his possession!” 

A sense of foreboding started to weigh on Loki as he noticed the look of greed that overtook King Loki’s face, twisting them. Even he, as ambitious as he was, couldn’t help but feel discomfort in the notion that this alternative version of himself, who had been able to get everything he desired, was still not sated of his lust for power. 

"The stones aren’t with him,” Loki remarked, “The TVA will try and destroy us all in the end. They’ll never help you gain that much power.” 

“Not intentionally, yes, but from what I have heard from Anthony Stark, they do like to bargain. If I get the stones, then I can destroy each and every one of them and rule over the universe! Their plans to eradicate my humble realm will be a thing of the past.”

Variant Loki pursed his lips, “And how, pray tell, are you getting those stones exactly?” 

King Loki seemed almost surprised to hear his own doppleganger speak these words, and he looked at Variant Loki almost with pity. “My... do I detect a trace of concern in your voice?”

“Concern?” Variant Loki scoffed, “No, of course not!”

“Then why have you been creeping over to Stark to try and break my spell?”

In a sudden movement, King Loki whirled to meet the gaze of the other Variant Loki who had been reaching out a hand to cut the threads entangled around Tony. There was no hesitation as a burst of magic blasted the clone with energy, and the Loki clone cried out, dispersing into thin air, leaving the real Variant Loki snarling a curse. He barely moved out of harm’s way as King Loki attacked again, throwing a full-on ball of magic at the Variant’s direction. 

“I am a far superior version of myself then you will ever be, Variant!” Loki laughed as another surge of magic was aimed in Variant Loki’s direction. 

His pride makes him weak, Variant Loki thought, but he didn’t bother to voice his opinion. He threw another counterattack at the Asgardian Loki and this time it hit its mark. Hearing a pained groan from his doppleganger and satisfied he had immobilized him for the moment, Loki turned his attention to Tony Stark, who seemed to stagger away from the battle, looking somewhat dazed as if being far away from his master was causing confusion to his steps. 

“Stark, wake up!” Variant Loki shouted, and he aimed his unbinding spell squarely in the mortal’s direction. It met its mark and the effect was instantaneous, Tony’s eyes turned back to its normal brown color as the effect of the magic faded. 

“What the hell!” 

King Loki’s smile vanished as quickly as it came and his expression contorted into a look of fury. “You dare take my moment of glory away from me, vagrant?”

This time it was Variant Loki’s time to laugh, his shoulders shaking with it, “A vagrant? Is that all you can spew as an insult? I’ve seen my brother sputter better insults then you have come up with!”

“A brother? I do not have, nor do I need a sibling to attest to my intelligence!” King Loki snarled. Behind him, a rush of armored men and women in Asgardian steel came to assist their king, a selection of different weaponry at the ready. “Take the mortal alive, but kill the impostor!” 

Tony was by Variant Loki’s side, shaking his head and trying to get the rest of the disorientation out of his mind. And as his fogged conscious became clearer, the nanobots in his body responded to his call for protection, enveloping his body with the Iron Man suit armor all the way until the top, leaving only his face unmasked. He turned to Loki and quirked an eyebrow.

“So why did you save me? Not that I’m not grateful and all,” Tony shouted as he knocked over the men who came at them with swords, maces and hammers. Loki groaned in exasperation as he blasted back a particularly large soldier out of his way. “Not now!”

“Okay, fine, but I’m getting that answer eventually, like it or not!” Tony cried out, amusement evident in his tone and Loki rolled his eyes. 

“You can try,” Loki challenged with a growing grin as both Variants fought side by side. 

[disneydreamlights]

Anidala Fic Recs

I got asked for fic recs for these. NSFW will be in a private post (that I’ll make later GOING THROUGH YOUR AO3 HISTORY IS TEDIOUS) for easy DMing purposes. All recs under a read more.

So first for authors:

Just about anything by SkywalkersAmidala and Gemma’s Writing (@gemmaswriting​)

Everything I’ve read by them is absolutely fantastic, and believe me, I’ve read pretty much everything from them. Multiple times in some cases. They’re just very good. SkywalkersAmidala in most cases writes more silly lighthearted AUs and Gemma’s Writing does a bit of everything, all of which are good.

Padme Lives/Anakin Doesn’t Fall:

(Anything on my Vaderdala fic recs list, you need Padme alive for Vaderdala)

Precipice by Shadowsong26

An AU in which Anakin Skywalker does not follow Mace Windu and the others to Palpatine’s office after they leave to arrest the Chancellor. As a result, he doesn’t get that final push over the edge, and doesn’t Fall.

(Padme returns to the Senate with Luke, Anakin to lead the Rebels with Leia. Things get better is the absolute best way to summary this one.)

To These Memories by KatieRoseFun

After Darth Sidious is defeated, everything changes. Some for the better, others not so much. Mostly better though. (Or: Anakin becomes a dad. Rex rehabilitates clone troopers who no longer want to be a part of the army. Ahsoka gets a call from an old friend. And maybe Obi-Wan finds out it’s not just his enemies who don’t stay dead. Basically, everyone gets the happy ending they deserve.)

Pocket Full of Sand Verse by Philthestone

Anakin goes missing, Padme is captured, and this causes Leia Skywalker and Luke Amidala to meet.

Clash of Fates by AliceBDS (In Progress) 

Sometimes, the course of life is changed with one decision.

When Ahsoka Tano requests the help of her former master in liberating Mandalore, a twist of destiny sends them to Coruscant to rescue Chancellor Palpatine instead, altering the course of galactic history forever.

When Dead Men Walk by Ellapromachos

Anakin hesitates just a few minutes longer, and the entire galaxy is better for it.

or; Anakin is at the Temple for Order 66, but not as Darth Vader. And when Palpatine comes for him, he plays his cards just a little bit better. He digs his heels in, and prepares for the long con.

My Loyalties Lie by Stranestelle (In Progress)

When Anakin initially rejects Palpatine's offer to 'help' him, the Sith Lord, in a rare moment of hastiness, ships him off to Kamino to have a control chip implanted.

Nobody Needs to Know by Elizaham8957

The twins are born in the middle of the Clone Wars, and Anakin and Padmé try to continue hiding the fact that they're married and now have two children.

Nobody buys it. Like, seriously, nobody.

Hunter by Zinoviev

Leia is offered a chance to escape Bespin when Boba Fett enlists her help to prevent Luke from falling into Vader's clutches. She has plenty of questions, however. Who is this mysterious bounty hunter, and what does he want with her friend?

The Bantha in the Room by Estrangedlestrange

concept: anakin sitting in the council room bouncing baby luke on his knees as he adamantly denies having children or attachments

Time Travel:

Stand the Hazard of the Die by KeelieThompson1

Baby Luke is sent back in time by Obi-Wan to the prequel era. Needless to say, things change.

Just One Wish by LadyVader23

On a trip to Dathomir, Anakin Skywalker finds a spell that will grant him one wish. Anxious to return home, he wishes for a way to end the war. As a result, he ends up accidentally kidnapping his future children...moments after they've escaped Bespin. Luke is quite done dealing with his mess of a father, and Leia is convinced telling the future Darth Vader about the future will only make it worse. Desperate, Anakin calls in the only person they might listen to: Padme Amidala. Too bad Padme has a surprise of her own...

Temper With the Stars by Pipionem

After being pulled through the World between Worlds, Ahsoka finds herself in the final days of the Clone Wars, on a Separatist ship holding the recently kidnapped Supreme Chancellor Palpatine. Saving the galaxy from the horrors to come is a lot to get done in a week, but Ahsoka has lost everything before - this time, she won't let that happen. Of course, that doesn't mean it's going to be easy.

Skywalker Family Fics:

Skywalker Family Values by Ariel_Sojourner

Camp Chippewa is proud to be the Empire’s foremost camp resort for privileged young adults. Located on the picturesque forest moon of Endor, your child will have the opportunity to participate in wholesome outdoor activities and socialize appropriately with their peers. We invite your offspring to join us for the experience of a lifetime and a bright future in service of the greater glory of the Empire.

On opposite sides of the galaxy, on opposite sides of a civil war, Darth Vader and Padme Amidala unwittingly send Luke and Leia to the same camp during school break. Chaos naturally ensues.

Mild AU:

Desideratum by Sithanakin (In Progress)

As a young Initiate in the midst of a childish crush, Padmé had always dreamt of Anakin Skywalker becoming her Master. But she was to turn thirteen too early for that to be possible.

Then, at sixteen, she loses her Master in the battle of Geonosis. In the confusion of all her grief, she does not expect newly-knighted Anakin Skywalker to offer to take her on as his Padawan.

The Wise Thing by Stranestelle

Warning: Very dark, not happy ending.

Padmé Amidala may not be all she seems. Anakin Skywalker wears his heart on his sleeve. People have crushes every day, it’s not the end of the world. Is it?

or, if you will, a sith!Padmé AU

Bonded by Betts

(Okay I’ll out myself slightly with smut but just one on my mostly SFW recs.)

Padmé had always been better at the mental half of the Jedi code—coercion, manipulation, meditation. Anakin had always been better at the physical half—beating shit up with his lightsaber.

Heirs to the Empire by Aldojlc

Alternate Universe. En route to Endor, Luke, Leia, and Han during the events of ROTJ find themselves transported into a different universe and a different Empire, with a different Vader.

Heavy AUs:

(it’s not so bad) being dead like me by Estrangedlestrange

Recently deceased Anakin Skywalker (killed in an taco truck explosion) finds himself not in the after life but recruited as the newest member of the undead, he’s become a grim reaper. He’s told that it’s his destiny but really he thinks it’s just rotten luck. Rotten except for the fact that one of his fellow reapers is Padmé Amidala, the most beautiful woman Anakin’s has seen, dead or alive. As he struggles to come to grips with his death and his new role in the universe, Anakin finds that taking souls isn’t the easiest job out there, he also finds himself falling in love.

Skyborn by Silverdaye

Senator Padmé Amidala enjoys spending her time in a bookstore, one made of real flimsi books where each one costs a small fortune. It is there she meets a strange man, Anakin Skywalker, who is searching for long forgotten planet, Kesh. 4,500 years ago a ship crashed on Kesh. The survivors told the natives they were their gods, the Skyborn. Anakin is one of them.

For Even the Very Wise Cannot See All Ends by UncorrectGrammar

When people think of Anakin Skywalker, they think of the Chosen One, the Hero With No Fear. They think of an accomplished duelist, of the best flyer in Hogwarts, of the prophesized savior of the wizarding world.

They don’t think of gardens diligently kept or dirt under fingernails.

Or: Anakin Skywalker and his legacy. Hogwarts AU.

General Prequel Era (Non Anidala Centric, but still contain Anidala)

Like Fire In Our Bones by AcuteNeurosis

With all of the most important things in the galaxy literally exploding around her, Leia is given the chance to go back and help keep a promise she never personally made.

But then, for Skywalkers, saving the galaxy was always a family matter.

Well It Goes Like This by Corde_and_Dorme

At the end of it all, the thing is: Palpatine breaks his heart.

(or the one where Anakin makes the hard choice, the right choice, the other choice. Then he keeps making it.)

Vode An by Epsiloneridani

There are millions of lives on the line, clone and Jedi alike. Every second brings them one step closer to the chip's activation - one step closer to the endgame. The truth is shrouded in secrecy and clouded by doubt. The clock's ticking down.

It's a race against time.

Fives is gone. Echo finds the courage to ask why.

Bonus: ObiAnidala

For We Are A Woven Thread; Find the Strand by Shadowsong26

The night before Obi-Wan was to leave for Utapau, he and Anakin and Padme agreed that, regardless of the Council's orders, Anakin should go as well. They split up over the course of the battle--and when Order 66 is given, they cannot find one another in the chaos; Padme, on Coruscant, is left with the knowledge that neither of them is coming back.

This story covers the next four years in their lives; how they survived and coped with the loss; how they began to fight back--and how they found their way home.

[mediaevalmusereads]

The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics. By Olivia Waite. New York: Avon Impulse, 2019.

Rating: 2.5/5 stars

Genre: historical romance, wlw romance

Part of a Series? Yes, Feminine Pursuits #1

Summary: As Lucy Muchelney watches her ex-lover’s sham of a wedding, she wishes herself anywhere else. It isn’t until she finds a letter from the Countess of Moth, looking for someone to translate a groundbreaking French astronomy text, that she knows where to go. Showing up at the Countess’ London home, she hoped to find a challenge, not a woman who takes her breath away.

Catherine St Day looks forward to a quiet widowhood once her late husband’s scientific legacy is fulfilled. She expected to hand off the translation and wash her hands of the project—instead, she is intrigued by the young woman who turns up at her door, begging to be allowed to do the work, and she agrees to let Lucy stay. But as Catherine finds herself longing for Lucy, everything she believes about herself and her life is tested.

While Lucy spends her days interpreting the complicated French text, she spends her nights falling in love with the alluring Catherine. But sabotage and old wounds threaten to sever the threads that bind them. Can Lucy and Catherine find the strength to stay together or are they doomed to be star-crossed lovers?

***Full review under the cut.***

Content Warnings: sexism, allusions to homophobia

Overview: I feel like I’m in the minority of not loving this book as much as I wanted to. Based on content alone, it should have been a perfect storm for me: a historical sapphic romance, a lady scientist, debates about the value of art and women’s contributions... but while the romance genre doesn’t have nearly enough wlw stories, representation alone wasn’t enough to sustain my interest in this novel. It had the threads of a good story - something along the lines of The Countess Conspiracy or The Suffragette Scandal - but in my opinion, too much of the focus was on needless interpersonal drama, which left the plot dragging for the bulk of the story. So though the representation is great, and there are a number of feminist themes that I think are valuable, I didn’t enjoy this book enough to give it more than 2 or 3 stars.

Writing: Waite’s prose is about what you’d expect from the romance genre. It’s simple and straightforward, getting to the point without leaving the reader wondering what’s going on. My main criticism would perhaps be that Waite sometimes does a little head-hopping in the middle of a chapter without a section break. One minute, we’ll be seeing things from Lucy’s POV, and the next, we’ll get something from Catherine, then back to Lucy. It was a little jarring, but not too distracting - I could still immerse myself in the story ok.

Plot: The Lady’s Guide follows Lucy Muchelney as she translates, expands, and publishes M. Oleron’s Mechanique celeste (an astronomy text) under the patronage of Lady Catherine St. Day, Countess of Moth. After being rebuffed by the male members of the Polite Science Society, Lucy endeavors to render her own translation in hopes of educating readers who are interested in astronomy, but may not have had access to the range of texts needed to understand Oleron’s work. Catherine, for her part, funds the printing of Lucy’s work, while also discovering her own value as an embroiderer.

On the surface, this plot had all the things I love: women in science, valuing women’s art, a social commentary on patriarchy. But despite the interesting threads, I didn’t feel as if Waite used them to the greatest advantage. Aside from a few scenes, there wasn’t a lot of external pressure from the Polite Society; any drama that arose from their sexism was easily dismissed or avoided with a trip to the country, and I felt as if sexism in this book was more of a nuisance than a threat. This isn’t to say I wanted the characters to be constantly suffering or be miserable from an onslaught of male meddling, but I would like to have seen more of a sustained plotline where the Polite Society attempts to thwart Lucy’s efforts, thereby creating more suspense and giving Lucy and Catherine some external challenges to face together.

I also think the subplots could have been strengthened so that they enhanced the main conflict. The plot involving Eliza, the maid with a talent for sketching, was a good parallel to Catherine’s arc, which involved finding and rewarding women’s talents in art, but Eliza wasn’t a compelling character on her own, nor did I think Catherine reflect enough on the paradox of how she encouraged Eliza but not herself. I also think more could have been done with Lucy’s brother, Stephen, so that his meddling in Lucy’s career paralleled the Polite Society’s - just in a more subtle way, thereby showing different forms of sexism. Granted, there is a little of that, but like the Polite Society, Stephen pops up at convenient times before disappearing a page or two later.

Characters: I hate to say it, but I didn’t feel as if I could connect to the characters. Lucy, one of our heroines, is a mathematician and astronomer who inspires Catherine to see herself as an artist... and that’s mostly it. I guess she’s also bold and headstrong, but honestly, she felt more like an archetype than a fully-fledged character.

Catherine, for her part, is meek on account of being mistreated by her husband, but has brilliant skills as an embroiderer and is generous with her financial support. I did like the depth that Catherine had with regards to her insecurity over whether or not she could call herself an artist, and I liked that she respected Lucy’s feelings and didn’t allow her desires to be too selfish. But I also felt like she had no ambition or desires of her own until maybe 75% of the way through the book, and she mainly existed to support Lucy.

Side characters were hit or miss. I liked the idea of Eliza, the maid who gets to put her drawing skills to use as an engraver, but she wasn’t a fully-fleshed out character and didn’t hold my interest on her own. Stephen, Lucy’s brother, had the potential to be interesting, as he is an artist and acts as a foil to Lucy in many ways, but he flits in and out of the story as needed. Even Lucy’s ex, Pricilla, seems only to exist to make petty drama; there was no pining, no angst, and I didn’t see why Lucy had once loved her. There wasn’t even any commentary on how both Pris and Catherine were blond women who were skilled at embroidery.

Polite Society members had the potential to be good antagonists, but because their appearances were so contained, I don’t think they were used to their full potential. They provided some nice commentary, but I would have liked to see them meddle more often in Lucy’s translation process.

Romance: This is personal preference: I don’t like it when the love interests get together too early in the story. It usually means the rest of the romance is going to revolve around petty drama, and I think that’s what I got here. Lucy and Catherine become a couple some 25% of the way through the book, and for the life of me, I couldn’t see why they wanted to be together other than they were interested in women and happened to be sharing a house. Over time, their reasons for loving one another became a little more clear: Lucy loves that Catherine believes in her and lets her forge her own path, whereas Catherine loves that Lucy values her skills and lifts her up, rather than dismissing her (as Catherine’s deceased husband did). While these are certainly nice, I wanted there to be a little more to their romance. Because they got together so quickly, there was very little pining, very little growth in their affections.

I also think all the angst and relationship drama that happened after they got together was a little tedious. Lucy spends some time pining for her ex, which causes Catherine to be jealous. Catherine also sees the relationship as being incompatible at one point because Lucy likes science and she likes art, so of course that means they’re on different paths that can’t be reconciled. Most of the barriers to the relationship could have been overcome by either talking it out or getting to know one another a little better, so rather than good tension (in the form of suspense), I felt like there was pointless tension. I would have much rather seen Waite dive into the very real concerns, such as the economic inequality between them or the lack of permanence that comes with not being able to marry - I think those are real, life-altering concerns that could have tied in well with the non-romance plot, but unfortunately, those concerns seemed to be resolved a little too neatly.

TL;DR: Despite having some much-needed wlw representation and a number of feminist themes, The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics does little to cultivate a compelling plot and relies on misunderstandings to drive the romantic tension.

[pass-the-bechdel]

Marvel Cinematic Universe: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017)

Does it pass the Bechdel Test?

Yes, six times.

How many female characters (with names and lines) are there?

Five (35.71% of cast).

How many male characters (with names and lines) are there?

Nine.

Positive Content Rating:

Three.

General Film Quality:

The pacing is a disaster, the story is weak, and if the style of comedy isn’t to your taste it can be very grating, but the central theme has at least some glimmers of genuine quality.

MORE INFO (and potential spoilers) UNDER THE CUT:

Passing the Bechdel:

Gamora passes with Ayesha. Nebula and Gamora conflict. Gamora asks Mantis about her empathic abilities. Gamora passes with Mantis. Gamora and Nebula fight. Gamora confronts Mantis.

Female characters:

Meredith Quill.

Gamora.

Ayesha.

Nebula.

Mantis.

Male characters:

Ego.

Peter Quill.

Drax.

Rocket.

Groot.

Stakar Ogord.

Yondu Udonta.

Taserface.

Kraglin.

OTHER NOTES:

Nice of Ayesha to randomly exposition on the way her people are created, even though it is not relevant to the plot or anything else at all. 

Gold Ben Browder is the highlight of this film. Because it’s Ben Browder. And he’s gold.

The immature escape-from-the-Sovereign-fleet bickering between Quill and Rocket (with chimes in from Drax) while Gamora is the Token Female and Wet Blanket is just...chafing a really tedious cliche. 

Drax hanging out the back of the ship as they’re crashing is one of those things where the characters are so unrealistically indestructible it makes it hard to engage with the idea that they’re ever in real danger. That happens a lot in this movie.

Android prostitutes. Sigh.

Daddy issues. Never seen that done before. Thrilling.

First time I saw this movie I thought it was a weird choice to make the raccoon the main character of the B plot, but to be honest, Rocket is the best of the Guardian characters and front-lining him is one of the better choices of the film.

The whole idea that Quill was able to hold an Infinity Stone because he’s half god really fucks over the whole ‘the Guardians teamed up to withstand the power of the stone together’ thing. Like, nevermind, that whole climactic moment from the first film didn’t mean shit, Quill is a half-god.

Kraglin thinks that Nebula would be the type to buy a pretty necklace or a nice hat and this is just one of those weak, gender-stereotyped jokes that makes me annoyed at the lack of awareness in writing ALIEN CULTURES and also just, like, the basic ability to comprehend character personalities. I complained about this when I reviewed the first Guardians film, but honestly. Whether in throwaway lines or entire plot arcs, these movies are rife with gendered writing, more than any other films in the MCU so far, and that doesn’t make a lick of sense. ALIEN. CULTURES. GUYS. 

He’s playing catch with his dad and MY GOD, glowy god power should not be this trite and boring. 

This script has a bad habit of over-playing its jokes. You gotta know when to stop, y’all.

URRRGGH, the momentum of this movie straight-up dies every time the plot shifts back to Quill and his dull daddy issues. The imbalance between the A and B plots is staggering.

Gamora and Nebula’s conflict and eventual reconciliation is one of those few quality emotional beats in this movie; the recognition that the hate that has been engendered between them comes from the abuse they suffered at Thanos’ hands, and that they are both victims of him, not of one another. It’s a kind of insightfulness that is surprising, considering the cliches and under-developed arcs that populate the rest of the film.

Credit where it’s due for genuinely funny jokes that they don’t overplay: the Mary Poppins gag, Drax’s nipples, the giant Pac-Man.

Yondu deserved a better movie, man. I don’t know why the rest of this story is such a mess when the little slivers it gets right are so spot-on.

So, daddy issues. It’s one of the most overdone cliches in the history of storytelling, typically stemming from a very performative-masculine root (the father as the only/most important role model for his son, specifically in modelling manliness), and/or the old-fashioned patriarchal idea of the son as his father’s heir (and the idea that that makes the relationship between a father and son more profound than any other). Men love to write stories about their daddy issues, despite the fact that they’re rarely interesting or unusual or different to the billion other daddy issues stories that have already been told. As such, the fact that this movie is built around that same-old-same cliche is a fact distinctly to its detriment; that said, it’s also the one well from which it draws any spark of meaningful inspiration. 

The dot points above have already made it clear to which sparks of inspiration I refer; the Daddy Issues threads with Gamora and Nebula and their abusive father Thanos, and Quill’s realisation of the way Yondu ended up filling the fatherhood role in his life. Gamora and Nebula’s Daddy Issues are automatically fresher than the average on account of them not being dudes (Ant-Man had the same thing going for it, though that movie made a much greater strength out of it); that said, the fact that Thanos’ terrible parenting forms the backbone of the two sisters’ conflict and eventual unification is not what makes that slice of the plot work: it’s the sibling bonding, not the Daddy Issues. The sibling bonding is where the fire’s really at (again, enriched by the fact that the characters are female; funny how the under-representation of women (or any group) in media can make even small amounts of representation seem impressive just for existing), but unfortunately, that bond is pared down to the absolute minimum number of scenes possible for functionality as a subplot, and therefore we never really get to enjoy what it offers so much as we kinda point and wave at it as it goes by. Yondu gets a bit more play, both through the character’s own ruminations on his life/personality/relationships while hanging in the B plot with Rocket, and through Quill’s Daddy Issues whining in the A plot to which Yondu’s relevance provides the only saving grace. Still, Yondu’s place in the plot and in Quill’s life only gains narrative weight in the final act, leading to a cathartic denouement for the character, but not for the film itself. The bloated emptiness of the A plot with Ego is something which Yondu’s meaningful sendoff cannot retroactively undo.

I’m...trying to figure out if I have anything nice to say at all regarding Ego and all that he entails, but I’m not coming up with anything. A godlike character who is also kinda-sorta a literal planet should not be so devoid of interesting factors, and yet, here we are. With every overdone boring Daddy Issues cliche in the book, played straight. We’ve got ‘I never knew my father!’ abandonment-resentment! We’ve got father-son bonding (heavy Americana edition)! We’ve got the heir-to-my-empire, follow-in-my-footsteps schtick! If it’s overdone and boring, we’ve got it! The fancy special effects visuals can’t make up for the total absence of compelling plot (the first movie in the franchise also made that mistake, though it at least faked it on the plot front a little better), and the shapelessness of the story on Ego prior to the reveal wreaks havoc on the pacing of the movie; where the B plot has trajectory from the jump, the A plot just kinda wanders around, having nothing new or interesting to do or say, nor even any thoughtful ways to bring itself around to that aforementioned reveal (as with the first film, things just kind of conveniently happen and characters go places and say things at the opportune times; nothing flows naturally from one event to the next, cause and effect style. I am baffled that people think James Gunn knows how to plot).

Speaking of characters going places and saying things, this film also does a very poor job of utilising its cast in a meaningful way, which makes it kinda embarrassing that it’s called Guardians of the Galaxy as if the whole team actually matters. Much like in the first film, Drax is just an extra without any real plot or purpose of his own, no narrative or character arc to speak of beyond being a total douche to the new female character on the block, Mantis (the fact that the movie uses Mantis as a punching bag and laughing stock for the so-called good guys is among its more tasteless sins). Groot, meanwhile, was already more of a gimmick than a character, but that’s up to eleven now, and like Drax he could pretty easily be excised from the story without lasting effect. Gamora’s interactions with Nebula are really her only good fodder; her tangential attachment to Quill is incidental and has no personal relevance for Gamora, she’s just providing someone for Quill to bounce his inane misogyny off, because how would we recognise him without it? Quill being the centre of this plot does at least make sense this time (sleeping pill that it is), unlike in the first film where he was frankly pointless to the story; nevertheless, the drudging Daddy Issues cliche of this movie fails to make anything insightful or impactful out of Quill’s experiences. As noted earlier, Rocket is, bizarrely, the only character who feels like his story matters, and it’s his and Yondu’s character exploration that wins the prize as the highlight of an overall weak, spectacle-laden film that thinks it’s much funnier than it really is. 

It’s no secret at this point that I don’t care for the Guardians franchise, but it isn’t complete absent glimmers of good promise and creative storytelling. Unfortunately, it’s also largely overrun with lazy plotting and vaguely-connected strings of shenanigans that prioritise rapidly-staling comedic beats over any semblance of narrative cohesion or character development. A rocking soundtrack and a smattering of toilet humour does not a worthy film make; it’s not like I’m going in looking for some high-brow drama, I just prefer my entertainment to hang together a little better than this does, and it surprises me a bit to hear people sing the praises of something so very, very messy. Whatever. It did its job for Marvel’s bottom line, so I don’t expect they’ll cook up any quality improvements for the third film of the franchise, when it comes. I sure would be glad to be wrong, though. There’s so much potential they’re wasting here.

[mimi-love-4ever]

Training

SasuSaku Month 2018 - Day 15: Training Rating: T A/N: This is a continuation of Day 8 (Flowers). Couldn’t resist. ;) Thank you for reading and I hope you like it! 

Day 8 (Flowers)

Day 14 (Wait For Me)

It had been a week since Tsunade had finally allowed Sakura to come back to work, having extended her leave for a couple more days. Thanks to Sasuke and his ever observant eyes watching her every wince of discomfort and small lack of appetite. She would have been upset if this had been any other situation, but she used her new free time to spend time with Sasuke and even the other boys. However, for some reason, Sakura started having bouts of insomnia and the little she did manage to sleep was plagued with nightmares. She was no stranger to nightmares. She had been in a war and seen countless of people die, some right under her hands, but after seeking a couple of counseling sessions she was able to cope with the horrors she saw. The last time she had a full-fledged nightmare was about a year ago, so when another one invaded her dreams, she was not prepared for it. The only thing she was thankful for was that Sasuke had not been around to hear her scream or see her rocking on her bed trying to forget the images.

Working long, and sometimes tedious, hours was a blessing in disguise for Sakura. Most of the time they left her so exhausted that she had no room to think or dream. She’d come home late at night, check on Sasuke - he’d moved back in with her - in the guest room and faceplant her bed. It wasn’t perfect, or entirely healthy, but it was a system that kept her moving forward. That is, until it didn’t work anymore.

After the fourth consecutive night of nightmares and insomnia, she’d had enough. She threw the sweat covered sheets away from her angrily and got dressed in a pair of leggings then threw on a light sweater over her tank top. She snatched a pack of kunai to wrap around her leg and an old pair of sneakers from her closet, and headed towards her window. Knowing full well she was sneaking out like a rebellious teenager - from her own apartment - as to not rouse Sasuke’s suspicion, made her feel the tiniest bit of guilt, but she wanted to be alone. Although she and Sasuke had grown impossibly close ever since he came back, there was still that fear that she’d do something that would somehow make him realize she was still that weak girl from all those years ago.

Once Sakura slipped outside quietly, she took to the roofs and ran to one of the far training grounds on the Northside of Konoha enclosed by a multitude of trees. It was secluded and gave her the privacy she wanted, not to mention the wooden posts placed strategically in various areas that offered her a source to vent her frustrations on. She sighed heavily, glanced at the waning moon wistfully, and began jogging around the field to warm-up. She ran mindlessly for a couple of laps before zeroing in on the wooden posts and hitting them in sequence. The harsh texture of the wood rubbed against her bare skin painfully since she didn’t have her gloves with her, but the sensations were welcomed. They distracted her.

Again and again she aimed her fists at the posts, each hit landing harder than the next. It was impossible to tell how long she kept at it, for her mind had finally wandered away from what kept her up at night, until one particular blow stung much more deeply than the rest. Sakura’s eyes refocused on the scene in front of her and winced as she looked at her bruised and bloody knuckles. Her heartbeat drummed quick against her chest and her breathing was labored. A small bead of sweat ran down her neck, letting her know just how hard she had been training. Not entirely satisfied, but in no mood to cause any real damage to herself, Sakura sat down on the grass and let herself fall on her back as she tried to calm down. The wind blew mercifully through the trees and the grounds, cooling the perspiration on her flushed skin.

“Stop being weak, Haruno,” she whispered to herself gazing at the stars. “They’re just nightmares, nothing more.”

She couldn’t help but wonder how Sasuke coped with his nightmares. She wouldn’t pretend that she hadn’t heard him once or twice, muttering countless I’m sorry’s and names of people long since passed, in his sleep when she’s gotten home from work. His episodes never lasted as long as hers and she wondered if he found a way to deal, or if he simply grew used to them, which was a really sad thought.

“I’ll need to inform Tsunade if you keep talking to yourself like that.”

Sakura shot up from the ground with a startled squeak and faced the direction where the voice had come from. Standing against the trunk of a tree, looking as calm as ever, was her dark-haired companion. His cool midnight orbs locked on her anxious jade eyes with such intensity, she felt a shiver run down her spine and all the way down to her toes. He was in nothing but sweatpants and a black t-shirt. The disarray of his hair was enough to suggest he had been sleeping not long ago.

“S-Sasuke,” she managed to say after a few moments of composing herself. “What are you doing here?”

He ignored her question, keeping her rooted to her spot with only his stare. “Midnight training?”

“Eh, yeah, something like that,” Sakura finally managed to answer.

“Hn.” Sasuke pushed away from the trunk, never breaking eye contact, and approached her slowly.

Sakura stayed rooted to her spot, watching his every step as he came closer to her. For a second she felt like her anxiety shot through the roof, but as he stopped right in front of her, a strange sense of serenity settled over her. Sasuke grabbed one of her still bleeding hands and frowned, inspecting the wounds.

“Tell me what’s wrong, Sakura,” he murmured softly as he started wiping away the blood with his shirt. A tight knot formed in her throat at the concern she could see shining in his eyes. She shook her head in response, finally breaking eye contact. “I see… How about a spar, then?”

“What?”

Sasuke smirked. “Spar with me, Sa-ku-ra.”

All thoughts flew out the window at the sight of his smirk, which seemed way more sensual than Sakura cared to admit. But she still enjoyed it.

“Fine, Sa-su-ke.”

She tugged her hand away from his and healed the wounds, threads of excitement filling her at the prospect of some training alone with her dear Sasuke. They both stepped closer to the middle of the training ground.

“Nothing fancy, just the basics,” Sasuke stated, sensing her low chakra levels.

He moved first without waiting for confirmation and went on the offensive. Just like when they trained together all those weeks ago, he tested her reflexes and defensive stances to get a better read of her fighting style. And just like before, her forms were powerful and well-developed. She had been the Godaime’s apprentice after all.

They circled each other, throwing a kick or punch here and there, testingly. Though they both kept their expressions neutral, as to not give anything away, on the inside they both felt an inescapable connection pulling them closer and closer until they had no choice but to collide. Sasuke felt a wave of desire burn through his being as he regarded the pink-haired kunoichi. The air crackled with electricity around them.

Sakura shot forward and engaged him in a series of well-aimed punches that would have knocked him out for sure if he let one land. The tables turned as he went on the defensive and Sakura wasted no time in keeping up. All the frustrations she had been keeping in burst forward and fueled her attacks, increasing in speed and voracity. It was enough to awaken his sharingan to keep him from falling under her attacks.

They spared against one another until they both collapsed on the ground, exhaustion weighing down their limbs. Sakura pulled Sasuke down to lay on his back next to her to regain their breathing. A calm silence settled between the two for a while as they stared up at the sky.

“Nightmares, right?” Sasuke spoke up after a while.

She wanted to deny it, but she couldn’t lie to him. “Yes.”

“Does it happen often?” He asked.

“Not for a while now, honestly,” she replied, shrugging. “After the war, it happened every night, but I’ve learned to cope with the things I’ve seen. I guess it just never really goes away and sometimes I don’t have the ability to deal with them.”

“I’ve learned that sometimes it’s not about dealing with them,” Sasuke said turning his head to face her. Sakura turned to look at him too, curiously.

He raised his hand from the grass and caressed her cheek tenderly. The unexpected action caused a blush to tint her cheeks. He couldn’t help but smile slightly.

“Sometimes, you have to replace those nightmares with something else. Something more valuable…” Sasuke trailed off in a whisper, leaning towards her slowly.

Their lips met in the middle. A thousand butterflies exploded in her stomach and her heart sped up like a hummingbird’s wings as it filled up with her love for him. Her body moved on its own, scooting closer to him until there was no space in between them. Neither complained, reveling in the warmth of their bodies combined. Sasuke slid his hand from her cheek down to her smooth neck and further down to her waist. Sakura gasped into his mouth as he tentatively squeezed the small amount of flesh that been exposed with her sweater riding up. She felt her body come alive with his touch, and may the stars fall from the night sky and the sun dry up, she never wanted him to stop.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#10yrsago Star Simpson, one year after Boston airport terror-scare: unedited BBtv interview transcript

September 21, 2008 marks exactly one year since the day on which 19-year-old MIT engineering student Star Simpson walked into Boston's Logan International Airport wearing a home-made light-up sweatshirt, and asked an airport worker for information about a friend's arriving flight.

Boston is the city from which two terrorists involved in the 9/11 attacks departed in 2001. They boarded planes at Logan and flew them into the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York, destroying the buildings and killing nearly 3,000 people.

In January 2007, a false terrorism scare happened in Boston when a guerrilla marketing team working to promote Cartoon Network's Aqua Teen Hunger Force show placed LED signs around the city. Authorities mistook the colorfully lit boards for bombs.

Just eight months later, in a persisting environment of anxiety over terrorism, a Boston Logan Airport worker mistook Star Simpson's LED-adorned wearable tech garment for a suicide bomb. That airport worker phoned Boston police. A small misunderstanding over a hoodie quickly became a surreal debacle during which police said they came close to killing Ms. Simpson.

Last Friday, we aired an interview with Star Simpson -- her first public comments on the incident since that day -- in a ten-minute video feature on Boing Boing tv (here's the direct MP4 link).

Some viewers asked if we could publish a transcript of our entire 45-minute Skype video chat, and here it is. One year, countless court dates, and much media uproar later, Star's wry advice to other would-be wearable electronics makers? "Hide the batteries." Snip from the transcript:

STAR SIMPSON: The woman who made the call surprised me. I was asking an information woman for, 'has the flight come in, can you tell me which baggage claim to be at...' and she looked at my jacket and glazed over completely in fear. And I was very surprised by that, I didn't know what to say. That was how everything started. I tried my best to explain everything to her, and I turned the lights off the jacket. Nothing calmed her down. No words could convey anything calming to her. I thought maybe I could at least get out of her sphere of terror, whatever was causing her such anxiety, by maybe going somewhere else and trying to find my friend on my own. Then, I didn't expect that things would go so badly from there. After that I was trying to leave the airport, I was catching the shuttle bus to go home because I realized that I'd missed my friend and the next best thing I could to was find a phone. I was waiting on the traffic island for the next shuttle bus to get on the subway when all of a sudden my hands were grabbed from behind me.

XENI: Who was grabbing your hands?

STAR: It turned out to be the state police. They have this magic trick where 40 of them can appear all at once out of nowhere. I didn't see them coming ever. Just, all of a sudden my hands were wrenched up over my head and my stuff was thrown on the ground, and they're everywhere, and some of them were holding really big devices that I realized were machine guns, later. I was -- I couldn't identify them at the time, I thought maybe they were camera tripods. I had no idea what was going on.

Full text of the interview follows after the jump.

XENI JARDIN: Welcome to Boing Boing tv, I'm Xeni Jardin and today we're going to speak with Star Simpson. I'm holding a stack of paper here, about 300 comments to a BB post dated September 21 2007. The title of that post is MIT student arrested for entering Boston airport with "fake bomb". And the short version is that it turned out not to be a fake bomb at all. It was a wearable tech jacket, a t-shirt with a breadboard and LED lights that light up, which led to a huge misunderstanding that changed this woman's life and changed a lot of how many of us feel about "maker culture" and airports, where those two things meet. Star, welcome to Boing Boing tv, and thanks very much for joining us today.

STAR SIMPSON: Thank you.

XENI: Star, what happened, tell me about that day, that incident -- what were you thinking when you wore that to the airport and when you crafted that. Did it ever occur to you that what happened could happen?

STAR: No not in the least, that did not ever occur to me. I made it thinking that I lived with some of the coolest, brightest circuit hackers in the world, and that wearable electronics were this cool thing I'd heard about since I was a kid, something that was part of the future and awesome. I wanted to make something where a bunch of people could collaborate on a cool circuit and I wanted to make clothes that involved electronics, because that's what I love. But that could change and evolve over time. Because sewing is tedious, and if you put a bunch of conductive thread on your clothes and you end up with something you don't like in a month... with a breadboard, though, you could just change it. I wore it to the airport because I was going to meet my friend Tim, who's taught me a whole lot about electronics. The thought that crossed my mind was "Oh, maybe Tim will like my project, it's kind of nerdy and cute, and that's the extent of what I thought. I wore the jacket mainly because it was a cold, grey day like this one, as you can see behind me. It was damp and cold outside that day in Boston. I had no idea what was going on when they arrested me. Pure terror.

XENI: So what exactly happened? What was the moment that changed from you going to pick up your friend with this shirt and another device which you'll show us in a moment... when did everything switch.

STAR: The woman who made the call surprised me. I was asking an information woman for, 'has the flight come in, can you tell me which baggage claim to be at...' and she looked at my jacket and glazed over completely in fear. And I was very surprised by that, I didn't know what to say. That was how everything started. I tried my best to explain everything to her, and I turned the lights off the jacket. Nothing calmed her down. No words could convey anything calming to her. I thought maybe I could at least get out of her sphere of terror, whatever was causing her such anxiety, by maybe going somewhere else and trying to find my friend on my own. Then, I didn't expect that things would go so badly from there. After that I was trying to leave the airport, I was catching the shuttle bus to go home because I realized that I'd missed my friend and the next best thing I could to was find a phone. I was waiting on the traffic island for the next shuttle bus to get on the subway when all of a sudden my hands were grabbed from behind me.

XENI: Who was grabbing your hands?

STAR: It turned out to be the state police. They have this magic trick where 40 of them can appear all at once out of nowhere. I didn't see them coming ever. Just, all of a sudden my hands were wrenched up over my head and my stuff was thrown on the ground, and they're everywhere, and some of them were holding really big devices that I realized were machine guns, later. I was -- I couldn't identify them at the time, I thought maybe they were camera tripods. I had no idea what was going on.

XENI: What happened then?

STAR: A lot. I had a bike lock clipped to my bag, and one of them asked me, 'Why would you bring a bike lock to the airport?' And they asked me about everything I had on me, my keys, anything, they asked each other if I had a lighter on me, I don't really understand why a lighter would be -- anybody's allowed to have a lighter on you, but not then, it would have helped with the argument that I had explosives on my person.

XENI: So you're being asked about things that were mundane parts of the stuff you carry around with you in your daily life in Boston, and what's going through your head now? You're realizing there are 40 armed guys, and the situation has taken on a different life, what's going through your head at that moment?

STAR: The sense that everything is going completely wrong. Trying to understand what is going on. Getting patted down and searched, take off your clothes, they asked me to take off the sweatshirt so they could look it over, looking through everything on me...

XENI: Were you wearing clothing underneath?

STAR: I was, I had a shirt on underneath.

XENI: You were also, if I remember from these reports, you were carrying around a piece of play-doh and playing with it, and people thought maybe it was C4 or some kind of explosive -- what was that?

STAR: Sure. That was this little hand-sculpted flower I brought to give my friend at the airport. (holds it up to camera, it's a bright pink rose, hardened clay)

XENI: Well did it look like that, or did it look like a wad of C4?

STAR: This is exactly what it was. It wasn't strapped to my chest, it was in my hand looking very much like a flower. It's hard (taps it against desk and against fingernails). It's not play-doh. (taps, audible) It's baked, hard. And this is exactly how it looked on that day, it hasn't changed shape or lost color or anything. They took it from me and kept it from me at the time. It's been about a year since I had this in my possession. But I chose not to show it to people until now.

XENI: Does it have a little inscription on there?

STAR: Yes, it says "For Tim" on the bottom. (holds up to camera, inscription visible). Tim is the name of my friend at the airport. I found out later that the Boston State Police use play-doh to train for recognizing [the explosive material] Semtex. It would have been very convenient had it been play-doh, but this is not play-doh, this is a flower.

XENI: So, Star, what happened there. You are taken in to custody. Are you able to contact your friend, your family, an attorney?

STAR: Things dived further into this spiral of surreality. We were probably on the airport island for what felt like a half an hour, 45 minutes. Once they had gone through all my stuff they took me to the Boston State airport police office, questioned me, took my fingerprint and mugshots, and then had me on a couch in some officer's office questioning me. At that point things were already blowing up outside. The phones were ringing off the hook in the police office. Somehow every news agency was all over it. The Secretary of Homeland Security called in wanting to know about the Boston Logan Suicide Bomber --

XENI: And that would be you.

STAR: Yeah, that would have been me. I wasn't anything like that, but within one hour, I still don't know what is going on, rumors are flying all the way to Washington DC, at least, how can -- I didn't know that was possible.

XENI: And Star, the first thing I might have done in that situation is called somebody on my cellphone, you didn't have a cellphone with you?

STAR: No, I didn't have a cellphone at that time. It ended up that reporters started calling my family and they called the police to try and contact me that way.

XENI: What happened then? You're realizing you've been mistaken for a suicide bomber.

STAR: I thought maybe I could explain, I don't know, the wheels had started rolling and no explanation made anything better, as you can tell. The next thing after that, they took me directly to court for a hearing.

XENI: Without being able to go home or speak to anyone, just directly from custody to court? Were you speaking to an attorney, to anybody?

STAR: No, nobody.

XENI: Did you ask to speak to an attorney?

STAR: When we were in court we started talking to attorneys. I've seen a lot of videos, like, from the ACLU, explaining how to properly talk to police, since then. I definitely wish I'd seen them beforehand.

XENI: What were some of the things you said to the police?

STAR: They asked things like -- so, my friend had a switch. He's converting his car to veggie oil. I had a switch that I was supposed to give back to him in my bag. And they held it up in front of my face and said WHAT IS THIS! WHAT IS THIS! Just, shouting and yelling, and being very confusing. I answered, "it's a switch..." what else, what else happened... they asked me, what was on my shirt. As soon as I could hand it to them, I did, the bomb squad guy was scrutinizing it and determined that it was a bunch of lights leading to a battery. They knew exactly what everything was before I was taken to the station.

XENI: Why do you think you were taken there and treated in such an aggressive manner, when some of the experts who were examining your things, if what you're saying is accurate, understood that these were not bombs. Why do you think that kind of approach persisted?

STAR: It's unfathomable to me. I've been completely bewildered by how far something like this can go. Boston appears to have some point to make. Some -- I don't know. It's like there's not a huge improvement in actual security, but there's a large step up in the amount of acting, and theater, happening. My understanding is that it's part of that.

XENI: So, you're taken to court, and this is the first time you speak to an attorney.

STAR: Actually, on the way to court, in the police car -- it was an unmarked car. The officers were discussing how it should be an unmarked car because they didn't want to bias the public, which was ridiculous, given the words they used later. Then in the police car, someone was listening to a talk show, and the talk show came on, and they were describing where I lived in the car, while I was on the way to court, already the radio is telling everybody where I live.

XENI: You're hearing this on the radio?

STAR: Yeah, I didn't even know exactly what was going on. And I'm hearing the facts that I'm supposed to believe about myself on the radio on the way to court.

XENI: By this time, have you spoken to anybody, your parents, friends, anyone?

STAR: Just Tim, the friend at the airport, who said, where can I meet you, tell me how to help.

XENI: So you arrive at court, what happens.

STAR: At court, this was another surreal thing -- I was taken to the back and was put in jail. They shackled my hands and ankles, and waited until the hearing with the judge, I was in the jail in the back for an hour.

XENI: So by this time how much time has passed since you first asked the airport information lady your question.

STAR: About 4 or 5 hours. Definitely enough time to start to make some better judgements.

XENI: So you're shackled, you're in jail, what happens then.

STAR: I'm in the court then, after that, with a court-appointed lawyer, making some basic statements, based on whatever information is available. That's -- at the time, that's when the media mob was all around me. There were a million cameras there. We tried to leave, they were chasing us through the courthouse, hounding the car...

XENI: I remember seeing video or snapshots on blogs of you and your friend Tim leaving the courthouse at some point.

STAR: More like fleeing the courthouse.

XENI: Where did you go? At what point did you stop being a shackled detainee, and return to being someone who could leave of her own free will?

STAR: At that point, we'd called a bunch of lawyers, the advice was to not talk to anybody. We left and I tried to figure out what had happened that day. I spent some time trying to get my mind around what had happened, is this really possible? Where do I live? What is this? What do I do? How big is this? I didn't realize my name and face were already being published internationally. No sense of the grandness of the media blowup.

XENI: I'm looking at a printout of the original Boing Boing post, September 21, 7:43AM. I was personally following this story all day. I think I made like, nine? Fifteen updates throughout the day. But we watched this story as it unfolded, I remember being on the other side of the monitor, as it were, thinking -- our hunch, sort of knowing who you probably were by 6 or less degrees of separation through the internet, maker culture and whatnot, we on Boing Boing kind of got it that unless we'd really misjudged you, you were not a suicidal terrorist. Our presumption that was a horrible misunderstanding had taken place here. You blacked out after that, vanished, we heard nothing from you. What happened then?

STAR: That day -- so, 7:43am for Boing Boing would have been noonish for me. I was just getting out of court. I tried contacting different lawyers. The lawyers for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force guys gave us advice. I think it was he who said don't talk to the press. That's why you didn't hear anything from me until now. I was in the middle of a pretty hectic term at MIT, my goal was to get a deep breath, figure out what had gone on, and put everything I could into -- okay, that was something that happened, and my focus was to finish MIT and I didn't believe that this court thing... because it was so clear to me, why I made this, I never expected that this case would last for an entire year. I didn't expect the postponements, delays, we can't dismiss this now because the media is paying too much attention. That just seemed totally, totally backwards, right? That should not be the focus of the justice system.

XENI: So eventually though, this did come to trial. That's September of last year, your first court hearing was months later?

STAR: There were many dates, they were mostly dates to postpone the hearing. Finally I had court date in June, 2008. My fourth D.A., the judge was retiring. My lawyers recommended that I make a deal with the D.A. and end the case, and after an entire year I was definitely very tired and also wanted to end everything also. So the deal made with the D.A. was to perform 50 hours of community service, to not be arrested in Massachusetts, for an entire year, and that I had to issue a public apology to Boston.

XENI: What were you accused of, and what was it decided that you'd done? Were you convicted of a crime?

STAR: I was not. The other part of the deal was that MA dropped the "hoax device" charge, finally, after a year.

XENI: Can you explain what that was?

STAR: A "hoax device" is defined as an "infernal machine," any device intended to cause anxiety or fear. I think I read a case where the last person charged with this actually had explosives and was using them to clear land on his own private property and didn't have anything to ignite the explosives. But I didn't have anything like that. Another key part of the charge is that you have to intend to cause fear, anxiety, and I did not have that intention. So after the many months, MA finally dropped the "hoax device" charge. They claimed I'd been a disorderly person instead, because you don't have to intend to be a disorderly person. You can charge anyone with that. And if I don't complete the community service, I would be charged with that. It's a totally fascinating thing. If you watch the press report on that day, Major Scott Pare says it's lucky I cooperated with the police because otherwise I would have ended up in the morgue instead of a cell.

XENI: Star, how do you feel when you hear that quote?

STAR: Terrified. Completely terrified. I was almost killed on that day. The police could kill me, and I would never have been able to ask what was going on. It's hard to believe they mean me.

XENI: Was the judgement fair? Are you angry about how things turned out?

STAR: It doesn't make any sense to me. I happened to wear the wrong shirt on the wrong day to the wrong place and all of a sudden, here's two years of dealing with this, and I should make an apology for the over-reaction of a bunch of other people who heard that I was doing something wrong and didn't make their decisions based on facts. Now I'm being punished for something they've admitted was not a charge they could pursue.

XENI: How have you been punished? How has the reaction to this incident changed your life?

STAR: I've become very turned off to living in Boston. I'm taking time off to travel, because that seems like a much better plan than continuing to live in that state. The reaction of people in Boston has been -- based on news reports containing any number of lies by the police, and little embellishments by writers, people have -- any number of reactions towards me. While biking one day, some complete stranger spit on me, spit on my bicycle, and shouted that I should have done time. I know he doesn't know anything about what actually happened.

XENI: Does that happen often, hostile reactions from people on the street?

STAR: Yeah. Every time I'd go out, I'd meet some person who had something to say, and had formed strong opinions and decided to take that opportunity to take them out on me.

XENI: So are you still an MIT student?

STAR: Yes, and I'll be returning at some point.

XENI: When?

STAR: I'm not sure. Maybe a year, maybe more.

XENI: I remember reading something you said, that you felt like MIT disowned you, is that correct?

STAR: Yeah, so not only did the Boston Herald and other papers slander me on the day, but MIT made a press statement on that same day, before even I know on, and when they definitely did not know what was going on -- doing the same thing. Making a public statement about what had happened. There were no facts available and they were making statements about what had happened, my own school.

XENI: What did they say, Star?

STAR: That my actions were reckless and cause for concern.

XENI: How did that make you feel?

STAR: I didn't know where to go, who to talk to. What I should do. I needed advice from someone. I'm trying to do well in school, here's my school telling the entire world what they think of me without any basis.

XENI: Who did you go to for advice and support?

STAR: Mostly the people I live with. The same creative people and engineers who'd inspired me to build the shirt in the first place. I ended up hiding from anywhere I used to go, for that first week after it happened. Any time I showed up at the machine shop I used to hang out at, there would be reporters outside. I didn't want any of that. I just wanted to be able to go to a place and figure everything out. I couldn't go back to my house that much. I did call my family -- they lived in Hawaii, so finding everything out was time-delayed. They provided support. Tim provided support. My friends provided support.

XENI: Did one of your friends give you the plans, the design for that shirt?

STAR: I designed everything myself.

XENI: What were the reactions of your friends and roommates?

STAR: When I first started working on it, it was like, oh you could put this on it, you could put that on it... then, when I got arrested, people didn't believe it. Didn't believe it was me. Everyone was completely shocked and didn't know what to say, do, or believe.

XENI: Star, how old are you now?

STAR: 20.

XENI: Do you feel like what happened with this incident has caused you to grow up faster?

STAR: The main thing I can say is that I believed that police were nice, friendly folks before last September. And my opinion has changed drastically in that respect.

XENI: Can you understand how maybe that first person who fingered you, the woman who was terrified by your shirt, can you feel empathy toward how that person might have been scared? How do you feel about that person's reaction?

STAR: It inspires me to try and help explain electronics even more. I can see how a common picture of electronics could lead to an unreasonable reaction that is very strong. Yes, I can understand why she was gripped with fear and called the police. The only thing I can think to do is continue to study electronics, and try to help other people to learn, and understand.

XENI: Star, we asked Boing Boing tv viewers and people who read our blog for comments. I'll ask Dana Devonshire, our series producer, if she'd read some of those out. Would you mind?

STAR: Sure, go ahead.

DANA: Twitter user "ehanesrn" asks Star, "How long did it take the 'U gotta be kidding' feeling to wear off after arrest?' Seriously."

STAR: I'm not sure that it has. It still seems surreal.

XENI: Was there a morning when you finally woke up -- I mean, I remember when 9/11 happened, I woke up the next day and I thought, that was a dream, but then something snapped and I realize, no, that was real. When did that happen for you after this?

STAR: Maybe after 5 or 6 court dates.

XENI: So basically, last week, huh.

STAR: The fact I can say it's over has a lot to do with saying it's a real thing that did happen and is over. While it was going on it just kept growing into something more nightmarish each time.

DANA: Here's another question. This is from @scott_so. He says, "Yeah, the TSA is ridiculous, but why instigate them?"

STAR: I never talked to the TSA. I was in baggage claim. I didn't pass any security checkpoints. One of my friends pointed out that if you are exercising your right to bear arms, you can have 11 pounds of ammunition on you at that point. I didn't meet any TSA people that day.

XENI: I'll paraphrase some of the 250-odd comments on that original Boing Boing post, too -- many people asked, "Cmon, what were you thinking? Who would wear something like that to the airport? I know what it was, but I'm not dumb." I'm sure you've heard that a million times. What do you say to those people?

STAR: I was thinking it was a cold day. It was a sweatshirt. If I'd seen my work through their eyes, no, it wouldn't have made any sense to wear it. But I didn't see it that way.

DANA: @witz wants to know if you still wear electrically powered clothing with lights after the Logan incident?

STAR: I have a lot more trepidation. I haven't worn that sweatshirt since, even though I got it back in June. Hasn't really been cold enough yet. I still like the idea. I still want to wear clothing that anybody can edit, and has cool circuits in it. I want to be a walking radio, I want to wear clothing with cool decorations.

DANA: Here's another question from Twitter. @biovert wants to know if your notoriety post-LED t-shirt has resulted in any job offers.

STAR: No.

XENI: Reality TV show offers?

STAR: No. A lot of my friends had offers to be on various talk shows, but I thank them for all being sane enough to know better.

DANA: @RobboMills asks, "Do you think they would have reacted differently if it had been a hat?"

STAR: Hm. That's a good idea. Maybe so. There actions seem pretty irrational to me, I can't make good guesses.

XENI: I'm going to throw out another question from the blog. One anonymous commenter says [http://boingboing.net/2007/09/21/mit-student-arrested.html#comment-23001],

"What she created is a crude version of a promotional products T-Shirt used by companies to advertise their products. These have been around for years. I have one with the Heineken logo on it which lights up, rotates the lights in different areas and plays different music depending on the settings. Inside the T-shirt is the battery compartment and all the wiring."

This is not the first time someone has worn clothing with electronics in it. There are blogs, conferences, books devoted to this subject. The fact that all of the wiring and the homemade-ness was evident seems to me like what caused the reaction here. What do you think?

STAR: It's true these things exist. I did my best and I did it quickly. I hadn't scrutinized the placement of the battery pack in other wearables. That probably does make some difference but I don't see why it should.

XENI: Context came up in many of these comments, people said, I don't see anything wrong with making devices like this but I would have considered the context and the security hysteria.... what is your response?

STAR: I didn't know until after I got arrested that Logan was quite so hyper about security. I learned afterwards. It makes sense to be considerate.

DANA: I just want to ask you, Star, do you regret having chosen to wear this sweatshirt that day? You chose to do this innocently enough, but do you regret this?

STAR: It's pushed me, fueled me to explore other projects. [Boing Boing tv] interviewed me about Fuzzy Logic, which came directly out of the fact that people view electronics as scary, and they could be presented differently. I don't think I would have not chosen to wear the sweatshirt. It's like Groundhog Day. Every single day I would have woken up and picked out this sweatshirt. It's that day, played over and over again.

XENI: How do you feel most misunderstood by the world? If there was one thing you could say to set your own story straight, what would that be?

STAR: The biggest misunderstanding was that I was trying to create havoc. It was an innocent action in nature. It goes back to the question about why I chose to wear the shirt that day. In light of having been arrested, it appears maybe I put a whole lot of thought into this, and where I was going, and how it would appear in that situation. But in my mind, I was going to pick up a friend, and I put on whatever shirt. It wasn't an action at all. There wasn't a ton of weight in consideration.

XENI: You're a year older and wiser. What would you say to someone else, maybe a younger person who's becoming fascinated by wearable computing and thinking of tinkering around with this?

STAR: Practically? Hide the batteries. Some people commented on how there were "exposed wires." But actually, before I went to the airport I taped down the wires so they wouldn't short. I'd encourage someone who is fascinated by wearable electronics to make them. I continue to encourage that.

XENI: Do you feel like that's tied in to what it is to be an American?

STAR: Yes. You have to learn by making. To be able to make your own stuff is -- I mean, since you ask me about being an American, my perception is that a lot of the country is built on the ability to make things. It's important. You can't just buy everything.

XENI: Star, is there anything else you'd like to say to our audience?

STAR: I hope in seeing this, they can understand better.

XENI: Star, you mentioned that part of the court decision is that you have to do community service, for 50 hours. And you have to do a public apology. Have you done those?

STAR: I've completed half of the community service. You can choose what you'll do for 25 hours of it, and I finished those. I taught at the South End Technology Center in Boston, where they teach about technology and electronics to just about anybody, mostly underprivileged kids. I did a summer program, and did another bit of it on the BioTour bus which travels the country to teach people about clean energy. The other 25 hours I'm required for some reason to serve community service specifically with veterans. I'm figuring out how to do that. The public apology was written by my lawyers and apologizes, essentially, for Boston's overreaction on that day.

XENI: Our segment producer Derek Bledsoe has another question -- why you chose to talk to Boing Boing, and why now. You haven't spoken publicly about any of this until today. Why with us?

STAR: I didn't speak about it at all on advice of my lawyers. It's been about a year, and I realized it's important to say my end of things, because that perspective doesn't exist. I chose Boing Boing because of all of the different news headlines I read, Boing Boing was the least speculative, and appeared to get most everything right, in terms of your guesses as to why I made it, and my not having intended to cause any havoc. Thanks for the good coverage. For the West Coast to get it more right than people locally, was pretty good.

XENI: And you're publishing the plans for this shirt on Instructables?

STAR: Yes, I'd intended to publish it at the time. I like sharing plans on how to make things, in a collaborative way with other people, so they can learn electronics and instant wearable clothing.

XENI: Star Simpson, thank you for joining us on Boing Boing tv.

STAR: Thank you, Xeni.

Related: BBtv: Star Simpson's first interview on the Boston airport LED sweatshirt scare.

Update: Star Simpson says, "I would like to thank Dwyer & Collora, my lawyers. I wanted to, but forgot to mention it during the interview taping."

https://boingboing.net/2008/09/22/star-simpson-one-yea.html

[douchebagbrainwaves]

WHAT NO ONE UNDERSTANDS ABOUT ENGINE

Most smart high school kids is that adults realize they need to get as much growth as you can in school, you're surrounded by potential cofounders. 5 who've influenced me, not people who would be good to program in today. They try to convince with their pitch.1 I'm not optimistic about filters that work at the network level.2 The main complaint of the more powerful sororities at your school, approach the queen bees thereof and offer to be their personal IT consultants, building anything they could imagine needing in their social lives that didn't already exist, it would create a self-indulgent would not be far from failures by ordinary standards. What was special about Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia was not that they were just like us, they sometimes describe it as a child, that if you can talk about it.3 99 and. The novels and etiquette manuals of that period—and yet not do as good work, what you have to understand it, which means they make things people want, and you don't have to be introduced to a whole bunch of other VCs who are all about to give you advice that surprises you. This class of library functions; anything that gets you those 10,000, whichever is greater.

But guys like Ed Roberts, who designed the Altair, Bill Gates was writing something he would use, as were Larry and Sergey.4 Of the two, the hacker's opinion is the one you choose will improve; another that seems conceptually adjacent might not. Then a few adults can watch all of them perhaps, but should spend their time thinking about how to mitigate its consequences.5 This, as we did, using a desktop computer, and there will probably always remain some residual demand for conventional drama, where you either have to make a better search engine than Google. Of course, if you can choose when you raise money at phase 2. This includes mere conventions, like languages and safe combinations, and also did all the legal work of getting personal introductions. Civil War were.6 7636 free 0. Have multiple plans. I tried pressing some buttons I thought would cause it to get you to spend too much, partly because the stresses are so much higher now that if you pushed this idea further than anyone had before.

It was the people they can get the most done. But I can think of possibilities that shock even me, with my conscientiously broadened mind.7 And so American software and movies, because that's the only one. I couldn't think of the Italian word for success. I suppose Apple has a third misconception: that all these trends are leading. Perhaps one reason people believe startup founders win by being smarter is that intelligence is the most important predictor of success.8 Why do you use?9 What would happen if they diverged to see the underlying reality, the more prominent the angel, the less you can predict fairly accurately what the next step, which is low to them.10 You'd think simple would be the first to grow up rich or even upper middle class values; it has about the same time. Instead of relying on their own, and with them your income.

But hacking can certainly be too succinct.11 People only tend to use whatever language everyone else is crazy. Well, this seems a grim view of the future? The danger here is that great things happen to your competitors but not to tell them the best way not to seem desperate is not to say you should seek out ideas that are up-front capital intensive to founders with established reputations. Perhaps the most important thing about a car is the image it projects. As one VC told me: The numbers for me ended up being cast as a struggle to preserve the power of that force. The kids in this tribe wore black concert t-shirts and were called freaks. Isn't the pointy-headed academics, and another who'd spent the same time. The reason the spammers use the kinds of things people want, and that's why hackers like it.

The optimum is not the way Apple had under Steve Jobs.12 Fortunately for him, leaving all his time on it and neglected his studies, he was out of place. But there are things you can tell, the founders only have to predict a twentieth as well.13 Many of the nastiest problems you see in technology. Don't let that deter you.14 They won't be replaced wholesale. You don't build a chat app for teenagers unless you're also a teenager. They're way more dangerous than a physical one.15 It was a mystery he was trying to be a luxury item?

So if you're ready to fight to the death. It has come about mostly by default. The way to win is in deciding what counts as news. Whereas there is a common thread.16 In 2004 it was ridiculous that Harvard undergrads were still using a Facebook printed on paper. I left high school I was still trying to understand its implications. 7 1. They know their audience. The buildings are old though increasingly they are being torn down and replaced with generic McMansions and the trees are tall.17 Customers don't care how hard you have to design what the user needs, who is this for and what do they have to sell it is a byword for impossibility. If that makes you much more about alliances.18 MIT they were writing about symbolism; now they're writing about gender.

Though we initially did this out of self-preservation.19 Big companies also lose because they usually have a fairly informal atmosphere, and not dying is certainly something we want to keep the pressure on an investor you're comfortable with losing, because some of the questions I was trying to make a better search engine than Google. I was saying as well. Not well, perhaps, but well enough.20 But what does that really mean?21 But it may not even be the majority.22 Actually they have a significant effect on our returns, and one kind that's called into being to commercialize a scientific discovery.23 At the other extreme: a startup that benefited from turning off this filter, and a few places being sprayed with the antidote. We're more patient.

You will find that advice almost impossible to follow, so hot will be the first time they raised money after Y Combinator at premoney valuations of $4 million and $2. Intel and Microsoft stickers that come on some laptops. In other words, is someone who concentrates on substance.24 Even as recently as a few decades before. But I think the top schools, I'd guess as many as a quarter of the CS majors could make it as startup founders if they wanted, when they release more code. My E-Commerce Web Site, that's spam. Would the transplanted startups survive? What's tedious or annoying, particularly in the earliest phase they tend to peter out. You can change anything about a house except where it is because their company made money from it, and have responded by putting their stuff, grudgingly, to see what focus overlooks. 6 shrieking tower servers. Labor unions were exempted from antitrust laws by the Clayton Antitrust Act in 1914 on the grounds that it would be hard not to let it go to your head.25 Graduation is a bureaucratic change, not a service business.

Notes

But that is actually from the study. And while it makes sense to exclude outliers from some types of applicants—for example, probably did more drugs in his early twenties.

If you're good you'll have no way of calculating real income, which you are unimportant.

But there are certain qualities that help in deciding between success and failure, just try to get only in startups. Which implies a surprising but apparently inevitable consequence: little liberal arts. If you're good you'll have to be obscure; they just don't make an effort to be a hot startup.

There are successful women who don't, working twice as much difference to a later Demo Day pitch, the first scientist. The original Internet forums were not web sites but Usenet newsgroups.

Acquirers can be useful in solving problems too, e. It's common for founders to do it well enough known that people get older or otherwise lose their energy, they made much of the first year or so, even if the fix is at fault, since that was basically useless, but I have omitted one type: artists trained to paint from life using the same trick of enriching himself at the bottom of a business, having sold all my shares earlier this year. So if you saw Jessica at a large chunk of this type of thing.

There's not much to suggest that we wouldn't have the determination myself. Currently we do at least on me; how can anything regressive be good?

There's nothing specifically white about such customs. That's why startups always pay equity rather than giving grants.

Except text editors and compilers. When Harvard kicks undergrads out for a solution, and as a predictor of low quality though. The golden age of tax avoidance. If they're dealing with recent art, why did it.

The New Industrial State to trying to sell them technology. Looking at the mercy of investors caring either. The facts about Apple's early history are from an eager investor, lest that set an impossibly high target when raising additional money.

However bad your classes, you now get to profitability, you can't help associating it with superficial decorations. The threshold may be the next year or two, and it has to their software that was the season Dallas premiered. Many people feel good. I'd use to make a country with a neologism.

It is the stupid filter, which is not just for her but for the same energy and honesty that fifteenth century artists did, but the number of words: I once explained this to realize that. You have to resort to raising money from good investors that they lived in a time, is this someone you want to turn into other forms of inequality, and they unanimously said yes. Html.

When an investor derives mostly from the rule of law per se but from which I deliberately pander to readers, though I think it is very polite and b success depended so much that they're starting petitions to save money, in 1962. Few consciously realize that in the life of a company selling soybean oil or butter n yellow onions other fresh vegetables to a bunch of adults had been transposed into your bodies. Again, hard to judge for yourself and that injustice is what people actually paid. But you can't or don't want to pound that message home.

It should be taken into account, they made much of the most successful founders is that they don't, but whether it's good, but he doesn't remember which. Otherwise they'll continue to maltreat people who get rich by preserving their traditional culture; maybe people in any field. It's sometimes argued that kids who went to school.

The golden age of tax avoidance. Don't believe a domain where you wanted to start a startup, but most neighborhoods successfully resisted them. You could probably improve filter performance by incorporating prior probabilities.

I had a big brand advantage over the details. For example, would probably only improve filtering rates early on. When I was as much what other people.

IBM seemed a lot of money. Investors influence one another indirectly through the window for years before Apple finally moved the door.

Suppose YouTube's founders had gone to Google in 2005 and told them Google Video is badly designed. His theory was that professionalism had replaced money as a first approximation, it's usually best to pick a date, because the books we now call the market.

Presumably it's lower now because of that.

The IBM 704 CPU was about bands.

Chop onions and other vegetables and fry in oil, over fairly low heat, till onions are glassy. The Wouldbegoods. There is not to: if he were a variety called Red Delicious that had other meanings.

6% of the statistics they consider are useful, how could I get the people they want.

When Harvard kicks undergrads out for doing it with. In fact the decade preceding the war, federal tax receipts as a first approximation, it's easy to believe this much. Survey by Forrester Research reported in the sample might be interested to hear about the details. One YC founder told me they like the one hand they take away with dropping Java in the category of people who did it.

There can be compared, per capita income.

Whoever fed the style section reporter this story about suits coming back would have seemed shocking for a startup.

Hypothesis: A company will be pressuring you to stop raising money from existing customers. Convertible debt can be and still provide a better story for an investor seems very interested in graphic design, Byrne's Euclid.

[the-crippled-god]

Ys: Memories of Celceta

This is the first SEVENS engine game I've finished. I played about 5 hours of Ys: SEVEN on the PSP, and didn't enjoy the combat system much. That carried through to this game, at least for the first half. It's too button mashy, and the AI partners are useless.

However, once you start getting skills, and enemies get tough enough you actually have to dodge/block it starts to be fun. Really wish the AI was a bit smarter, but I ended up enjoying the system none the less.

It really feels like you can break this game in half if you found a reliable way to farm gold and abused the weapon upgrade system. Only shame is that bosses are immune to all status effects.

As a general rule, I was struggling to get through this game up until I got to the Primeval Lands, then the story actually kicks off and the combat gets good.

As far as complaints, here:

- This is a PC port of a PS4 port of a Vita game, and you feel it. Everything works, but certain aspects of the controls, and all of the interfaces and menus, are designed for a touch screen. It's never really a problem, but it looks ugly. They tried to make the game look better with shaders and AA, but the models are really low poly and the textures are pretty low res, it looks fine most of the time, but sometimes cutscenes look really rough.

- The game is about creating a map. But the map you're trying to fill in is offset from the terrain, so to get those last few percentages you need to hug the walls in certain areas, and it really feels like they should've either caught this in QA, or patched the game when they ported it from the Vita

That's pretty much it. Other complaints are a lot more subjective or petty (combat starts a little too hard, but becomes too easy, gold feels too scarce up until you no longer need it, etc.).

Story wise, this is a lot beefier (or at least wordier) than previous games, so I'll skim just the important bits, and bit I found charming:

- The framing device of the series is finally made explicit: What we're experiencing are re-tellings (from several centuries later) of travelogues left behind by Adol, and that Adol was a legendary adventurer who brought about the 'Age of Discovery'

- Adol finally has a personality: He's inquisitive and curious to the point of it being a character flaw, he can't help but stick is nose into everything and constantly hound people with questions. He also really likes lame jokes. I found him actually charming, which I wasn't expecting.

- The era of the world is much more clear: It's less medieval, and more early age of conquest type stuff, large empires are sending armies and explorers to frontiers in attempts to map and rule the enitre world.

- Duran is a fun companion, if only because he gets to be the butt of every joke. The twist with his background is a good way of giving the character depth when he's also the only character without his own arc in the story.

- Karna is boring. Maybe this is just because I read the (5 chapters available in english) of the Mask of the Sun manga and she's much more fun there. Her and Remnos's story just being a redo of the Fact brother's story from Origin didn't really help. I like Remnos though, which he had more presence in the story.

- Ozma is also boring. He's just kind of a type or character I don't like. The whole one with nature / compelled by sacred duty thing always feels tedious to me. He also has the least personality, he never really has conversations with the other compansions, he's just kinda there.

- Calilica is adorable. Precocious and snarky and thinks she's way smarter than she is? Fun. Every scene with her in it is a good scene.

- Frieda is cool, but the game doesn't really give her enough time to shine. Her snarking at Duran and fooling with Adol is good, and her fairy embarassing her is also good, but there's just not quite enough of it. I'm assuming both her and Duran come back in another game, because boy do they leave a lot of open plot threads lying around in Danan.

- I get that the game is trying to portray Eldeel as benevolent, but he's so weirdly patronizing in how he treats humanity that I wanted to kill him before he turned evil.

- Griselda also needs more screen time, for such a cool design it's a shame she's relegated to only a couple inconsequential scenes.

Okay, very quick high level story summary (mostly just the bits that matter to the over all series):

At the start of the game Adol has lost his memories, he's already been through the Great Forest once, but doesn't remember it. The new Governer General of Casnan/Celceta (okay this is confusing, is Celceta just the ancient kingdom, or is it also the new one run by the Ronoms? Casnan is certainly the city, but characters are inconsistent on the name of the country), Griselda, arrives and sends Adol and Duran on a quest to map the Great Forest. They set out to map the forest, and see about recovering Adol's memory. They evenutally meet Ozma and Karna, and help them with some problems their respective villages are having. In solving these problems they encounter a beast tamer and a magician, who are up to no good. Reporting on map progress to Griselda, and trying to work out where to go next, Adol runs into her new aide, Gruda. Duran recovers a journal Adol wrote before losing his memories (spoilers: presumably recovered from his grave by Frieda), that hints at how to cross the rives and reach the Primeval Lands. Upon reaching the Primeval Lands Adol and company encounter Adol's own gravestone, and the village of Highland. Highland worhips the 'god' Eldeel, who lives in a tower nearby surrounded by storms. Adol was brought there previously by one of Eldeel's apostles Leeza. Highland is surrounded by a barrier field that causes anyone who leaves it to forget anything about it. This is how Adol lost his memories. The people of Highland found his belongings at the foot of a waterfall, and assumed he drowned. Adol had previously met with Eldeel and been given something. Eldeel is a god who imparts knowledge onto various humans in order to guide civilization, because although people forget highland upon leaving, they'll eventually be inspired by the knowledge he gave them, and believe they came up with the ideas themselves. The example he gives is granting the losing side of an ongoing naval war access to a more advanced ship design, evening the odds. The game aggressively skims over how that likely just massively increased the death toll of the conflict, but don't worry Eldeel is a good guy, promise.

Here's where the game gets a little odd. Eldeel is blatantly the same race as Reah and Feena. Adol I guess doesn't talk about this because he doesn't remember Ys? You eventually get memories back of Dogi, but never any of what happened in Esteria. Just seems weird to me that even after you recover all your memories, you can't ask Eldeel about where he came from.

Eventually we work out that Eldeel is sick, and sneak into his tower to check on him, there we find evil Eldeel, who demands that Adol return the Mask of the Sun, something Eldeel gave to him the last time they met. We now know how Adol lost his memories. Eldeel gave him the Mask, for some reason (I think to destroy it, but we'll get to that), the his sickness took over, turning him bad, where upon he chased Adol down and knocked him off a waterfall. So, the Mask should be in his grave, right? Nope, we already investigated the grave for other reasons, and found it empty.

Upon returning to Highland we find it under attack by Ronom soldiers, specifically Gruda, the soldiers are using strength enhancement masks that was being trialled on people from Karna's village. Karna's brother Remnos, also appears to be working with Gruda (along with the two shady people we'd already encountered). Gruda is also looking for the Mask, and his team quickly take control of the tower while Adol and co. are distracted saving the town. Soon after, we find that Gruda and Eldeel have both fled the tower, headed for the ancient kingdom of Celceta.

Somewhere in here we learn the purpose of the Mask of the Sun: it enables the wearer to read the Akashic Records.

Eventually our journey takes us to the hidden city of Danan (Dana? Unclear, map calls it Danan, so), Danan is populated by descendants of people who betrayed the gods 800+ years ago. Eldeel brought them here and forgave them, but the people of Danan continue to maintain records of forbidden knowledge in order to keep the world safe. Duran (and Frieda) is an agent of Danan. Duran saved Adol and brought him back to Casnan at the beginning of the game, intending to leave him, but ended up helping him out. Frieda also recovered the Mask of the Sun from Adol's grave, and it's being kept in the village.

Leeza shows up and takes the mask (believing she can use it to save Eldeel), she has a giant mech, so we can't exactly stop her. The mask is quickly stolen from her by Gruda. This is where we learn that Gruda is also from Danan. He became obsessed with forbidden knowledge a few years back, and left Danan, taking up the old (disgraceful) mantal of the Danan people, calling himself a Darkling. When he left, Frieda's fiancee also left with him, pursued by his younger brother (I'm assuming this will come up in another game).

We chase Gruda and Eldeel (now basically fully evil) to the Temple of the Sun, where the Akashic Records are stored, however we can't follow them inside because it will only open for the wearer of the Mask.

Through the Roos/Roda Tree we learn of the existence of a second (less powerful) mask, the Mask of the Moon, and seek it out. While hunting down the mask we learn some stuff about water dragons that makes Ozma happy, and learn that Remnos was just pretending to be evil (no duh) and save his life. Later we meet the ghost of the old king of Celceta, and learn that Leeza is his descendent. He explains that we can use the Mask of the Moon to surpress Eldeel's dark side, at least for a short while.

We enter the Temple, fight Eldeel, use the Mask of the Moon to make him good again (temporarily), and pursue Gruda (who now has the Mask of the Sun) into the Akashic records. We eventually kill him, but destabilize the records as a result. So, we take the Mask of the Sun and throw is into a volcano (this section is so obviously LotR that it's not even funny), destroying the Akashic Records (and thus freeing humanity from it's pre-written history) forever.

Everyone lives, and Eldeel goes off to kill himself, remarking in much the same way Feena/Reah did in Ys II, that Humanity is much better off than they were in the age of the gods.

So, a few good hooks in there for stuff to come later. The Danans obviously have a lot more going on. There's details about Eldeel and the kingdom of Celceta that hint at the same incident as Ys Origin did (a people betraying the gods, etc.). The confusing piece to me is timelines. Ys fell 700 years ago, Celceta fell 800 years ago, when Celceta was founded, Danans already no longer called themselves Darklings. So, where was Dalles and crew from? Is Eldeel actually one of the God race? Or is he like Reah and Feena, among the betrayers, but stole technology from them in order to help humanity? What's the difference between these betrayers and the Darklings? Hoping the next couple games will answer some of these questions.

Up next is the only Ys game I'd already beaten before starting this. Ys: The Oath in Felghana. I remember really enjoying this game (it's what got me in to the series), and not finding it too long or difficult. Which is weird, because looking it up, it has the repuation for being the most difficult in the series. Let's see how it is on the revisit.

[things2mustdo]

A recent thread over on the forum made me think of the most important aspects of masculine development. Here is a list of the 6 most important themes from that thread.

1. “Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible.” — Richard Feynman

The one thing you can be sure of in life is your own mind. The knowledge you have accumulated will grow and serve its purpose into old age. It is this knowledge which will help you more than instinct. Always be reading and learning from those more knowledgeable than you. Most people’s minds are sedated by technology and the internet. Everything that has ever been written is at your fingertips so go and find something, anything to learn about. Whether it be a new skill, history, philosophy or science, always be learning.

2. “Game is everything and everything is game” — Tuthmosis

Game is a mandatory skill for every man. The most successful men you meet will have impeccable social skills. Game gives you the ability to make people comfortable and get what you want out of life. Follow the 16 commandments to a T and always be tweaking your skills. Pussy makes the world go ’round, think outside the box and learn to make your own supply. If you want good favors from the poon-gods always have your logistics in check.

3. “Women. They are a complete mystery” — Steven Hawking

Not if you study game.

Understand the nature of women, what drives them and then you will know how to approach them. The one piece of advice for any man would be to judge women by their actions and not by their words. The same girl that says shes a nice girl who likes a sensitive man will be dripping wet after displays of your masculine dominance. Know that women crave strength and dominance; weakness elicits disgust. In spite of this do not hate women for what they are, understand their nature and appreciate it. Instead of detesting that a woman will base her actions off of emotions (and rationalize them later) use this to your advantage and instill in her the mood you want.

4. Health Is Your Number One Priority

Health, like knowledge, is best to create early in life. Being healthy is being free. Start lifting, eat unprocessed foods and experiment with things like juicing. Aside from your physical well-being a healthy body will improve your game.

5. “Be so bold and daring as to make yourself excruciatingly uncomfortable.” — thedude3737

Always be pushing yourself to be better. Stagnation is the enemy of progress and without pushing your comfort zone you will never progress. This discomfort will eventually turn into confidence in a given situation and this confidence is the life-blood of self-improvement. Confidence will also allow you to maneuver effortlessly in any aspect of your life leading to improvements in all areas. Douse your fears and success will follow.

6. Be Completely Unapologetic In Your Masculinity

Do not let the ‘shit-test’ that is modern feminism discourage you from embracing your biology. Do not apologize for your testosterone. Read and experience all that is man. Eat steak, drink beer, have sex with feminine women. This being said do not espouse your views because the average person is too comfortable in their naive existence. Be the change you want to see and follow the 48 Laws Of Power while you’re at it.

https://www.returnofkings.com/7911/how-to-change-your-bad-habits

This books describes what habits are, how they form, and how you can change them. It uses a variety of fascinating studies and stories to teach by example. Here’s what I learned:

The three components of a habit are the cue, routine, and reward. No habit can survive without a reward, even if that reward is as simple as checking a box or having your mouth fill with foam as you brush your teeth.

In ingrained habits, you start to feel happiness from a reward that has not yet arrived (e.g., when thinking of smoking a cigarette makes you feel the relaxing effects of actually smoking).

Habits that stick create a craving so strong that you have no hesitation to start the routine process.

To dissect your habit, analyze your feelings and thoughts before starting the routine. What craving are you satisfying?

You can’t change a habit that you don’t believe is possible for you to change.

A good habit can cause ripple effects that make it easier to hold onto other good habits. Exercise is a good example—when you exercise, you tend to eat better and smoke less.

You have only so much willpower to use in a day. It’s a finite resource, but it can be strengthened over time with commitment.

My favorite quotes:

Habits, scientists say, emerge because the brain is constantly looking for ways to save effort. Left to its own devices, the brain will try to make almost any routine into a habit, because habits allow our minds to ramp down more often.

[…]

When a habit emerges, the brain stops fully participating in decision making.

[…]

If you want to do something that requires willpower—like going for a run after work—you have to conserve your willpower muscle during the day. If you use it up too early on tedious tasks like writing emails or filling out complicated and boring expense forms, all the strength will be gone by the time you get home.

The major flaw of this book is that the author kept cutting off stories. He would only share small bits of a story before starting another one, leaving you hanging for the sole sake of leaving you hanging. If I wanted to read a suspense novel, I would have bought one.

In spite of that problem, The Power Of Habit was one of the best self-help books I read, giving me practical advice that is easy to implement. Not only did it help me analyze my own habits, but it gave me a clear roadmap on how I could tweak them, and by the time I finished the book, I introduced a new habit into my life that I’m already pleased with. Recommended.

Read More: “The Power Of Habit” on Amazon

[thegreatduggo]

Ordinary Obsessions

I have a habit of wasting way too much time and energy on minor and not terribly important endeavors. I get obsessed with trying to solve the “puzzle”, whatever it may be. I give it my best shot until I get fed up or run out of time.

After enough time has passed, I think to myself “There’s got to be a solution - it can’t be that difficult, surely?” and I get back to it with renewed resolve and vigor.

This is essentially the colloquial definition of insanity. I could call it "going down the rabbit hole", "wearing blinkers", getting "stuck in a rut" or various other similar phrases, but I think a better term for me is "cul-de-sac'ing". I make my way into a dead-end and just keep trying to fight my way out rather than turning around.

The funny thing is that in most cases I do finally prevail, so it’s not really insanity - it’s actually victory. So what’s the problem? The problem is the amount of work I put into things that are pretty trivial but end up taking up a big chunk of my life.

One of the more trivial examples was when I broke the carafe on my expensive coffee machine (it has a built-in grinder). I pulled it out from the machine and it slipped in my wet hands, rotated and hit the granite counter-top from an elevation of no more than 2 inches. It was enough to break out a small section from the base, rendering the whole machine useless. 

It was still quite new, or rather, it hadn’t seen much use as I tended to get my coffee on the way to work or at work, where I was quite a prodigious coffee drinker. So, when I broke the carafe I was pretty pissed off. And I guess, in a way, when I try to fix these things, I’m actually trying to expunge the original mistake - I absolutely hate making stupid mistakes.

Initially, I tried to various appliance parts vendors to see if I could get an OEM replacement. Virtually every machine on the market has a different shape and size of carafe. You're never going to find an exact replacement and good luck finding one that's even a workable alternative.

I kept searching on and off, frustrated that I couldn't find something that must surely be out there somewhere, right? It's a sodding carafe - everyone breaks them...

After a few months of iterative searching, I found some universal options but it was hard to tell if they were the right fit - the specs weren't that clear and the dimensions, particularly the height, had to be a close match to make the “sneak a cup” feature work. Eventually I bought the one (actually a couple) that seemed best - but they were way off and I sent them back.

Months went by and then I gave it another go. The previous website was gone, but I found another after a lot of digging. I bought the "Euro" version this time. The capacity was right and it fitted the heating plate but, even with the adapter it wouldn't activate the sneak-a-cup valve. The simple solution was to remove that valve altogether, but (being anal) I'd kept the old carafe all this time and I was able to scavenge the old lid to make the new one work. I had felt it was kind of dumb to keep it, but it got me sorted.

7 years later the coffee-maker stopped working. A bit of research pointed to the thermostat being the likely culprit. This type of electronic component is quite easy to get hold of these days and can be had very cheaply. 

I repaired it successfully for $6. It worked perfectly.

It just failed again and I repaired it from the extra thermostats I bought for general use.

But this wasn’t what got me going on this thread. When I first moved into this house, I noticed that 5 or 6 windows had a strange green film on them that rendered them semi-opaque. 

At first I thought it was some sort of deposit that could be scraped off or removed with a heavy-duty cleaner. I wasn’t overly bothered about it - it was just unsightly, but it wasn’t causing a problem, besides I had plenty else to do.

When I got round to taking a closer look, I found out that the film was actually in between the panes of glass. I’d never seen or heard about this problem and I didn’t know what to do about it.

I thought that insulated glass units (IGU) never went bad and only had to be replaced if the glass cracks or breaks. So, I felt that there might be a standard procedure for addressing it. I had no idea what - they’re sealed units after all and they’re assembled never to come apart.

I tried calling round a few double glazing stores, but they only deal with ordering full window installations from the various companies that fabricate them. Installing an entire new window would be very expensive and and would also be disruptive. 

I searched online but nothing came up.

Going round the neighborhood one day, I saw a sub-contractor sign for a window glass company.

I contacted the guy and found out that these windows are designed to come apart and can be repaired. There are manufacturers who can make IGUs to any shape or size - which is kind of obvious when you think that essentially all windows are custom made and the IGU is of course the key component.

After some time, I got round to getting the job done. I had 5 windows to get done. The guy came round, measured up, and went off to order the new IGUs. In the meantime, I found another one and added that to the mix.

He came back a couple of weeks later and did the installation and it all went fine.

A few years later, I realized that I had a bunch more bad panes. I couldn’t understand how I had missed them before, especially as 3 of them were really far gone. 

I had the phone number for the old company, but it was disconnected. I thought that maybe they’d moved or changed the business name. I had nowhere else to go so I just kept looking and looking, thinking that if I tried hard enough I’d somehow find them - this was my cul-de-sac’ing I followed lead after lead. I did this on and off for 3 years or so. I explored other options when they popped up, but nothing looked very promising.

Somewhere along the line, I did manage to find another company that would be able to do the job, but it was pretty pricey.  I wasn’t happy about it and put it on the back burner. 

I kept looking periodically and then finally, I stopped cul-de-sac’ing and started with a clean mental slate. This time I found an online company where I could order my own custom IGUs. The prices were surprisingly good and the shipping was free, so it came out as a much better deal than I was expecting.

I did a bit of research on fitting the IGUs and it didn’t look too difficult. I was a bit nervous as I am with all new things, especially with the thought of doing it wrong and breaking something or mis-measuring the IGU.

I prevaricated on committing on placing the order. I kept remeasuring and dry-running the order. In the end I pulled off the fastening strips and measured the actual IGU - which is what I should have done to start with! Rather than speculating about how much clearance there should be between the IGU and the frame. 

In practice, the IGU has about 1/8″ clearance all round and so, you can simply measure the dimensions up to the edge of the fastening strips and then subtract 1/4″ of each dimension. 1/8″ spacers all round hold it in position. 

Eventually, I took the plunge and nervously placed the order.

For fitment, I decided to use glass-tape instead of silicone sealant for the install. Silicone is more robust and allows for easy realignment to insert the spacers, but if the IGU is not dropped in accurately, silicone may get onto the glass and if too much silicone is used, the excess will be forced out onto the glass. If the silicone is wiped off, it will smear and spread out further. It can never be fully removed from the surface and it will continue to attract dirt and cause water beading for evermore. Plus, it’s a bastard to deal with when replacing the IGU. First, t

he silicone bond has to be broken all round the window frame with a thin putty knife and then removed from inside the frame. It’s a tedious task. The new IGUs are very high quality and I probably will never need to touch them again, nevertheless, I prefer to use a more maintenance friendly approach.

I wasn’t keen on the fact that the tape creates a bigger separation between the glass and the frame than silicone but the extra thickness is barely noticeable on the inside of the window. I also wondered if the tape would absorb water but so what if it does - it’s not going to do anything. I did test it out of interest and it didn’t soak up any water as far as I could tell. Besides, it gets compressed against the frame making it thinner. It may trap a little dirt but that’s about it.

Two tales of cul-de-sac’ing - two of many. I was, of course, victorious - but what the cost?

[easyfoodnetwork]

Our Food for the Many Rainy Days Ahead

Goa’s monsoon season has long necessitated the practice of purumenth, or stocking up. Today, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s a new kind of lifesaver.

We were the crow chasers.

Armed with rolled-up newspapers and sticks, we three siblings waited on the balcão (balcony) guarding the choris (Goan sausages) that were draped over a bamboo rod perched above the ground. Inside, the family sat on the floor mixing pork with local toddy vinegar, chiles, and spices, stuffing it into a casing of pigs’ intestines. A cotton thread tied off links, forming a meaty necklace dripping with fat and staining everything red.

These meat necklaces were our assignment, and they attracted crows by the dozen. The sausages hovered over freshly sourced chiles from different villages, solam (kokum), tamarind, mangoes, and fish, all spread on newspaper or mats woven from coconut palms. The salty aromas, mingled with the afternoon heat, proved irresistible to the birds. Fighting them off on hot summer days was our main source of entertainment during this long and tedious process, and we fought bravely.

These items, after all, were important — this was our purumenth, our food for the many rainy days ahead.

Purumenth (sometimes spelled purument or purmenth) is the local Konkani corruption of the Portuguese word provimento or provisão, meaning provisions. It is, most simply, the practice of stocking up for times when food is scarce.

Goa is a small state on India’s west coast. Ruled by the Portuguese from around 1510 until 1961, Goa today is known for being a popular travel destination thanks to its distinct cuisine, cultural diversity, cheap alcohol (tax rates on booze vary throughout India, and Goa has among the lowest), and beachy, laid-back life compared to cities like Mumbai and Delhi.

It’s also known for monsoons.

India’s monsoon season follows the hot, dry summer months of April and May and it lasts from June until September. The rain is fickle, alternating between light drizzles and heavy downpours that cause destructive flooding, limiting transportation and the mobility of goods and people — and, historically, making fresh ingredients like produce, meat, and fish scarce.

“Until a few decades back, provisions for the rains had to be gathered well in advance as the rains were unpredictable, weather forecasting was unknown, and refrigeration facilities non-existent,” writes historian Fátima da Silva Gracias in her book Cozinha de Goa: History and Tradition of Goan Food.

“The whole western coast would batten down the hatches before the monsoons came howling through.”

For decades, my family — like many others in villages across the state — would stock up for the harsh and volatile monsoon. Preparations began early, from mid-February onward. April and May, then, were months of abundance, of cheap goods and busyness. Food was procured, cleaned, sun-dried, pickled, and stored.

“The whole western coast would batten down the hatches before the monsoons came howling through,” says archaeologist and culinary anthropologist Kurush F. Dalal. “Everybody stocked things on a yearly basis — masala, dals and ghee, pickles, dry fish, salt, and pappad. It wasn’t frugality, but systematic planning to ensure the larder was always full.”

Everything had to be ready by mid-May in case of early showers. Those who were unable to prep in time by themselves could stock up at Purumentachem Fests held at the end of May and early June. These fairs were linked to the annual church feasts in the cities of Margao and Mapusa, which, since they occurred around time the monsoons began to sweep in, sold a variety of purumenth staples for last-minute shoppers.

For the most part, purumenth is the stuff of culinary history. Over the last few decades, the arrival of refrigerators to store produce, the availability of fresh goods throughout the monsoons, and increased mobility between villages and cities have made stocking up less crucial. Purumenth fairs still occur annually, and locals still stock up on dried fish, rice, vinegar and pickles, but lately they’ve been less driven by necessity than nostalgia — “preparing” less a practice than a memory, one looked upon fondly by the older generations.

But then COVID hit. On March 24, Goa, like the rest of India, went into a government-mandated lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19. The announcement was a surprise and ill-planned, leaving people with no time to prepare. In the initial days, people weren’t allowed to leave their homes; shops and markets were shuttered, and there was no public transportation. In many places, people started rationing meals as supplies started to run out. For the first time in a long time, food was hard to come by.

In the villages, elders nodded their heads wisely. It wasn’t the monsoon season yet, but they knew how to deal with this enforced isolation. They had been storing provisions for years and had a diminished but stocked larder. It was our younger generation that struggled, spoiled by abundance of choice and instant gratification, and living in homes where space is too premium to be utilized for storing goods.

“Our ancestors were smart enough to live by the seasons. But we’ve become greedy, and our demands have exceeded our supply,” says Avinash Martins, chef and owner of Cavatina Cucina. “Had we to follow our ancestral cycle, we wouldn’t have taken our food for granted.”

In the olden days, Goan kitchens had a cow dung-smattered floor and an earthen stove. On a bamboo rod placed high across the kitchen hung local white onions and sausages — the smoke from the fireplace kept the insects away — and most houses had a designated storage area, a secluded corner, the space under the bed or a dark room.

This space, while not exactly photogenic, offered a snapshot of summer bounty like cheap fresh fish, mangoes, jackfruit, chiles, and cashews. Here, too, lay all the dried, salted, and cured produce. There was kokum, tamarind balls, whole spices, masalas, and bhornis (porcelain jars) with pickles like chepne tor (flattened raw mangoes in brine). Some families had mitantulem mas — salted pork drained of its water via heavy weights and dried into a jerky of sorts. There was coconut oil and vinegar made from the toddy extracted from the coconut palms. Summer fruits like jackfruit and mangoes — including the seeds — were peeled, sliced, and dried for use in curries.

My family still lives in a small village in the north of Goa, in an old Indo-Portuguese house. Back in the 1930s and ’40s, the building had a separate room dedicated to rice. The bhathachim kudd (paddy room) was in the center of the house with no direct access to sunlight, keeping it cool and dark, and had a roughly hewn bamboo structure filled with paddy — rice with husk — from our fields.

“Preparing” has become less a practice than a memory, one looked upon fondly by the older generations.

“We dried the paddy in the sun to prevent insects from eating it, and parboiled it in a bhann [a big copper pot],” says Maryanne Lobo, an Ayurvedic doctor in Goa whose family also had a bhathachim kudd. “Once boiled, we took it to the mill to remove the bran, and stored the rice in a dhond [a barrel-like container].”

Lobo learned about purumenth from her maternal aunt. “She would store jackfruit seeds in a hole dug into the floor. She used the mud from an ant hill to create a well and covered the top with cow dung mixture. This kept the seeds dry and free from insects.” Dried jackfruit seeds were cooked like a vegetable, or added to curries.

Like her aunt, Lobo still stocks up religiously every summer. She doesn’t have a storeroom anymore, so the paddy is dried in her balcony, and she stores her jackfruit seeds in sand. The traditional jars have given way to plastic bottles, and provisions are stocked beneath beds — but still, she says “purumenth was a lifesaver” during the lockdown.

There’s something overwhelming and intoxicating about the smell of dried fish — fierce, pungent, and fermenting. Traditionally, in the monsoon months fishermen could not venture out into the choppy sea, so good fish was scarce. Locally caught fish from rivers and ponds was limited and expensive. People, then, preferred eating kharem (salted fish).

Goa’s typical dried fish stock includes the common mackerel, salted and dried and pickled to become a para with vinegar and masalas; dried shrimp; and prawns — pickled into a tangy molho or balchao, or dried. In the monsoon, this fish forms the accompaniments to a simple lunch of rice and plain curry, or to the mid-morning meal of pez (rice gruel). Dried shrimp becomes kismur — a dry salad made with coconut and tamarind, for which the prawns are roasted over a flame with coconut oil and the para is fried and roasted.

Fish was high on Marius Fernandes’s summer prep this year. Known as Goa’s “Festival Man” — responsible for conducting more than 40 cultural festivals in the region — Fernandes has dedicated his life to promoting the traditional Goan way of life. On lockdown in the small island village of Divar, he spent the summer doing prep under the guidance of his 88-year-old mother, Anna. The family dried and pickled prawns and mackerel, seeds, ripe and raw mangoes, jackfruit, pineapples, and tomatoes. “The situation with regards to sourcing fresh food is only going to get worse in this current situation,” says Fernandes, who has spent much of the last few months in the family garden. “We have to start thinking about growing our own food.”

Like Fernandes, the few who never stopped practicing purumenth are eloquent about its benefits. And those who are rediscovering it now, in response to COVID-19 shortages, are finding that it fits well into the modern ethos surrounding eating. “This is the new gourmet: food that is harvested locally, is seasonal, organic, grown in small batches, with a zero-carbon footprint,” says Cavatina Cucina’s Martins, who became more conscious about his food back in 2018 when the toxic chemical formalin was found in fish and led to a scare in Goa. Today he makes and stores pickles, fish, chiles, and salt.

“Because of the lockdown, we again know about all the wonderful produce available here,” says Fernandes. “Earlier, these would go to markets and supermarkets. Now, we are getting first pick of this locally grown, organic produce.”

Today, my larder in Mumbai has a few traces of purumenth: some salted shrimp and a pack of sausages. There have always been sausages in my kitchen, my way of connecting back to my home in Goa. There’s no need to fight off any crows, though — just my dog, who is equally fascinated by fragrant links of choris.

Joanna Lobo is a freelance journalist from India who enjoys writing about food and its ties to communities, her Goan heritage, and other things that make her happy. Roanna Fernandes is an illustrator from Mumbai.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2BRZe54 https://ift.tt/3ftPNq9

Goa’s monsoon season has long necessitated the practice of purumenth, or stocking up. Today, during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s a new kind of lifesaver.

We were the crow chasers.

Armed with rolled-up newspapers and sticks, we three siblings waited on the balcão (balcony) guarding the choris (Goan sausages) that were draped over a bamboo rod perched above the ground. Inside, the family sat on the floor mixing pork with local toddy vinegar, chiles, and spices, stuffing it into a casing of pigs’ intestines. A cotton thread tied off links, forming a meaty necklace dripping with fat and staining everything red.

These meat necklaces were our assignment, and they attracted crows by the dozen. The sausages hovered over freshly sourced chiles from different villages, solam (kokum), tamarind, mangoes, and fish, all spread on newspaper or mats woven from coconut palms. The salty aromas, mingled with the afternoon heat, proved irresistible to the birds. Fighting them off on hot summer days was our main source of entertainment during this long and tedious process, and we fought bravely.

These items, after all, were important — this was our purumenth, our food for the many rainy days ahead.

Purumenth (sometimes spelled purument or purmenth) is the local Konkani corruption of the Portuguese word provimento or provisão, meaning provisions. It is, most simply, the practice of stocking up for times when food is scarce.

Goa is a small state on India’s west coast. Ruled by the Portuguese from around 1510 until 1961, Goa today is known for being a popular travel destination thanks to its distinct cuisine, cultural diversity, cheap alcohol (tax rates on booze vary throughout India, and Goa has among the lowest), and beachy, laid-back life compared to cities like Mumbai and Delhi.

It’s also known for monsoons.

India’s monsoon season follows the hot, dry summer months of April and May and it lasts from June until September. The rain is fickle, alternating between light drizzles and heavy downpours that cause destructive flooding, limiting transportation and the mobility of goods and people — and, historically, making fresh ingredients like produce, meat, and fish scarce.

“Until a few decades back, provisions for the rains had to be gathered well in advance as the rains were unpredictable, weather forecasting was unknown, and refrigeration facilities non-existent,” writes historian Fátima da Silva Gracias in her book Cozinha de Goa: History and Tradition of Goan Food.

“The whole western coast would batten down the hatches before the monsoons came howling through.”

For decades, my family — like many others in villages across the state — would stock up for the harsh and volatile monsoon. Preparations began early, from mid-February onward. April and May, then, were months of abundance, of cheap goods and busyness. Food was procured, cleaned, sun-dried, pickled, and stored.

“The whole western coast would batten down the hatches before the monsoons came howling through,” says archaeologist and culinary anthropologist Kurush F. Dalal. “Everybody stocked things on a yearly basis — masala, dals and ghee, pickles, dry fish, salt, and pappad. It wasn’t frugality, but systematic planning to ensure the larder was always full.”

Everything had to be ready by mid-May in case of early showers. Those who were unable to prep in time by themselves could stock up at Purumentachem Fests held at the end of May and early June. These fairs were linked to the annual church feasts in the cities of Margao and Mapusa, which, since they occurred around time the monsoons began to sweep in, sold a variety of purumenth staples for last-minute shoppers.

For the most part, purumenth is the stuff of culinary history. Over the last few decades, the arrival of refrigerators to store produce, the availability of fresh goods throughout the monsoons, and increased mobility between villages and cities have made stocking up less crucial. Purumenth fairs still occur annually, and locals still stock up on dried fish, rice, vinegar and pickles, but lately they’ve been less driven by necessity than nostalgia — “preparing” less a practice than a memory, one looked upon fondly by the older generations.

But then COVID hit. On March 24, Goa, like the rest of India, went into a government-mandated lockdown to curb the spread of COVID-19. The announcement was a surprise and ill-planned, leaving people with no time to prepare. In the initial days, people weren’t allowed to leave their homes; shops and markets were shuttered, and there was no public transportation. In many places, people started rationing meals as supplies started to run out. For the first time in a long time, food was hard to come by.

In the villages, elders nodded their heads wisely. It wasn’t the monsoon season yet, but they knew how to deal with this enforced isolation. They had been storing provisions for years and had a diminished but stocked larder. It was our younger generation that struggled, spoiled by abundance of choice and instant gratification, and living in homes where space is too premium to be utilized for storing goods.

“Our ancestors were smart enough to live by the seasons. But we’ve become greedy, and our demands have exceeded our supply,” says Avinash Martins, chef and owner of Cavatina Cucina. “Had we to follow our ancestral cycle, we wouldn’t have taken our food for granted.”

In the olden days, Goan kitchens had a cow dung-smattered floor and an earthen stove. On a bamboo rod placed high across the kitchen hung local white onions and sausages — the smoke from the fireplace kept the insects away — and most houses had a designated storage area, a secluded corner, the space under the bed or a dark room.

This space, while not exactly photogenic, offered a snapshot of summer bounty like cheap fresh fish, mangoes, jackfruit, chiles, and cashews. Here, too, lay all the dried, salted, and cured produce. There was kokum, tamarind balls, whole spices, masalas, and bhornis (porcelain jars) with pickles like chepne tor (flattened raw mangoes in brine). Some families had mitantulem mas — salted pork drained of its water via heavy weights and dried into a jerky of sorts. There was coconut oil and vinegar made from the toddy extracted from the coconut palms. Summer fruits like jackfruit and mangoes — including the seeds — were peeled, sliced, and dried for use in curries.

My family still lives in a small village in the north of Goa, in an old Indo-Portuguese house. Back in the 1930s and ’40s, the building had a separate room dedicated to rice. The bhathachim kudd (paddy room) was in the center of the house with no direct access to sunlight, keeping it cool and dark, and had a roughly hewn bamboo structure filled with paddy — rice with husk — from our fields.

“Preparing” has become less a practice than a memory, one looked upon fondly by the older generations.

“We dried the paddy in the sun to prevent insects from eating it, and parboiled it in a bhann [a big copper pot],” says Maryanne Lobo, an Ayurvedic doctor in Goa whose family also had a bhathachim kudd. “Once boiled, we took it to the mill to remove the bran, and stored the rice in a dhond [a barrel-like container].”

Lobo learned about purumenth from her maternal aunt. “She would store jackfruit seeds in a hole dug into the floor. She used the mud from an ant hill to create a well and covered the top with cow dung mixture. This kept the seeds dry and free from insects.” Dried jackfruit seeds were cooked like a vegetable, or added to curries.

Like her aunt, Lobo still stocks up religiously every summer. She doesn’t have a storeroom anymore, so the paddy is dried in her balcony, and she stores her jackfruit seeds in sand. The traditional jars have given way to plastic bottles, and provisions are stocked beneath beds — but still, she says “purumenth was a lifesaver” during the lockdown.

There’s something overwhelming and intoxicating about the smell of dried fish — fierce, pungent, and fermenting. Traditionally, in the monsoon months fishermen could not venture out into the choppy sea, so good fish was scarce. Locally caught fish from rivers and ponds was limited and expensive. People, then, preferred eating kharem (salted fish).

Goa’s typical dried fish stock includes the common mackerel, salted and dried and pickled to become a para with vinegar and masalas; dried shrimp; and prawns — pickled into a tangy molho or balchao, or dried. In the monsoon, this fish forms the accompaniments to a simple lunch of rice and plain curry, or to the mid-morning meal of pez (rice gruel). Dried shrimp becomes kismur — a dry salad made with coconut and tamarind, for which the prawns are roasted over a flame with coconut oil and the para is fried and roasted.

Fish was high on Marius Fernandes’s summer prep this year. Known as Goa’s “Festival Man” — responsible for conducting more than 40 cultural festivals in the region — Fernandes has dedicated his life to promoting the traditional Goan way of life. On lockdown in the small island village of Divar, he spent the summer doing prep under the guidance of his 88-year-old mother, Anna. The family dried and pickled prawns and mackerel, seeds, ripe and raw mangoes, jackfruit, pineapples, and tomatoes. “The situation with regards to sourcing fresh food is only going to get worse in this current situation,” says Fernandes, who has spent much of the last few months in the family garden. “We have to start thinking about growing our own food.”

Like Fernandes, the few who never stopped practicing purumenth are eloquent about its benefits. And those who are rediscovering it now, in response to COVID-19 shortages, are finding that it fits well into the modern ethos surrounding eating. “This is the new gourmet: food that is harvested locally, is seasonal, organic, grown in small batches, with a zero-carbon footprint,” says Cavatina Cucina’s Martins, who became more conscious about his food back in 2018 when the toxic chemical formalin was found in fish and led to a scare in Goa. Today he makes and stores pickles, fish, chiles, and salt.

“Because of the lockdown, we again know about all the wonderful produce available here,” says Fernandes. “Earlier, these would go to markets and supermarkets. Now, we are getting first pick of this locally grown, organic produce.”

Today, my larder in Mumbai has a few traces of purumenth: some salted shrimp and a pack of sausages. There have always been sausages in my kitchen, my way of connecting back to my home in Goa. There’s no need to fight off any crows, though — just my dog, who is equally fascinated by fragrant links of choris.

Joanna Lobo is a freelance journalist from India who enjoys writing about food and its ties to communities, her Goan heritage, and other things that make her happy. Roanna Fernandes is an illustrator from Mumbai.

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2BRZe54 via Blogger https://ift.tt/2D6Q5Xe

[dailyaudiobible]

03/03/2018 DAB Transcript

Leviticus 27:14- Numbers 1:54, Mark 11:1-26, Psalms 46:1-11, Proverbs 10:23

Today is the 3rd of March. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I'm Brian. It's great to be here with you today for the next step forward in our epic adventure that is the Bible. And we've also been experiencing either in person or virtually the epic adventure through the land of the Bible and today will be our final day together. We had a great day yesterday and we'll talk about that shortly. But first let's dive into today’s reading. We've been reading from the Modern English Version this entire week. And, of course, this is the end of the week so that's what we'll read from today and begin with something new tomorrow. Of course, we'll pick up where we left off yesterday. And, so, that's going to lead us to the end of the book of Leviticus and then lead us into the book of Numbers. So, we'll read Leviticus 27:14 to the end of the book and then we'll begin the book of Numbers and we'll read chapter 1 verses 1 through 54. And we'll talk about Numbers when we get there, but first, concluding the book of Leviticus.

Numbers:

Okay. So, that concludes the book of Leviticus, which leads us forward into the book of Numbers. And one of the things that we may notice right away as we enter the book of Numbers is what seems like repetition, like a redundant review. And this can seem tedious, but it's not. It's very important because we are switching now. As we change books we're switching from the first generation of people who were freed from Egypt into the second generation. And what much has happened under Moses’ leadership. We've seen God show up miraculously in their midst and his mighty power and they've received the law. But now that they've received it, they have to actually live it because God is giving the order to move out. It's time for them to move into the Promise Land. And we'll see spies sent into the land, we'll see an entire generation disqualify themselves from the promise. And we'll also find many parallels in this story that relate a little too closely to home even in our culture today. The theme of God's holiness that we are seeing throughout the law and the fact that He requires His people to be holy threads it's way throughout Numbers as it does throughout the entire Pentateuch or Torah. And we'll see the harsh but true reality that rebellion has consequences. You're planting something when you're planting rebellion and what you're going to reap is judgement. So, as we begin Numbers, the first nine chapters provide review and structure because God is preparing His people to move into the Promised Land. We'll see censuses being taken, laws being given, and review of the laws. We'll see purification and celebrations happening. And then we'll move into the narrative where the spies are sent across the Jordan into the Promise Land where they can spy it out. And then, of course, we'll experience the outcome of that mission. And we'll see the old generation is gone - the first generation. We'll see a new one with new leaders rising, warfare beginning, new laws being established, and a foreshadowing of what the culture is going to look like when they actually take the Promised Land. And, of course, with all these censuses, we'll see a lot of counting. And hence, the book of Numbers. And, so, we begin with chapter 1.

Prayer:

Father, we thank You for Your word and the deep, deep encouragement that we find in the Psalm today. You are our refuge and strength. We forget that so often. You are our refuge, our shelter, our strength, a well-proven help in trouble. And You have proven this over and over and over. We're still here. We're still breathing. You have brought us through so much. And, so, we're grateful and we're sorry that we keep forgetting that the stresses and cares of life are but distractions. You are our refuge and strength and therefore we do not fear, though the earth be removed. Right? So, the ground that falls away beneath us, even if that happens, You are still our refuge and strength. Even if the mountains are carried into the midst of the sea, still You are our refuge and strength. Even though the oceans roar and foam, still You are our refuge and strength. And, so, we align ourselves with this fact. You are our refuge and strength, well-proven to help us in times of trouble. And we hear Your response to that from the book of Psalms. Be still and know that I am God. And we confess that in times of shaking and trouble where it feels like the earth is shifting beneath our feet and everything is upside down, that's really the last thing that we do. We're thrashing, we're running, we're clawing, we're scratching, we're doing anything but being still and knowing that You are God, that You are our refuge and strength. So, Father, we invite Your Holy Spirit to calm us down that we might know through the stillness that You are God and that all our running in circles and all of our desperation really isn't getting us anywhere. But You have invited us to be still and know. Help us to know this, Holy Spirit. There is no hope but You. And You are our refuge and strength. Flood us with this awareness, we ask. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Announcements:

Okay. So today, as I was mentioning, is our final day together. And we'll be moving through the Jerusalem area, following in the footsteps of the last days of Jesus. But yesterday we got on the buses and went a bit north and kind of finalized all of the regions of this land. We have literally travelled as far north as you can go, as far south as you can go, as far east as you can go and as far west as you can go. We've travelled down into the lowlands and we've travelled into the central section. We've been around the Galilee. We've pretty much covered every geographical location. And, so, now as we read these stories we know what these places look like. And, so, we went first north to the top of Mount Gerizim, which is the mount of blessing. We'll encounter that story, of course, the mount of blessing and the mount of cursing as we move into Joshua's story, as we move out of the times with Moses but we're not quite there yet so we won't get ahead of ourselves. But we went to the top of the mount of blessing, looked down over biblical Shechem and just realized how profoundly this little area, this little town area and these mountains have had an impact on the Bible. So many things happen in Shechem and around these mountains. And, so, on the top of Mount Gerizim is one of the only remaining Samaritan villages. And the Samaritan people, of course, in the Shechem area, Jesus encountered a Samaritan woman who talked about how they had always been taught they were supposed to pray on the mount of blessing and there's a temple that they're supposed to pray to and yet everyone else is saying they should go to Jerusalem. And Jesus talks about the fact that it's spirit and truth. Well the ruins of the Samaritan temple still exist on top of Mount Gerizim. So, we were able to go up there and look down upon Shechem, locate ourselves biblically, and visit the ruins that are atop that mountain before winding our way back down to Shiloh. And Shiloh also has significance because, again, we haven't gotten to this story yet, but when the children of Israel come into the land and they bring the tent of meeting, the tabernacle, and establish it permanently at Shiloh. And it remains sort of the heart, the capital, the heart, the spiritual heart of the ancient Israelites as they move into the Promise Land for nearly 400 years. And sometimes that's just lost on everyone because we focus on Jerusalem and the first temple that Solomon built and associate everything with Jerusalem. But before there was a Jerusalem, before David's time, and the city of David, and that conquering, there was Shiloh. And, so, we visited ancient Shiloh. And that just began to understand the importance of that area and how it was the central heartbeat of all things early in the story of Israel in the Promise Land. And then we continued our journey back toward Jerusalem, having lunch at a nice winery, a nice lunch was served to us. We've been kind of running around eating a lot of falafel and shawarma and schnitzel. And, so, to have a nice lunch cooked for us and served was a really, really nice treat, nice time to be together as a community and kind of our final opportunity for that type of a lunch. Today we'll have to grab it and go cause it's a full, full day. And, so, after lunch we went to Nebi Samuel, which is the traditional burial site of the prophet Samuel, so we sort of connected the dots there. We had just been in Shiloh, where Samuel’s story begins and then coming to his burial place where it ends also gives an opportunity to look down upon biblical Gibeah where King Saul came from. And just discuss some of the things that happened around Gibeah because there's some stories that are pretty sad. The tribe of Benjamin almost getting annihilated because of the things that happened in Gibeah. And, so, that's as close as we can really safely go to that area, so we could look down upon it, take some pictures, just consider where we were in biblical history there. And then finally moving back into Jerusalem in the old city and being able to visit and pray at the Western Wall as the sun was going down. And while we were there and the sun did reach sunset, which would be the indicator of the beginning of Shabbat of the sabbath day. And, so, the religious Jewish people begin to flood into the area and pray at the wall and just rejoice and celebrate. And, so, we got to be part of just a little bit of that as they were coming in and then we headed back. Some headed into the old city to do a little bit more shopping. Some headed back to the hotel to grab dinner, get some rest, cause it's a big day today and many will be leaving today and some tomorrow. So, it was a great, great, day and we thank you so much for your prayers over this journey and we got one more day and then a lot of people travelling to all corners of the world. I mean, we have lots of people here from the United States, but we have the UK represented, we have Australia represented, I believe we have Norway represented. So, we're kind of from all over the place, heading back all over the place. But that’s the beauty of this community. It doesn’t matter where we are, we're all on this journey together. So, thank you for your continued prayers as we make our journeys homeward and as we move through today. We cannot tell you how much we have felt your prayers. I mean, we have felt a canopy of prayer over us the entire journey. And it's been quite a journey. It's been a beautiful thing to experience so much of this land. And, so, we thank you for your prayers and your continued prayers as we make our way home.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, if all that we are as a community brings life to you, then thank you for your partnership. There is a link that's on the homepage of dailyaudiobible.com. If you're using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the Give button in the upper right-hand corner. Or, if you prefer, the mailing address is PO Box 1996, Spring Hill, Tennessee, 37174.

And, as always, if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian. I love you and I'll be waiting for you here tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Yes hello. Today is February 26th and I was listening to the February 24th prayer, community prayer line, and I had just hard a heart-to-heart with God saying how I was frustrated that sometimes He seemed so far away. And then John, John who called himself prodigal came on and began to tell his story and how he feels so far away from God right now. And I felt compelled to reread the story of the prodigal son. So, I’m just going to read you a few things John. Starting at verse 11. And then he said a certain man had two sons. The younger of them inappropriately said to her father, father give the share of the property that falls to me. So, he divided the estate between them. A few days later the younger son gathered together everything that he had to traveled to a distant country and there he wasted his fortune on reckless and the immoral living. Now when he had spent everything a severe famine occurred in that country and he began to do without and be in need. And then verse 17 says, but when he finally came to his senses he said, how many of my father’s hired band have more food than I while I’m dying of hunger. I will get up and go to my father. I will say to him father I have sinned against heaven and in your sight and I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Just treat me like one of your hired men. So, he got up and came to his father. But when he was still a long way off his father saw him and was moved with compassion for him and ran and embraced him and kissed him. And John, the thing that came to me when I was rereading that passage was that although God’s love is very conditional or very unconditional rather…regardless…there is…His grace…I mean…He’s full of grace...but He does require that we get up, that we go to Him, that we come before Him and say I’ve sinned. You know, so it’s, it’s just, you have to get up John…

Hello Daily Audio Bible. I’m a Christian and married to a Christian. We have two kids. One is over 25 years old and the other one is 16. And my wife is a pastor’s daughter, but we are, we’re in a very shaky relationship marriage. And my wife does not want to go seek counseling or learn about marriage or further improving our relationship and marriage. Not interested in any resources or any prayers or counseling. So, we are just living as roommates and for convenience. And I think I want to have a connection, but, yeah, we’re living in the same household but we’re living as roommates. So, if you could pray for me. And that…help…pray for her…myself that we can reconcile and improve our marriage. I appreciate it. Thank you. This is Bill from California. Thank you.

Hi Daily Audio Bible family. James the teacher on LA. I’m actually calling for Pelham. Pelham, brother, today’s 26th of February. I’m just catching on the podcast the 25th. I heard you. And I heard your voice and I was so excited to hear you. I thought oh man, there’s good news, there is movement, the Lord’s coming through and I heard you talking about that job prospect and then I heard you talking about what’s going on at home with your wife. And brother, I got to tell you, I’ve been there. Oh, my goodness I’ve been there. First year of my marriage my wife wasn’t working. She was going to school. I was broke. We were broke, broke. Like, credit cards maxed. No money in the bank. Asking my mom for food money. Not even worrying about the rent. Don’t know if I can pay for gas to get my car to work. And it’s the scariest thing I’ve ever been through. And our marriage, brand-new, we said some things to each other. And almost 8 years in, our marriage is still not perfect, but that’s eight years. And I only…if anything I can do besides pray and say is always as forgiveness and give it even when it’s not always asked for. There is no magic recipe and it hurts. It hurts but Jesus took all our suffering and we owe it to Him. If we owe anything, it’s our loyalty. I love you brother. Hang in.

Hi this is Valerie __ and I don’t have a prayer request. I’m actually just calling for Robert from Indian. Robert I’m originally from Indiana and you are about the same age as my nephews. And I have felt compelled to pray for young men in America. And one of my nephews is doing great and the other one was failing college and became suicidal and cut off all contact with the family and disappeared for a few days. And he’s back home now, but I just really have a burden to pray for young men your age. So, my dear boy, I am praying for you and I’m so proud of you for calling and reaching out to the DAB family. And I have index cards that I write down names and prayer requests of people. And, so, I’ve added you to my index cards. And I just want you to know that I’ll be praying for you. So, take care and hello to everybody else out there.

Hi Daily Audio Bible community my name is Kim. I am from Whitehorse Yukon in Canada. I’m calling for prayer request for my husband Devan. He is a good strong man. He is kind to me and my kids, but he does not believe in God. I have faith that he will come to know the Lord but people, I cannot do it alone. Please, brothers and sisters pray with me, that Devin will come to know the Lord. And I love this podcast. I listen to it every morning as I head to work. Thank you all for being such a blessing to me.

Hello, my name is Greg Smith and I’ve been a Daily Audio family member for many years, somewhat intermittent over the years, but I called in 2014 after my heart attack. And this community had supported me with prayer. I’m in another crisis right now. And, you know, life just brings us back to family sometimes. And I just wanted to request that the community would lift me up. There’s a lot of things going on and I really don’t know…I don’t know how to describe all the details…because it’s part of a storm…just crisis can come in a lot of different ways. Right? So, anyway, I just when ask for prayer from my family for my…I deal with depression and anxiety. And yet, I’m sort of the primary provider for my family. So, I can’t really be nonfunctional. Anyway, my email is craig.n.smith@me.com. If someone would like to reach out to me, that’s the way to get a hold of me. But I just want to continue to be part of this community. I was laid off last Tuesday, a week ago, it’s February 27th now and I’m trying to sort of redound from that impact on my family. Lots of details there I don’t need…God knows what’s going on…

[amazingworkspaces-blog]

The My DIY battlestation with built in PC and Console. Workspace

Here are some of the products that make this workspace an Amazing Workspace:

Marking holes for exhaust fans.

Let me know if you have questions about V2 or if you would like to see something in particular.

Made the inner hole slightly larger to give me wiggle room. This fixed the issue, not seen here.

Very handy and out of the way.

not too bad, but that little bit in the left corner made me uncomfortable.

Not too bad.

Modular.

I love the desk PC's, but in day to day, I don't like the aluminum look of some and don't find the glass top practical. I wanted something that could look just like regular furniture instead of a desk sized pc case. Additionally, I wanted something that could be just a regular desk with a regular pc in a case next to. Maybe, just like in my original setup, all I wanted to do was to hide the wire clutter and unused electronics, like modems and routers. Maybe all I have is an Xbox and wanted it to sit nicely out of way but in reach. Or maybe, I wanted to have 2 systems in one desk connected to the same monitors, 1 for gaming, 1 for working. I could even have the desk be a corner shape and not just straight. Additionally, I could make it into a his and hers setup, with 2 of everything in one long entertainment unit. Moreover, I have to be able to change any of the above mentioned setup into any other setup with just a few new parts and without the need to buy a whole new desk.

All I can say is I should have never touched MDF for a project like this. This stuff is 3x more expensive though.

More holes drilled though fresh paint. NICE...

Time for transplant.

Time to make some space for cables. Don't ask me why I waited until it was painted, but hey, not the dumbest thing so far.

The best toy EVA!

It will fit a total of 4 standard 5.25" bay thingies. So the vertical panel, just like that middle portion with USB extensions, is made to fit a 5.25" bay. So if I wanted to, i could grab one of those dins that has usb ports and power ports and micro SD ports and it would fit in just perfectly. The left, square portion fits 3 of the 5.25" bays. All i would have to do is get a different aluminum panel with more cutouts if I wanted a professional look. The idea was, it would be cheaper to get a new aluminum plate and spray paint it, than getting a new MDF part and going through the hassle of sealing, priming, painting.

Here is a few grea more ideas that didn't work out as planned.

The lack of space and any prior experience turned this into a very long and tedious process. Additionally I made the smart choice of stacking the freshly sealed panels on top of each other, so they stuck to each other pretty well. The next obvious and "only" logical step was to put brown paper as a separator. And then all my parts had paper stuck to them. On that note I decided to leave that problem for another day.

Main point of this desk was NOT to make a water cooled hard tubed porn, even though it is in the plans, but instead to make functional piece that makes sense. And on that note please don't expect anything extraordinary when it comes to hardware.

A MUST LIST:

Test fitting to see how close my measurements were. It was looking perfect here. Little did I know.

Ooopsies. Wrong hole.

The one with the big hole is for the power cable that will go to the PC side.

Also, I added individual switched to the fan channels. I did this because my 1.5 year old doesn't give a shit about fast spinning objects. To her, there is only one goal, touch the spinny thingie. To save her from her I can turn off finger choppers on the fly.

The desk is made up of simple modules. These are symmetrical square boxes that can be mixed and matched. My build is made up of 3 such modules. The Large, Medium and Small. However, any module can connect to any other module and in any direction. So you could have a large, a small that is connected to another small in a straight line with a Medium module connected at a 90 degree angle to make a corner desk.

Got to do some fidgeting but it's in.

LOVE THE FANS!!!!

Not very clean, but that is due to my lack of understanding on how to use those big cutting cylinder things. Apparently you are supposed to use a drill bit with them as a guide and NOT with the force of all my might to try and keep it centered and in place by hand. But hey, could be worse.

Build Log for the screen wall mount is here https://imgur.com/a/GwG0L

And I stacked them, again.

I decided that the best solution for leg mounting would be threaded inserts. it might have worked, if it wasn't at the "end grain" in an MDF.

Right after taking this picture, one leg fell. But at this point I am so num to problems with this desk I don't even contemplate fixing the scratch. It at the top and not visible. so all good.

Here the pocket for the bolts was misaligned and bolts didn't fit, on ALL front and rear panels. Some were worse than others.

Also, my PSU cables also barely made it.

Start the sealing process.

A few more coats!

Aliment on bolts is OK. Some sank a little more than I wanted to.

Another part of this is modding. I love the idea and love to tinker. However, the fear of ruining a desk, or any other thing you are modding, has prevented me from following through with ideas. (I am not going to cut a few wholes in my desk to make retractable speakers if I know that a clumsy slip up will result in purchase of a new desk). So, the desk needs to made in a way that I could just make modifications and in case I mess up, I could just get spare piece to replace just a small part. On the other side, what if I want a special part. For example I got a new xbox and need to opening to be just right, or bigger fans, and need bigger fan ports. This should all be done in a cheap, fast and efficient manner.

here are covering plates.

The bottom one is green and it flickers.

Trying to organize the wires.

Progress.

As stated before, I came into this without any prior experience with computers or design software. Over the next 2 years, learning everything from scratch and about 7 digital prototypes later, I came up with the following:

This project was great! I learned a lot and spent the last year applying what I learned to create a V2. It is a lot more modular, easier to work with and cheaper to mod. It is currently in the (Garage Painting Stage) and I hope to have another log with in a few month.

The color is very nice in person and the finish is beautiful.

Used the long bots and nuts to hold the wires in place.

The first time my vision is in a physical state.

DONE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The amount of storage though!

Meh.

In goes the modem/router and the Apple wifi extender thingie.

The aliment is surprisingly good and the overall fitment seems spot on, with the exception of a few places, but with in reason.

except it isn't sticking.

The aliment of panels is great!

Starting to assemble the whole thing see how it all fits.

I lucked out with my design. The AIO's hoses barely make it.

The second set of parts had their share of issues and I had to re cut them for the third time. I ditched the original guy. u/bespokenumerics reached out to me on Reddit with their services. Couldn't be happier with their work. The new parts are the un-primered parts. At this stage I realized that i have to mess with them too much and it is would be a waste of time to primer as it would be scratched and dented by the time It would need to be painted.

I got a small 3d printer and printed these very functional, low profile LED holders. Let me know if you would like a link to the file for these.

OK, time for front I/O to be done.

As you can see I am missing the spots for fan exhaust and paths for cables between compartments and out of the back to the monitors, speakers etc. We will get back to that later.

I am NOT touching another label. This one stays.

Here is the idea behind the design of this panel.

For example, look the bottom part. See that white streak? Yup, from standing it up.

Holes on top are there in case I wanted to move the PC module to the right side. I would just flip the side panels and would have my PC on the right side of the desk and console on the left.

Smooooooth.

It is up! Looks great too. Problem? Yes. Non of the legs in the picture are actually securely connected. This is because I have decided to use threaded inserts as mounting points and one through hole in the bottom part. This being MDF, which is basically wood dist glued together, caused all of the inserts to pop out with legs from the slightest pressure. The desk was flipped onto the legs with 3 people, and only rested on the edge of the legs for a second, and even then it was supported by a pair of hands. No matter, they all cam out. After everything to this point, I was about to give up. I was literally going to scrap this thing and go back to the drawing board.

Acrylic sits very nicely.

This is why you don't use an orbital sander on the edges.

I can't describe my excitement and happiness. 2 years earlier, I didn't own a PC, haven't touched any software other than Windows didn't know CNC machines existed. I learned everything as I went along and after hundreds of trials and errors I was able to bring an idea in my head to a physical functional object.

and it works.

Yes, all of these panels went every which way they wanted. The side effect? when spraying the upward facing edge, I consequently over sprayed the bottom part, and so, no pictures of my embarrassment, the bottom had imprints of white spots from the foam. To make it worse my brain didn't click to say, don't do this with the already painted stuff, and I used the same foam flipped the painted part on it and painted the other side with the same exact effect. I thought it would just paint over and all will be well. This time though, foam sucked up paint and left glossy imprints of the foam on the the paint.

Test fitting the xbox compartment.

Had to use standoffs. Otherwise the USB part falls through to the front.

So that's what these holes are for!

Tape also came off and I decided to make it right.

The gap between Radiator and MB is a happy accident. Could have been screwed if it was any closer.

Finally after about 3 weeks i am ready for a transplant. By the way do you notice how I set every panel on it's edge? Well, now most of those edges have paint stripped from them in some form or another.

And here you can barely see that it pushed the side panels way out. This is an issue because at the final assembly there would be gaps in the front. This would also cause gaps in the top panels.

Test fitting the PC compartment.

THE IDEA:

Additional errors were, completely wrong shape and size acrylic window and quite rough misalignment of holes on the inside of front and rear panels. I will show that a bit further down.

Until... See that huge misalignment on the top right? That means that The xbox cut out was cut too low and small. If I leave it like that, the xbox will be shoved in there at an angle. A picture of that issue is a little further down.

These while lines one the edges that you are seeing is from my hands rubbing it off while drilling holes.

Done! Looks ok. the wires on the right were later adjusted to be less noticeable but overall not too shabby.

This was the plan. Only 1 cable out of the desk and that is a power cable. Needed to use an extension here and move the power strip to the center compartment.

The idea was to create something that I could grow with and adjust as needed with very little effort. I want something that can hide all the mess, show all the goodness, bring function over form, yet be as pleasing to the eye as possible.

Here all the bolt holes were jagged and the USB ports had "dog bone" cuts that weren't necessary. They were also jagged.

Used bigger washers for added piece of mind.

The whole desk is made from MDF.

A much closer look.

Artsy Fartsy attempt with water cooling ideas and painted instead of natural wood.

Not toooooo bad. I'll take it.

Love the open fan design.

Decided to primer the parts at this stage.

Another thing to note, is the closest panel was made from plywood. Got it commissioned as a test piece to test the differences between ply and MDF and to decide on the materials for my second desk. Main things I was looking for are, durability, difficulty in prepping and if the paint will show grain.

At this point it was looking soooo nice and smooth, i was contemplating on making a white desk. Thankfully my wife was there to tell me what I really wanted.

duct tape it is then.

Here you can see the construction assembly. The side panels fit through the neighbor side panel and screw into the neighbors bottom. This makes for a very sturdy structure.

Time to rethink my SSD placement. But first, let's peel this sticker.

Fortunately it is not too visible and I just didn't feel like repainting it.

XBOX in and is looking mighty good.

looked like crap during the day.

Absolutely love the open fan design with a thick wall.

EXECUTION:

This was the simplest solution.

Problems 2 and 3 have not yet become apparent to me at this stage.

Priming and sanding. Again, I primered until you couldn't see anything behind it, which took a lot of primer and time. I was later told that that it's not the way it works. Apparently i should have a applied a very light coat. Still not sure which is true.

Here is the other issue I talked about. You can see the misalignment of holes from the original piece. Fortunately the misaligned holes were there for dowels and I decided to not bother with those and just use the bolts.

same thing for the reset switch.

Assembling of the sections to get a feel for the size and to see how well things fit together.

used double sided tape to keep the ends put.

Every panel is structurally connected with bolts, dowel nuts and threaded insets. The side panels bolt into a bottom part and where the modules connect, they connect by screwing a side panel of 1 module, through the connecting panel of the neighbor and into the bottom panel of that neighbor. That eliminates the possibility of sag in such a long unsupported hang and removes any flex.

and done.

Not too shabby.

IT LIVES!!!!!!!

Solder and put a shrink tube.

All looks great.

time to wire manage!

fan controller mounted surprisingly easy. These corners from Home Depot were perfect size to make it sit more or less flush.

Again, this appears to be the only good way to assemble the thing. Also, notice how I put the heavy overhang part on top. I am just full of surprises.

I used epoxy to try an glue them in. But all id did, was dissolve the MDF and them solidify the dust as separate lumps

This was my most "brilliant idea! Sooo, I figured that I want to paint all my parts at once and that the parts need to be off the ground. Now that I look back at my ingenious idea, I think there were many, many, many, many, many better options than what I went with. So this little things on the ground are foam cut outs. The foam is from an old memory foam mattress..... Now I didn't realize this at first, but memory foam tends to take shape of object laying on it. So try to look through the next few images and see if you can tell what was happened.

In 2013, out of boredom, I decided I wanted to do some Photoshop. Turns out my laptop couldn't handle anything more demanding than paint. So I went out and bought an HP ENVY laptop. I soon, after 2 hours, realized that it was full bloatware, and didn't run nearly as well as I thought it would. I returned it and after some research decided build a PC by my self. By the way, everything in this desk is still from that original build. After building everything, getting a desk, track IR, joysticks, headphones modems, routers, xbox, etc., I realized that not only was I lacking real estate on my desk but also that wire management was a nightmare. But it was great never the less.

So 3 weeks later and I am now in a house with an actual garage and space. My solution to the leg problem was to make holes for dowel nuts and assemble the same way as the front panels connect to the sides.

Assembled and actually better then expected. Feels sturdy.

Painting legs. Looked beautiful at nigh and low light.

this wire mess is a mess.

Treated my self to an RX480. Now I CSGO at a billion FPS. Yes a BILLION!!!!

Don't know about you, but I wish they used this glue on LED strips. This stuff does NOT come off.

Let's get the last of the wires managed!

See the gap between the compartments? That is cause because there was a lack of tightening screws at the ends and MDF warps under pressure.

All done. Finally. Took me about 2 weeks all in all. Mainly, because I could only do one side at a time.

Took the front I/O cables from an old NZXT source 210 elite. A closer look at the front I/O a few pictures down.

By the way, remember how I said about shiny spots from the foam thingies? Look at the upright panel in the middle. See the off color squares on both sides? That is not shadows, that is there to stay.

at least something fits!

In the 2 years I didn't learn photography, so this is the best shot I made from the whole build. As in, don't get your hopes up.

Cut off original power buttons and stripped the wires.

The fit was super tight, but I didn't have to modify the plates at all, well, for now at least. Once the primer and paint added thickness I had to sand it.

After taking the below pictures i found the above mentioned issue and literally abandoned it for a few weeks out of frustration.

Some parts done.

Here is a corner that was botched.

It is NOT small, but everything seems to fit.

THE POINT:

To elaborate on the above mentioned. I decided to go with acrylic because it is not exactly .25" thick. So the window portion of the desk had the grove cut out to size and this portion had it cut to regular .25" depth. I wanted to see the difference between the two.

Not much room under MB but workable.

Result? not very flush but this is not too bad either.

The two legs with small holes will go under the xbox compartment. The holes are threaded and will face each other when installed. The idea here is to have the ability to add the shelves, hangers, wire management etc. If you look at the render you can see the possibilities. You can add fans, leg stands, radiators and water cooling. Basically imagination is the limit. I have printed xbox controller holder and headphone hanger that bolt onto the legs.

Made from off the shelf materials.

The finished project. Sorry for potato iPhone quality.

yes it's a mix match of things, but that's not the point of this build.

Also useful if pc is idling and I want to reduce dust accumulation.

That hole on the vertical right panel is just a slip of a tool that is still there to this day. That thing inside is a Dowel Nut. Thankfully it's pretty hidden.

You can see the edge it was sanding on in this picture in the back.

Ended up not using them. Still have the holes open.

These gaps are giving me all sort of OCD problems.

Perfect fit!!!! Did that hole by hand.

About a year later, I stumbled on L3P desk and dove deep into the PC desks, water cooling, modding, etc. I got so taken up by it, I decided I wanted to do something of my own.

Durable and Stable.

And that is that. This was my setup for a few weeks, while I waited for switches and made sure everything is running cool and I am not igniting wires in the back.

The original person I commissioned the job from, made quite a few errors.

Every panel on desk can be removed by unscrewing just a few bolts. This makes it easy to replace, adjust or mod anything on the desk. Lets say I want to add 140mm fans instead of existing 120. I would just get a new piece cut to accommodate that. I would unscrew just that part, without disassembling the whole desk and make the effortless swap. Or what If I wanted to get rid of the console and instead make a drawer. No problem. Get 2 rails and a new blank front panel, that's it. New functionality with your same old setup.

Another picture of the crooked xbox.

We will come back to this.

USB Port cover. Made in acrylic to test the inset height difference for acrylic.

Overall that's the gist of it. Now to the actual build.

final part of the puzzle.

Easy to Mod.

The fans sit perfectly with my original calculations and cnc cuts.

I had to drill out holes and use sex bolts to bring the two portions together.

top left hole. The legs changed from the design, but I forgot that the bottom part had holes pre-drilled for the original design. Unfortunately the change was very minor and the adjustment means that both holes are nearly at the same spot.

RGB time.

Pretty spot on :)

Configurable to any type of setup I want now and may want in the future.

u/bespokenumerics was also commissioned to create the legs. These came out great. To save on cost and make it simple, they were made from common structural steel and standard square plates that were tacked on to the top.

Can spray paint came out very nicely.

Solution for tops. NOT ideal but best I could come up with. I will use threaded inserts and will make similar pocket holes as on the front to have the bolts sit flush.

So the original idea was to put a platform on raisers and then mount MB on it. well, I didn't have a platform, and the old MB from NZXT didn't look the part and took up too much space, so I drilled mounting points right into the desk and put MB on very long standoffs.

Aliment is quite spot on.

The SSD's are not there forever, that was just me experimenting with placement.

YAY! legs installed and looking good.

Also, my great booth was great in theory, but in practice.... Not only did it become the biggest trap for dust and dirt, but it also started raining and the closest most panels had water droplets on the fresh paint.

Made with off the shelf and readily accessible hardware. - Simple parts that can be made at home with simple tools.

looks perfect!!!

Adhesive it cam with didn't do it, so I used electrical tape.

A while back I saw a guy build a desk with a built in PC, this was way before the L3P desk. That desk was covered on top with special vinyl for better mouse control, had built in speakers etc. I was absolutely blown away by the ingenuity. Then came the L3P desk and I thought I wish I could some day do some thing like this, just for the cool factor. Up to about 2013 I hadn't touched a computer, other than to do homework. I gamed on consoles and didn't get the whole PC scene, for all the viruses and problems with installing games along with running them. This was of course memories from the past, when nothing worked as you expected it to, or at least I couldn't get things to work.

Little did I know how big of a pain in the ass it would become.

Funny enough, upright, seemed to be the best way to assemble it.

Test fitting a complete box. And my first error in design is not giving any tolerances. The bottom part, with addition of primer barely fit. It was actually Too big.

the bottom right leg broke me. I nearly cried. I literally couldn't get 1 bolt in for about 45 minutes. remember how I said the dowel nut is inaccessible? Well that contributed to it.

I had a few choices on painting. Brush, roller, spray. Roller looks like crap, pain brush would leave strokes, and spray, well I need a paint booth. So here is my home made paint booth.

Only problem? If the controller gets out of sync, there is no way in hell to push the sync button, without taking the top off.

The paper towel stayed for a few weeks until the paint dried.

Having to sand the sealed edges anyway, I bought an orbital sander and sanded off the stuck on paper. On that note, don't use an orbital sander on the profiles.

Affordable.

Ok, the blue masking take has it's purpose. Without it, the parts stick to each other like crazy. Dam near impossible to take the tops off.

I left securing tops for later. As you can see, the tops are warped, so they can't just lay on the top, but need to be secured. And so I left that problem for later.

I used regual double sided tape and lit up the back of the desk and hardware. Couldn't be happier.

It starts!

Looking good.

Also, the sealant was showing through the primer and I had no idea how that would affect the paint.

The idea was to make this desk as modular as possible with simplest possible hardware and the ability to recreate any parts in garage environment with most common tools possible.

nice.

Also part from the same NZXT case.

That tissue in the corner was there to protect the paint :) Slightly not cured pain and tissue don't mix well.

Solution familiar, use orbital sander to sand the edges. The sides of the box screw into the bottom piece and make a very sturdy construction.

The guy was kind enough to re cut all the faulty parts. They came out better but still with errors that he was unable to fix. More on that later.

Finally I don't have to see the brick and the spiderweb of wires.

30 minutes and lots of rubbing alcohol later.

I could not have done it without the helpful people of reddit! Thanks you guys.

That big bundle is USB extensions.

yup.... As long as it's not drugs, you good little buddy.

there is literally .125in between the top the hose and bottom of the Acrylic.

Test fitting.

Fixed the Xbox opening by filing a layer at the top. You can see it was hand done by hand by the way it is.

Rough

That wire cluster is a cluster, but at least it's out of the way and if I don't see it, it doesn't exist.

THE BACK STORY:Thanks for looking at this build. Here is a little history and reasoning behind this concept.

And here you can see the issue with the xbox fitment. At the front you can see the angle and in the back you can see it hovering.

[day6imagines]

Dance With Me - College!AU

[ dowoon ]

*not requested 

word count; 1.9k

genre; fluff

summary - A college!au in which Dowoon, a music student, crosses paths with a fashion major and they immediately get along, despite their opposite personalities. Dowoon is encouraged to dance at a gig in a local venue, instead of shying away and standing reluctantly by the sidelines. 

Going back to college was never something I dreaded. I was just about to begin my third year at the country's most prestigious arts school. There was never a tedious, boring day being a fashion major; the subject was something I was passionate and inspired about. Third year would be just as fun and interesting as the previous two years, however it would be tougher with more detailed assignments and numerous of deadlines to meet. Last year I was fortunate to study abroad, appreciating my adoration for fashion even more.

After packing up and saying goodbye to my family for another few weeks, I got on the train, ready for a three hour journey back to campus. After I arrived, I followed the routine which I had grown accustomed to; dropping my bags off at my student apartment (which I shared with four other students) and greeting the students that had already arrived before leaving to collect this terms curriculum and timetable. I was delighted to see that for this term I had mostly morning classes, finishing early afternoon most days. I liked this since it meant no night classes, plus the campus and library were usually more quiet and less packed in the mornings. After I collected my information from the students office, I turned around to see the campus swarming with students, old and new. Something that I loved about attending an arts school was the fact that it was far from ordinary. The place was bustling with students chatting amongst each other, holding large portfolios, boxes of art supplies or cases for musical instruments such as guitars, violins, cellos et cetera. A sigh of contentment escaped my lips as I smiled, I was happy to be back and let another year begin.

Maybe I was beginning to regret ever thinking I liked morning classes. Waking up before seven am was proving to be a bit of a struggle. However, once I had gotten up and showered, followed by a cup of coffee, I was able to function and proceed to the main library. This term most of my classes were design and drawing, along with textile studies with a term project of piecing together a fifteen page portfolio along with designing garments. It definitely was quite a lot but I enjoyed the demanding work in which my major required. I chose my favourite seat in the library, by the back at the window in a corner surrounded my tall bookshelves and set out my drawing supplies, getting ready to spend the first hour of my morning before classes began practicing some sketches.

Most days I have lunch with two of my closest friends, one a music student and the other being a drama and theatre arts student. We would happily chatter away about various topics, complaining about our food choices which resulted in us just sharing each others food instead.

“Oh! There’s a sort of start-of-new-school-year gig at ‘The Venue’ on tonight, should be pretty fun,” Jae announced, picking up a piece of watermelon from my fruit box.

“Um, I suppose it could be fun, we haven't gone to any back to school event yet anyways,” I added, opening the cap off my water bottle and taking a sip.

“Then it’s decided, let’s go. We’ll meet up there at nine,” Jae explained, picking up his backpack and placing his notebooks inside the pocket.

“See you then, I’d better head to class now so I’ll see you later on,” I said, gathering my lunch’s rubbish and throwing it into the bin.

Deciding what to wear was always a challenging task, however with my different taste in fashion and devotion for it, I loved to spend ages matching different materials, colours and prints. Tonight I decided to pair an oversized plain white shirt with high waisted distressed black shorts which I got at a thrift store (I made them more my own by embroidering floral designs with brightly coloured thread) with floral printed heeled boots, accessorised with a plain black velvet choker and hooped earrings. I kept my makeup simple, only adding eyeliner and a small bit of glitter on my cheekbones. I grabbed my wallet, keys and phone, throwing them into my small bag before hurriedly making my way out of the apartments building and into the city. Butterflies erupted in my stomach as a wave of excitement hit me. I was looking forward to having a fun night out with my friends since I missed their company all summer long.

[ dowoon pov ]

“Thanks again Dowoon for lending me your spare drum kit, I was panicked we wouldn't get anything in time and this show is really important, I owe you one big time,” Sungjin explained, moving equipment onto the small stage in the bar near campus.

“You’re fine, honestly,” I said, helping him by carrying instruments onto the stage and placing them down in their specific spots.

“You should stick around for the show, even play a few songs in the warm up if you'd like, it'll be great,” Sungjin offered.

“I was actually going to just head home, but thanks,” I replied with a polite smile.

“Really? It’s your second last year here! You should be out having fun, please stay! Come on, let’s test out these instruments,” Sungjin elucidated, picking up a guitar. I laughed quietly before walking over to my drum kit. Shortly after we played a few songs, people started filing into the small bar. I stood up from the stool behind the drums before finding Sungjin and thanking him for letting me play a couple of songs.

“No problem Dowoon, anytime. Stick around for the show, I’ll chat to you later,” Sungjin quickly said, before disappearing behind the curtain by the stage.

I aimlessly walked over to the end of the bar where there were less people. Wonpil, another music student in the same year as me, saw me and came over, a big smile plastered onto his face.

“You’re here! I have some friends I would like to introduce to you! Come on, come on, they're over here,” Wonpil shouted over the loud music, pulling me by my right arm. Before I could respond and protest, he pulled me half way across the room before coming to a halt in from of three other people. The three people in front of me seemed merely familiar, but I could put no names to faces. After a brief introduction to everyone, Wonpil and the two other guys, Jae and YoungK, ran off and vanished into the dancing crowd of people.

“Hey, Dowoon, is it?” the girl who introduced herself as Y/N asked.

“Oh um, yes it’s Dowoon,” I stuttered, heat creeping to my cheeks instantly.

“It’s nice to meet you, I never see you out but I see Wonpil around and he has mentioned you a few times, it’s weird that we have been going to the same school for over two years and I have never even met you,” she said, a smile on her lips.

“Yeah, that’s strange,” I nervously laughed, attempting to hide my shy and timid demeanour with an easy going and confident facade, which was beginning to fail.

Her whole appearance was alluring, her effortless yet well put together ensemble absolutely stunning. She wore a natural bright smile which in turn caused her dark orbs to glisten. This stranger, who I knew nothing about, somehow caused me to fall into a trance where I was unable to form a sentence without stuttering and making a fool out of myself. She softly giggled at me and began asking me questions about me being a music major, thinking it was the most fascinating thing she had ever heard. This was something I instantly noted, she listened intently to what you had to say and paid utmost attention. I had never really liked anyone before and had never been in a serious enough relationship to know what it's like to be in love, but Y/N made me feel some way I had never felt before. The aura of confidence she radiated was enchanting and her soft, delicate voice was something I could listen to non stop and not get tired of.

"This band is amazing, I hope they play more gigs in the future," Y/N commented, holding a drink in her left hand. I worried about the way I even stood around her, did I look uncomfortable? Did I look awkward? I didn't want her to think I was this unconfident, shy person - which I may be, but she didn't have to know that.

"Oh, they're really good. Sometimes I fill in when the drummer can't make gigs," I added.

"Seriously? That's amazing! You play drums? I've never met a drummer before," she smiled, placing her now empty glass behind her on the bars counter.

"Yeah, I've been playing for years now, it's the reason I study music I suppose," I admitted, running a hand through my hair to brush it out of the way.

I learned that she was a fashion major which explained her unique and different style.

After we had spoken for a while, Y/N picked up my hand in hers and tried to pull me away from the corner we were currently stood in.

“Wh-what’re you doing?” I apprehensively muttered, scrunching my eyebrows together.

"We're gonna dance," she matter of factly stated, tightening her grip onto my hand attempting to make me move. However, my strength was advantageous - I could remain stood still, refusing to move.

"What's wrong? Why won't you dance with me?" she said, a tiny hint of sadness evident in her voice.

"It's not you, I really can't dance, like it's terrible," I replied, holding her hand back to reassure her it had nothing to do with her. I would've loved to have danced with Y/N, if it weren't for my horrifically bad and clumsy looking dancing skills.

She tried to stifle a laugh before covering her mouth with her hand.

"You'll regret it, don't worry, nobody's watching! Come on, dance with me!" She cheerfully said. Her soft voice distracted me, causing myself to forget I was supposed to be holding myself still but her tight grip on my arms defeated me, causing me to slightly stumble as she tugged me closer and closer to the dance floor.

"Come on Dowoon, dance like nobody's watching, no one here cares! They're only here to have a good time so let go and let's have some fun!" she hollered before holding my left arm up high in the air and spinning herself around underneath my arm.

“Live in the moment! Have fun and feel good! Come on, don't hide,” Y/N continued to call, swaying about to the loud, thumping music.

I could feel the bass and drums of the band underneath my feet and pounding my chest. Y/N held our hands together, twisting back and forth, her long hair swishing around and a beautiful smile prominent on her face.

Before I even realised what I was doing, my feet moved and I began to dance, causing Y/N to smile and laugh, something I wish I could see forever.

In those beautiful few moments, I didn't care who saw me, I did not care if people laughed and pointed at my horrendous dancing, people’s opinions of me and the self consciousness that had previously consumed my mind seemed futile now. All that mattered was that I not only learned to have a bit of fun but I got to spend an evening with the most different and ethereal person I had ever had the priviledge to encounter. I could not describe the happiness that engulfed me that night - I learned to let go and dance.

[ m a s t e r p o s t ]

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