It depends how it was printed.

As a SUPER simplified basic: Any 3d print consists of walls/perimeters and infill. The walls are the exterior surfaces of the print. The infill is what is inside. And the vast majority of prints tend to be sparse infills. So rather than solid plastic beneath those walls, you mostly just have air and a mesh structure of some form.

So if the wall is thick enough (generally referred to as “number of walls”)? Sure. If it isn’t? You’ll just see the void inside the shell itself and make things much worse.

What is generally done to reduce “3d printed texture” is a mixture of smaller print layers (so the ridges are much thinner), printing with more walls, and actually lightly melting the exterior surface (either through chemicals or heat).

VKB are probably the kings of the mid-range sicko HOTAS market and I am like 90% certain they 3d print the shell of their sticks for the Gladiator (?). But they do such a good job that I genuinely can’t be certain. Whereas the vast majority of ploopy builds… aren’t that.

Then please. Educate me as to what this great secret that only Christopher Titus is brave enough to share it is.

Not a link to a video. Actual words. And links to data to support it.

I am not aware of musk having access to voting machines en masse during the Biden administration but, sure, let’s roll with that because it does not matter.

Do you honestly think musk, on the same k-hole where he called trump a pedophile rapist, wouldn’t have bragged about having stolen the election for him? And, we are to believe that elon fucking musk single handedly hacked the entire country while not playing Path of Exile? Or are you now assuming the twenty employees at spacex are so immensely loyal to him that NONE OF THEM would have narced for a book deal?

And yes. Voter suppression is a thing and it always will be so long as we have a system fundamentally built around gerrymandering and the electoral college. But demographics analyses show that even black men have increasingly skewed republican (nowhere near as much as other demographics but still).

If this were a super close election that had come down to a single battleground state? Sure. But it wasn’t. It was a fucking landslide. So unless we are assuming that musk and big balls are super 1337 hackers who managed to not only hack every single election in America (again, under the Biden administration) AND never once said a peep about it when they blab about EVERYTHING else… Oh, and they also hacked all the polling and demographic analysis data to make it look like they didn’t hack anything.

Not really.

People want to believe there was some magic conspiracy that, somehow, absolutely NOBODY has talked about when trump can’t even go a decade without talking about wanting to bang his own daughter. AND they managed to pull it off, not when trump was actually in charge, but four years later when Biden was.

Because the alternative is realizing just how hateful this world is. And having to question if maybe “I am against genocide and won’t talk about anything else” and “we should have run bernie instead” might not have been particularly helpful in encouraging liberals and progressives to actually fucking vote.

You see it any time personal accountability becomes a thing. The republicans flocked to qanon because it meant they were actually special and great and it was everyone else who was an evil jewish space lizard or whatever the fuck. Not that they are odious hate fueled shitheads. And… apparently lefties really wish they were Dave and Tommy. Rather than acknowledging that… yeah, glazing liz cheney ain’t it. But maybe villifying anyone who can provide progress for not being Progressive enough isn’t it either.

Just like it was really weird that nobody was talking about shoving horse medication up our asses to cure covid.

Here is the thing. if you approach the data we have from the perspective of wanting to find something weird? You will. EVERYBODY has been clowning on nate silver (long before he became a parody of himself) because they don’t understand statistics or sample sizes. But when you actually look at the demographics who claimed to have voted and general polling… it paints a very reasonable and incredibly depressing picture of how trump won.

https://catalist.us/whathappened2024/ is a good write up of things but it mostly speaks to what we all kind of knew going in:

1. Americans are ridiculously misogynistic
2. Americans don’t like brown people. This, somehow, isn’t just the white Americans.
3. Historically religious groups (e.g. Latinos) favor republicans.
4. Older generations tend to skew conservative AND actually go vote

But hey. I would LOVE to see an excuse that isn’t just “we are a country full of racist misogynists who just want to hurt people and people who can’t even be bothered to vote in their own interests”. But if the only person listening to the truth is a guy who has made a career out of being open with his struggles with mental illness (both genetic and experienced) who has been going further and further off the deep end since the mid 00s? Yeah… there is probably a reason other people aren’t listening to The Truth.

To be clear. I actually really like(d) Christopher Titus. I think he did an excellent job of using humor to make people acknowledge mental illness, toxic masulinity, and even domestic abuse. And he somehow did it on god damned fox. But he has also very clearly had troubles over the years and it was evident even from just the tone of his humor during his stand up specials.

And just because someone has a podcast doesn’t mean they are qualified to speak to… anything. All it means is that they have a microphone and someone explained to them that they could use stuff they would already buy or do to lower their tax burden.

I will not spend 2 minutes (let alone 13) watching the guy whose claim to fame is he fell in a bonfire break the news on a massive nation wide conspiracy any more than I would joe rogan or, hell, RFK probably has a podcast still.

If there is actual information, provide a reputable source. Not a guy with two seasons of a sitcom on fox and a couple comedy central specials that got increasingly depressing.

I want to believe. But this is going to require something to stay in the zeitgeist until the next time congress is in session which is generally the start of September.

In the meantime. We have a bunch of random files getting thrown to conspiracy theorists, cane sugar coca cola, likely at least two or three more rounds of tariffs and at least one more threat of war, and… apparently threatening to bring Obama up on treason charges.

At the best of times people are deeply stupid. Folk will forget epstein was even a thing by September.

… You linked to a comedian who has publicly had multiple nervous breakdowns and has a podcast.

But yes. Your glorified facebook post is the smoking gun.

What you are suggesting would have required a massively coordinated effort across all 50 states and NOBODY has talked about that.

Contrast that with how one tiff with musk has republicans outright calling him a child raper.

Do I think there was interference? Yes. It is called twitter and social media in general. But this desperate belief that there was some massive conspiracy to undermine every machine and NOBODY is talking about it is right up there with “9-11 was staged”.

And when the votes are actually broken down by demographics? Yeah… they line up. Mostly men and religious people.

It was still a plurality of votes.

There are plenty of arguments that we aren’t all bad and so forth. But, end of the day (and probably country), we couldn’t be bothered to even go out and vote against him because “the Democrats didn’t earn my vote”.

I keep thinking I should give a ploopy a shot but I’ve increasingly grown to like/need vertical mice and, like most ploopy related efforts, it is mostly “you CAN do it” with nobody ever having even tried because it requires pretty hefty redesigns of almost every part to mount things correctly.

Theoretically, you can mold it to fit your hand but the tolerances and mountings make that a hassle.

As for the print itself? Most people just do a quick print and have the telltale ridges from layers. But you can futz with settings to improve the smoothness or just finish the print itself. At which point it is not going to be as smooth as injection molding but it will be more “different” than “bad”.

This is PROBABLY just flailing.

But it also seems like a REAL good way to get Martin Luther King Jr and JFK and so forth all associated with people who rape children.

Unless you are playing purely for nostalgia, I would very much avoid runescape. It isn’t a game for kids to play during typing class. It is very much an obnoxiously sweaty (set of) game(s).

I think you can play the entire original campaign for FF14 for free? And FF14 is probably THE best theme park MMO out there. That said, my experience is “it is the best community on the internet” is very much marketing and you WILL have bad experiences during dungeons… which are mandatory for story progression. You can negate that if you join a clan but then you aren’t really playing with The Community and are already into hardcore-ish play.

I don’t know where the free/paid demarcations are, but I would actually recommend Guild Wars 2 or Elder Scrolls Online for a newbie. The latter does suck if you want to do any crafting as a free player (and inventory management in general will be hell) but you are there for the overworld gameplay. And both GW2 and ESO are very much geared toward playing solo in a crowd. As in you’ll walk around the overworld which is basically a single area with 10-20 other players. You’ll do event quests together, see each other while you go to the store or walk toward an instanced area, and so forth. But you won’t have to worry about someone telling you they are going to <REDACTED> your family because you didn’t skip a cutscene or aren’t holding aggro properly in newbie dungeon.

If you get into those? You can maybe find a guild and play some of the higher level content. Or you can go pick up FF-MMO or WoW or even SWTOR (apparently it is still going).

Good on nu-Waypoint but I do want to make it clear:

This is not the Waypoint that made a name for social justice oriented reporting and leftist gaming content. They all got fired/driven out over the years. Austin Walker has nine million side hustles but is mostly over at Friends at the Table, Natalie Watson has a fucking BAFTA as part of Half Mermaid, and Rob/Chia/Patrick are now Remap. And the rest of the crew have also moved on.

This is the Waypoint that Vice created because they decided they wanted to have a gaming outlet again after firing old Waypoint. And mad props to Valens et al for standing up for THEIR writing but… big ol’ asterisk.

I don’t know enough about the underlying code (I am the guy who still makes jokes about how html is super easy before remembering that it has been 30 years since I made websites with frames…) but yeah. HTLM5+Javascript with a heavy reliance on Impact support libraries.

The end result is that it is a god damned shitshow to get running on modern platforms and controller support is an even bigger mess. Like, I STILL don’t entirely understand how it manages to detect the difference between an xinput device and a device Steam is binding to xinput… on Linux via Proton. And it tends to break for anything but a proper microsoft made xinput device…

Crosscode was a RIDICULOUSLY good game. It genuinely captured the feeling of playing an MMO for the first time and making new friends while having VERY dot hack vibes as you learn more about the world as a whole.

Combat was… fine. When it worked, it worked. When it didn’t, you lowered the difficulty.

Then you get to the dungeons. Which… honestly, I just did not have the patience for puzzles that spanned two or three rooms that I worked on over the course of five overall puzzles and had to have pinpoint accuracy to launch an orb six screens away. I love a good puzzle game (Talos Principle is love. Talos Principle is life) but far too many of these were just more frustrating than fun.

Which is a shame. Because most people nope the fuck out after the second or third dungeon… and that is basically right before the story goes completely off the rails in all the best ways. Shit went REAL hard in ways it had no business even trying but pulled off perfectly.

And… the engine was a technical marvel even if it was also a huge mistake.

So yeah. VERY VERY excited about Alabaster Dawn. And here is hoping Radical Fish didn’t write it in html5 this time.

Its a fundamental mindset that goes into pitch meetings and the like.

Its the same idea behind game design/balance. If you listen to The Gamers, everything will be insanely OP and there will be no curve or balance at all. When the reality is they DO want that balance even if it means their favorite gun is slightly nerfed. But it will basically never be what they actually say when asked “what do you want?”

And same with franchises. People will always say “I want a game where I am Han or Luke” or “I want another KOTOR” and so forth. When the reality is that they don’t actually know what they want.

Like I said immediately after that. Moments of it are brilliant but it is clear there were still a lot of ways the plot could have gone and the showrunners were keeping their options over. And, while I think Aldhani was good, the Citra weirdness and Cassian being a mary sue who could do the entire rebellion better than anyone who was there. Whereas once Vel became more of a main character (and used to contrast Mon’s inability to overtly act) and they focused more on one story rather than having the option to tell ten, it became one of my favorite shows of all time.

As for Season 2? I strongly disliked how zany and fun Cassian’s infiltration of the prototype facility was but also understand that they needed to make something so that the trailers aren’t just bleak and horrifying while speeding Cassian to the point of not just being a Believer but being a Leader. But after that time skip it resumed being one of my favorite shows of all time And a big part of that was not even pretending that Mon isn’t the actual main character with Cassian and Kleya more a means to an end… which also fits with what they actually came to accept over the years.

I actually strongly disagree.

Andor was an example of actually telling a new story. Yes, people were eager to know who Cassian was. But If you had polled the entire Star Wars fanbase, like five of us would have said “Oh, I want a deeply political story with a massive focus on social justice that heavily focuses on a politician and a spymaster’s daughter. Also, hold back zero punches about the kind of people who would spearhead a rebellion. Like, how crazy can Forrest go?”. And we would have fully admitted we were on our bullshit.

Which was basically the problem with Outlaws. Everyone has been asking for a Han Solo game since people realized a Star Wars Pacman could be a thing. And you need to go REAL hard to make that live up to people’s expectations.

Which, getting back to Andor: I would go so far as to say everything up until The Prison is REALLY rough. You have moments of brilliance (basically any time Skarsgard is on screen) but it spends too much time on a plot point it had already dropped and Cassian is kind of a mary sue. But we were enthralled because this was something NEW (well, less so if you have ever read a political thriller but… Star Wars!). And once it found its legs… it was painful beauty in all the best ways.

And, to go back to “It is a Han Solo game” or “It is a Jedi knight but not a Jedi Knight” and so forth? It doesn’t take much to realize “I have seen this story a million times” and wander off. Like, I know I basically did that once I heard there were insta-fail stealth sections (although I generally try to not give Ubi money to begin with). Same with Ginger McBoring Face Survivor. It had an interesting hook (I LOVED Dark Times and Dass Jennir) and the gameplay was fine but when it came time to come back for seconds it was just “Eh, I’m good”.

Nah. We need more Star Wars that people don’t KNOW they want to see. Not just the tired crap that an exec would think was gold.