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"why are you emotional about technology" because by just going along with whatever is the mainstream path of least resistance without thinking about monopolies and ecosystem lock-in is precisely what has landed us in the trash can so many times. modern PCs, laptops, gaming consoles, phones, home automation ("smart" 🤓) devices. they all fucking suck to various degrees because we never think about creating an alternative for when shit goes down bad.

i unironically don't want the niche alternatives that we *have* created to be ran over by the same type of bullshit walled garden like-it-or-leave-it one-size-fits-all thinking, and any technology that actively tries to be a monopoly with an ever expanding field of responsibilities is simply seriously concerning and bad.

every foss project benefits from having viable alternatives.



#history #SilkRoads #china

A study has ascertained that the domestic cat were traded along the Silk Roads to China. Cats arrived into China about 600CE, which was 1500 years after their introduction into Europe. Cats were given as gifts by merchants to wealthy Chinese.

smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/…



Mi primer toot serio desde #neopaquita

Mi madre me ha echado de la cocina por que no esta cortando las patatas del tamaño exacto que ella quería.

(Sus instrucciones fueron; "Córtalas tamaño tortilla")



I have not scheduled my replies for #MakersHour - fail. Also hadn't realised the time and now need to go grab my charger.

But I am here makers, I swear it!

@makershour

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in reply to Alexis Bushnell

so turns out I am in fact not here cos long covid is kicking my ass mightily today.

Fingers crossed I can make it next week.

Have fun #MakersHour
@makershour

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Q1: @MakersHour
Hello. Please introduce yourself and tell us about a really fun thing you have made or crafted. It can be something that was fun for others when it was finished, or fun for you while you were working on it.

A1: Hello, I am Alfred, maker, carer, caretaker, and miniaturist story teller.
I think most fun for me is when I smile while making a thing. And that could be a thing that is actual fun or it could be a moment where I realise ‘I am actually good at this!’.
A recent thing, one I have done many times, is splicing a new piece of wood to a broken chair spindle and then re shaping it to round without using a lathe. And it turns out lovely, making me think ‘Oooh, I can do this!’.

Tonight’s soundtrack is: Pink Floyd – Dark Side Of The Moon
#MakersHour
@makershour@a.gup.pe

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in reply to Liam

@SocialGaff
I find the centre of an end and draw a circle as a guide. Then I shape free hand with a plane, a spokeshave, or a rasp to get the shape and profile right.

A straight edge helps check for parallel and for taper, and feeling by hand tells a lot as the spindle is rotated.

Also rolling the spindle on the bench shows up any variation in the profile of the repair.

#MakersHour

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Have Li-ion Batteries Gone Too Far?

hackaday.com/2025/03/13/have-l…



#ThrowbackThursday to my first time playing Respectable Street "Punk On The Patio" 2025.02.21 #tbt (Vid description: a white guy with long hair DJing at a big table. The background has industrial looking power lines and then behind that is a high rise apartment building.)


Q1: Hello. Please introduce yourself and tell us about a really fun thing you have made or crafted. It can be something that was fun for others when it was finished, or fun for you while you were working on it.
#MakersHour
@makershour@a.gup.pe

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in reply to MakersHourQuestions

#MakersHour A1:

Really fun... I mainly do pretty practical things, so the things themselves are rarely what anyone would call "fun". In recent times the most fun I've had is designing/printing these hexagonal flat-pack seed trays: toot.ale.gd/@yvan/114139560069…

Most of what I make recreationally I find to be "fun" - or I wouldn't do it, and generally if something stops being fun it stops being done.

@makershour@a.gup.pe
@MakersHour@cupoftea.social @makershour@a.gup.pe

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in reply to MakersHourQuestions

A1. Hi this is Jeff from the US portion of Cascadia, close to the inland salt water between the mountain ranges.

One of my most fun projects over a period of time was a felt fruit salad with custard cups, made from a kit from sweetenmajean on Etsy. I would sit in a folding camp chair on the sidelines of my child's Ultimate Disc games and make piece after piece, in no hurry.

In fact I made so many that there were too many to fit into the felt custard cups, so here are the leftovers.

#MakersHour

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FunHouseRadio.com
Like this #meme? Try the #stream!


One of the things I love about #FreeCAD is the ability to add specific functionality via macros. Usually, I’m not the first person to have the same idea or need for a function. Before I write my own, I will look for an existing macro that does what I need. It’s always interesting to find an existing macro that does what I want… just not in the way that I want it. The good thing is, I can tweak that code to my liking and then share it in case someone else has the same conundrum.


The US now says it's disrespectful of us to respond to tariffs with proportional tariffs of our own. If half of America didn't believe them you'd think this was funny
in reply to TechAltar

He doesn't like him when we make him "unhappy", what a snowflake. Let's go.
in reply to Koos Swart

are men just too emotional to be running countries? Are his hormones off balance? 😀



Kriminalitätsstatistik: Brandenburger Bericht wird in Teilen zurückgezogen

Erst am Montag hatte Innenministerin Lange die Kriminalitätsstatistik vorgestellt. Nun stellt sich ein Teil als fehlerhaft heraus.

"Es ist schon bemerkenswert: Erst wird mit großem Pathos eine Statistik präsentiert, die eine verzerrte Darstellung der Ausländerkriminalität liefert und dabei rechtspopulistische Narrative bedient - und dann stellt sich heraus, dass die Zahlen schlicht falsch sind“

tagesspiegel.de/potsdam/landes…



ME: The building is on fire!

REPLY GUY: This is nothing new. Buildings burn every day. [continues to sit there, burns to death]

🧵

This entry was edited (2 months ago)
in reply to Paul Cantrell

@Uair
Aha! Sartre: goodreads.com/quotes/7870768-n…
in reply to Paul Cantrell

Trying to work out how to fit the GNU/Linux interjection into this situation


#ScribesAndMakers Shameless Self-Promotion Day.

Behold! and click on my shiny self!
lydiavvinters.com/

And buy pretty prints and journals: redbubble.com/people/OddlyWitc…

(I know, I can never do a self promo without wielding a bit of ridiculous sarcasm.)

#writingcommunity #artist #illustration #fedigiftshop #design #mastoart



The 14th amendment places no qualification on birthright citizenship.

The 2nd amendment places a highly specific qualification—a well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State—on the right to bear arms before even mentioning it.

But who are we to quibble with conservative Constitutional experts and their alternative facts?



The White House announced Thursday that starting April 1, there will be a 500% tariff on Canadian Sorries.

Since there are currently no American manufacturers, the number of apologies in circulation is expected to drop dramatically.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)


hate how "banned book" got distilled into a marketing term where publishers intentionally tee up a minority football to piss off facebook groups of middle aged mothers in key west. u wanna know where books are really being banned. the fucking prisons
in reply to _

everything about jail is designed to smother knowledge and critical thought because educated prisoners are a direct threat to state power. that seems a little more pressing than evangelicals getting mad at harry potter i dunno
in reply to _

jamie political posts are back omg we stay winning






This is disgusting

taskandpurpose.com/news/arling…



🦝Guys??? The lesbian toggle made it to Polygon LOL

(special shoutout to Ian Walker for being super respectful to our plurality in emails and addressing us by alter name)

polygon.com/gaming/538959/blob…



Essen. Drei Unbekannte haben einen 33-Jährigen im Essener Westviertel hinterrücks angegriffen. Die Polizei hat Fotos der Männer veröffentlicht.

Nach einem hinterhältigen Angriff dreier Männer auf einen 33-Jährigen bei McDonald‘s an der Hans-Böckler-Straße im Essener Westviertel fahndet die Polizei mit Fotos einer Überwachungskamera nach den mutmaßlichen Schlägern.

waz.de/lokales/essen/article40…



I'm using LosslessCut to edit screen recordings from OBS. It is far from a seamless process. Even if I split the videos into individual setments, sometimes the audio and video fall out of sync for no apparent reason. Today, I finished a pretty important work project, and as a last step "i got "aira to look it over. Turns out the video abruptly starts to lag behind by 8 seconds at some point. I tried so many commands to fix it, and I got nowhere. Eventually just had to re-record that particular segment with OBS, which was what I should have done to begin with. But yeah. If you enjoy blending complex command line interfaces with complex partially accessible web interfaces, you *might* be able to edit video competently as a blind person.
Maybe it's time to go back to reaper and figure out why it kept generating broken video files. Seems like that might be just a bit easier.


This is your 10 minute reminder for #MakersHour. Please remember to follow and tag us in your responses.
Thank you.
@makershour@a.gup.pe

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I think making a game, at minimum, is a three person job. You need someone to code, someone to do graphics, and someone to do sound. Some rare individuals can do two or three of those jobs, and I applaud their industriousness, but most of us are only good at one of the three.



Dry stone dyke nerds: what do you call the ridge of ragged stones on top of the wall? Here, on Sanday in Orkney (Scotland), they're Rag Stones. What do youse call them?
in reply to Badger

I don’t know what they’re called, but I do know @kristiedegaris knows a _lot_ about dry stone walling.
in reply to @shezza_t

@shezza_t Copes here in Perthshire, boring I know. I've heard toppers from drystone wallers in England. Regional styles and regional lingo for Drystone is so interesting!
in reply to Kristie

@kristiedegaris I’ve walked sections of our most famous Northern Irish dry stone wall, and wish the guides would give more details about the actual wall itself.

We hear about its length, and how many men were involved in building it; but nothing about why they built the different sections the way they did.

@BadgerandVole

in reply to @shezza_t

@shezza_t The stones jutting out might be through stones but hard to tell, and the stones on top are called coverbands where I'm from.
in reply to Kristie

@kristiedegaris @shezza_t we'd call those through stones (steens, though), too! The rag(ged) stones on top of our dykes is to deter roaming livestock, although I've had to repair a few dykes where a bull has put all his weight on it to try to get to a grass verge! It seems much more peaceable to have a neat, flat layer. Also: we mainly have beach stone, so I'm envious of how neat these can get!!
in reply to Badger

@shezza_t They can indeed get very neat, but the core of the craft is doing what you can with what you have!
in reply to Kristie

@kristiedegaris @shezza_t Indeed! And I can do a decent job with round stone and a rubble heart, I just really enjoy it when it's not quite such a balancing act! Still, it's very much early days for me, a little over a year apprenticed to an octogenarian expert, so I know I have a lot of learning to come!
in reply to Badger

@shezza_t I've been doing it for 4 years now and I'll be learning forever I think. We use a lot of fieldstone here in Perthshire so something like sandstone or slate is a treat.


Over a month of development went into this little guy! Can’t wait to share him with the world this weekend! #StarWars #Droid #PitDroid #Scifi #3dprinting #3dprinted #maker

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This is not AI:

Trump threatens to copy Putin’s Crimean invasion, by using existing US bases on Greenland as a bridgehead to invade the Island — just like Putin sent thousands of soldiers to his Sevastopol base on Crimea to start the invasion.

I am sorry, but I can only conclude the US is now an enemy of The Kingdom of Denmark.

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in reply to Randahl Fink

Many high politicians in France support the idea of sending troops to Greenland... if Denmark request them.

lejdd.fr/International/menaces…



The facts behind the 19 programs President Donald Trump described as ‘waste’

politifact.com/article/2025/ma…

#news #politics #uspol #uspolitics #GOPCult #trump #ethics #corruption

in reply to Frankie ✅

some rumors and false understanding through starting in the middle of the conversation.

I be quite now, I'm follow because DnD.

This entry was edited (2 months ago)


Trump Announces New Visa Tier For Immigrants Who Will Be Friends With Barron
theonion.com/trump-announces-n…


I am utterly exhausted today... Got in at 07:30 and can't leave until the live stream is done after 16:00 and I sure hope I have the energy to be on camera for 30 minutes!


in reply to ももちゃん



I was just about to model something that has to hold something else and thought about how to best do a friction fit to an existing model and in all the thinking I just decided to say "fuck it, I'll use magnets" and that should make life easier.


Ukraine-Liveblog: ++ Ukraine evakuiert Ortschaften nahe Kursk ++

Angesichts russischer Gebietsgewinne in Kursk hat die Ukraine die Evakuierung von Ortschaften an der Grenze zu der russischen Region angeordnet. Der US-Sondergesandte Witkoff ist zu Waffenruhe-Gesprächen in Moskau.

➡️ tagesschau.de/newsticker/liveb…

#Liveblog #Ukraine



1
King: well, things are pretty bad these days
King: but if there's one up side
King: it's that elon's really too busy to
Elon Musk: [rising up out of bushes] eyyyy stephano king!


Ok liebe Grünen, unter welchen Bedingungen darf ich die Lebengrundlagen eurer Kinder zerstören? Schickt mir ein Angebot! Mein Faxgerät ist an. 📠