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2 yr. ago

  • It’s small pieces of solid wood from a mystery box of mostly lathe turning blanks. Pretty sure it’s just red oak, but that fits the vaguely 80s vibe on that build perfectly. I trimmed them to size on my table saw and jointer, but I may eventually redo them, as the fitment (on both boards actually) is just a bit off.

  • A pretty large portion of the kits, components, and pre-built boards are from "obscure" Chinese companies already, so much of what you'd want is just sort of... there. As a single example, get a GMK67 for $35, 70 Milky Yellow switches (if you're into linears. I am not.) for $20, and maybe a YMDK set of keycaps for $30-$50, and you've got a very presentable budget build under a hundred bucks. If you go hunting, you can probably find stuff you'd like just as much for even cheaper.

  • More pics at GH starting HERE.

    When I had xometry cut my plate for the one in the back, it was pretty cheap to have them cut three sets compared to one. Tried a few different ideas on build two. Tactile switches, "CSA" keycaps, 3D printed sides at 3-degree incline, and springs supporting the middle of the plate. This one is pretty flexy, but still feels secure. I don't think it's going to replace my clicky boi full of Box Navies though.

  • Tons of good mechanical keyboard stuff on AE. Not the absolute top of the line customs boards or keycaps, but almost everything else is hiding in there somewhere.

  • My friend, you need to find yourself a lumberyard. The framing lumber is for framing, and the select boards are not worth it unless you need exactly one board. Not that I haven't done the same thing with "2-by" material, but it's hard to complain. Those teenaged twigs in Home Depot are plenty strong enough to hold up a house and are way more sustainable than the beauties our ancestors nailed together and hid behind lath and plaster walls. Not quite THIS bad, but sad in its own way.

    Also, the trick is to grab a 2x12 and rip it to width. 😉

  • One, dude just played an instrument in the lower register. He fucked up. I quit trombone after a year in (small) part because what's the fun in setting the bass line?

    Two, it seems like Canon was sort of "rediscovered" in the late 1960s and the people just absolutely fucking loved that chord progression and pop musicians and their producers were no exception.

    On a personal level, I first ran across it as a kid when I found a MIDI file of it on my Tandy PC, which was known for having above average samples for the sequencer, and I thought it was lovely too.

  • That's the funny thing. As far as I know, you're completely right. I am not seriously tuned in or anything, but talking to my father-in-law and my wife's cousin (both Punjab-born Sikhs and no strangers to taking pride in their identities) as well as sort of generally keeping up with the basics in the news, the sense I get is that "Khalistan" as a movement very much peaked in the 1980s with Operation Blue Star, the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the subsequent riots, and culminating in the Air India bombing in 1985. Since then, it's been a slow erosion as Indian identity has stabilized, as the democracy became a bit more robust (seriously being tested now), and Sikhs felt better integrated into the country. The idea of being effectively a weak buffer state between India and Pakistan just sort of loses its charm when the population doesn't feel desperately repressed. The first Sikh PM was even a member of the Gandhis' Congress Party. The diaspora is doing well, and in many western countries Sikhs serve as useful, informal cultural ambassadors for the nation of India.

    Many Sikhs even supported the Modi and the BJP at first, but as the Hindu nationalists find success in oppressing Muslims, suddenly there are more voices that the Sikhs in Punjab need to be brought to heel as well, or at least that their concerns are unimportant and do not need to be addressed. Even still, most of the loud separatist voices are outside of Punjab and couching most of their rhetoric in peaceful terms, and the drive for any serious resistance remains fringe. Modi et al are fanning tiny embers of resistance that would normally be unlikely to cause great harm to India or the world. If they don't stop shooting straw men, they're going to create the exact problem they claim to be trying to fight.

  • Maybe I'm a little pollyannaish, but I tend to think that the generations growing up with this stuff will grow around it and configure their social expectations and will settle into rhythms that work as well for them as older generations' environments did for them. It will look weird to olds, but I always wonder if we're looking back at the "good ol' days," and projecting our own reactions to the changes onto the generations that will take them in stride and make sarcastic wanking gestures at us when we complain.

    Pamphlets/Newpapers/Films/Radio/TV/Video Games/Internet/Social Media will all rot your brain and subject you to misinformation and leave you depressed at how you must interact with the world, depending on when you were born and when you are speaking. Not to say there are not unique challenges to each in turn, or that some periods don't end up worse than others, but I just don't think our kids are going to treat the world and each other THAT much worse than all their ancestors have, and if they do I'm not sure it is uniquely social media's fault. There are many things worth knowing about the social impact of new tech, and perspectives that the experienced can offer, especially in transitional eras while it's new. I just don't think think doomer handwringing or trying to put genies back into bottles is a good use of anyone's collective time.

  • I get that OP is almost more thinking of people's "comfort food" works that serve that need for them personally, but Becky Chambers is very specifically writing to inspire that kind of feeling from the get-go. Life can get hard, bad things can happen, but good things too, and people (including pan-sexual bird aliens) are just living in the future the same way they do now and most of them are trying to be decent.

  • Tangentially, the DS9 shapeshifter makeup looks EXACTLY like the people who go way too hard on their plastic surgery. You know, the 60yo people who want so badly for me to think they're thirty that they get enough fillers that they no longer look how humans of any age are supposed to look so my brain resets and I mentally assume they're seventy.

    I'm not even completely opposed to cosmetic procedures. People have different priorities and psychological needs, but you've got to accept that you can only shave off so many years and approach your vanity with some strategy. We're all fighting a rear-guard action here.

  • I mean, the anarcho-capitalists are fairly extreme, but the libertarians in general seem to be people who want to lock in the benefits they've got in the current system and remove any barriers to fucking over people who don't have them. They also seem to forget that you can't just declare that coercive force no longer exists. The best you can do is try to have some sort of consensus to apply it fairly and sparingly and in the pursuit of noble ends. All of their proposals are just variations on directing the thrust of that power to enforce the status quo when it comes to property holders.

    The crazy thing is I'm not even particularly ideological, and I imagine our friends on the .ml domains would not be fans of me. I am just in favor of measures to moderate the worst tendencies of capitalism and to preserve the fact that no one succeeds in a vacuum, things like paying my fair share so people can have safety and opportunity. The Libertarians are just not what they claim to be, either because they're evil or naive.

  • Well, I mean, it is close to us.

  • TL;DR: Basically, in the US at least, Libertarians are spoiled white guys who don't even understand how good they have it and have Ayn Rand power fantasies that they'll make their own way and the rest of the world has just been dragging them down.

    A couple of my college buddies are full on Ludwig Von Mises/Murray Rothbard anarcho-capitalist nutjobs. The basic conceit is that all governments and states are illegitimate uses of force and are drags on the free functioning of the economy. Left with no "coercive" governments, people will competitively self-organize into private collectives to replace all governmental services, and all resources will flow to their best and natural use. It's absurdly naive and ignores absolutely everything about human nature and even the de facto reality of their desired end state.

    So somehow private property will continue to exist and be protected by voluntary courts and security, and funny how it works out that in this case my buddies get to keep the fruits of the privilege enjoyed by centuries of their ancestors and built up in a decidedly non anarcho-capitalist system. All existing government property will be sold off and the proceeds distributed to... someone? No word on how natural monopolies like the best water route between two river ports will be handled, but it will be privately negotiated and definitely perfect!

    It will be a utopia of people pulling themselves up by the bootstraps and not letting silly things like "personal safety" or "living wage" or "stewardship of resources" get in the way of making the completely even-handed and non-coercive deals that all people will make with the private entities that spring up to replace governments, but only VOLUNTARILY! People definitely won't make deals they don't like, and that reduce their future power, to avoid death in a "market" with limited opportunities. They definitely won't leave their shares (or whatever) to their children and recreate all the same social structures we have now, but with corporate self-interest as literally the only governing norm.

    Now, I suppose you could end up with corporate bodies that are outcompeted by "fairer" competitors (ignoring, of course, all first mover advantages and the willingness to protect profits by violent force that we already see in so many times and places), or maybe certain security and judicial corporations will make agreements with each other and install themselves as a layer over the more economically productive companies and collect fees that are definitely not taxes. Maybe some of them will be the "fairer" entities.

    But where does that leave you? Basically, our current world is already at least a little better than the libertarians' best-case scenario, and what their system really does is tell people to give up, that they are not worth one cent more than the economic value they can provide to someone else, and that they deserve no voice in the governance of their lives beyond what they can take.

    How this doesn't descend into competing warlord fiefdoms, eventually to be swept away by spasms of violence (in this system, "competition" is just a euphemism for politics and war), is beyond me. With some luck, it might lead to some parts of the world on a tortuously slow and uneven march in the vague direction of egalitarian governance to moderate the use of coercive force. In that case, CONGRATULATIONS! You've landed the world right back where it started, but now with millions dead and the Earth in even worse shape than it would have been.

  • In the right mood, I like setting things up and tweaking them, but I don't find it "chill". If I fire up Minecraft to chill, I usually think of it almost like a model railroad or something, occasionally it literally is a virtual model railroad if I want to build nether transit or something. I also find it satisfying to fill in that last patch of a map and put a copy of it on a wall next to its mates. It is very satisfying to get that auto smelter or adjustable enchanting room just right, though, and I can easily see that stuff being a goal in its own right.

    What I find brilliant about the concept of Minecraft is the way it hits a sweet spot of being just complex enough to be immersive, but abstract and simplified enough that the open world is actually open and rewards a hundred different play styles.

  • Where's the typo? My horse is glorious, and she is my personal heroin.

  • The two big boss fights are the closest thing to a "goal," but yeah, even in survival mode I guess it's as much lego as it is video game. In your case, maybe a Bethesda game but focusing on side and companion quests until you're so overpowered that wrapping up the main plot will feel like one more.

  • Don't overthink it. Minecraft. Vanilla survival world. Don't try to optimize and automate everything (unless you find that relaxing). Make your farm look like a farm. Mine until until your inventory is full. Build towards an Ender Dragon or Wither fight if you have time. Go mining or fishing or do base chores or a beautification project if you don't.

  • Having read some software developers' attempts at writing, or, god help me, contract drafting, I agree completely.

    Doctors are the worst about this though, and everybody WebMD'ing themselves before coming in is simply collective karma.