Plenty Bold

Ran office hours today. Literally no one stopped to see me. Which was fine. It was too busy for focused worked but I cranked through some light SRs. With that and a little follow up at home I managed to kill all but one from my queue, and that one is waiting on someone else. I’m back on the queue next week but I can leave this week clean and hope next week doesn’t pick up 2 a day like the last round did.

Spent HA4Hs today working on robot soldering. Primarily tearing apart an old Xbox controller trying to retrofit external pots. The construction on these is really surprising to me – some of the plastic components are retained by solder joints, but aren’t through-hole plated. It’s both a pain to get them off and super fragile what you attach anything else. Broke most of a controller before I figured out how to splice in without breaking stuff ¹I think. I broke the whole thing in testing, but I’m pretty sure I worked out a procedure for the next one..

This seems like the hard way to do things, as opposed to just reading generic pots on any other computer and pretending to be a game pad. Or, you know, not insisting that the prototype be wireless. S imagines this is “easier”, but that’s skewed by their fear of control systems. They also imagine it could get a rule exception, but honestly I think “emulating a game pad” is a more plausible rules change than “soldered at the internals of a game pad”, and neither seems likely given the restrictions on this league. But I agreed to do it anyway. Learning sometimes requires doing things the hard way. I sure learned the hard way how to desolder 14-pin connections for the analog sticks.

I got close to a call today, but didn’t quite connect. It feels nice to be back on the list, even if things still aren’t quite safe enough to make a connection. But you’ll get there, when it’s time. And I’ll be here when you do.

Shanda is headed out of town for a date tomorrow. That plan – or rather, the lack thereof – has been in the box for a few days now. Not so far into avoidance as it has been in the past; not quite such high stakes if the topic does come up. But still real work to look at and think about it. Still real work to know what you want instead of just hoping that someone else will tell you what to want when you get there. C helped us practice this in D&D last week, where you got to chase a romantic partner that you didn’t really want, and refused to have them tell you what to do when you caught them. Role play. It’s not just for sex.

It’s great to see that everyone is taking Biden’s advice and voting for someone else. It would be better though if the someone else wasn’t more regressive than a 1900s Republican. Fucking Pete tells us to be satisfied with the status quo because it’s “plenty bold”. Tells us not to pay attention to the numerous, well-documented crimes ²Like a grocery-store price-fixing crime, wherein he stole money from people buying bread, and which he alternately brags about and denies — on the record both ways — depending on whether or not he thinks you like his crime. and unethical acts he has committed in service of himself and other rich dicks. Maybe our summer robots project could be a guillotine, instead of the traditional projectile system. We’ve got several billionaires right here in town.

That and whatever the National Committees on both sides are cooking to further corrupt the electoral process in futute years. There are lots of reasons to be upset with the current process, but I can’t imagine the one they want to replace it with will result in better representation of the public. The idea that we let the Committees pick our candidates in the first place is already hard to take, and I doubt they’re gonna want less power in the future. Electoralism – when Putin lets you vote, but only for more Putin.

In general I think people are too dumb and narcy to pull off a conspiracy theory, but if you imagined a world where the Establishment saw Biden being untenable, saw Bernie winning, and wanted to prop up some replacement fascist against him, it would look a lot like the one we’re living in. Late polls canceled to obscure predictions. Reporting disabled, then delayed, then inaccurate. And somehow the closer we get to reality the more narrow the gap. If you wanted to technically lose Iowa (or if you were worried that you couldn’t clearly win) but still talk about winning until the next primary, this would be a good plan.

To be clear, I think we should stop having presidents, so I’m not really for any of them. Such hierarchy is harmful even with “good” people in it. But so long as we are required to tolerate their existence we could at least have one that isn’t actively trying to kill us. I know abusive Daddy is the usual look for presidents but it’s not our only option.

I got a box today, that gave me all the feels. It means so much to me, and I’m extra excited to get it after assuming it to have been lost to holiday shipping. It contained many sparkles for my face, a set of colors I had been eyeing for months, and possibly the most exciting red lipstick I’ve seen in person. It also brought me a whole set of colors for things other than my face, and enough tape to help me build this [fig 1]. It also came with some ZSD, which sounds like a next-generation psychedelic, but is actually much better. Currently the ZSD is missing a very important piece, but I know exactly what I’m going to do with it. I can’t wait to show you, so I’m gonna try to get it done right away. I’ve already made plans and ordered parts and cried about it.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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