I also don’t think it’s ever been confirmed that it was an employee

Oh yeah that’s another thing: would you rat out the guy who killed a disgusting CEO if you flipped burgers for a living? Whatever you think of murder, you might well look the other way in this instance.

I don’t buy the conspiracy theories and “the Man sees everything and needed a plausible excuse” theories (although I’ll admit the Man does see a lot more than he should…)

But I will say this: I find it extremely odd that a random McD employee in Fucktown, Nowhere, 275 miles from NYC, recognized a hooded dude wanted for murder in NYC, for the following reasons:

• McD employees don’t look at patrons. They’re bored shitless and they’re not paid well enough to care. You could show up at any McD joint disguised as Elton John with a feather up your ass and the employee behind the counter would still tell you “Would you like fries with that” while looking right through you.

• Do you follow the local news in a city 275 miles from where you live? I don’t. And even assuming it’s NYC and it’s a big enough city that people in Altoona pay attention, there’s a murder every 12 hours in NYC. Why would that one in particular enter the consciousness of a bored employee in a burger joint in Altoona.

• Can you recognize a hooded guy you saw on a still photograph? I can’t. I might have suspicions, but I’m almost certain I wouldn’t be positive enough to call the cops. And again, I work at McD and all I really want is go home after my shift. So I might just forget I saw someone I might have vaguely recognized.

Just read whatever you find anywhere and leave out the opinionated bits.

In other words, you can safely assume the hows, whens, wheres and to a certain extent the whys are accurate and not made up, and anything else - particularly whether he was right or wrong, the bits about whether his victim was right or wrong, whether the cops are lying, whether the McD employee is evil, whether Mangione should be freed or fried… is all a bunch of ultra-biased hogwash, regardless of the bias.

“Reactivating dormant IP” aka “Milking old franchises”, because it’s cheaper and safer than coming up with innovative stuff.

If someone starts the story by saying “I had a dream last night”, I know it’s going to be a long account of something totally nonsensical that I will be utterly uninterested in, that will not teach me anything of value, amaze me or amuse be in any way.

Depending on how much I care about not antagonizing that person, I might walk away without saying a word, lash out at them to shut them the hell up immediately, or politely listen while quietly escaping to my happy place in my mind while the torture lasts.

There are few things I hate more than people wasting my time telling me their dreams.

Is this in relation to the monetary value of cryptocurrency or the anonymity of cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrencies are just fiat currencies, like the dollar. They’re worth what people think they’re worth.

My beef with them is that they’re either pushed by scammer to empty honest but gullible people’s bank accounts, or they’re used to pay for illegal activities because they’re totally opaque and unregulated. My other beef is that they’re really securities and they’re not subject to the rules on securities for a reason that totally escapes me.

I don’t do cryptocurrencies both out of financial self-preservation, and also because I refuse to participate - and thus promote - stuff that’s generally bad for society as a whole.

And if you’re not convinced cryptocurrencies in all their forms are rotten to the core, consider this: Trump loves em. That alone is a red flag big enough to hang on a pole in North Korea.

MySudo is a proprietary aliasing software

Hard no.

Privacy.com is a proprietary financial transaction masking and aliasing tool.

Hard no.

Google Pixel phones

Hard no.

Yes, I know Pixel phones are the best option to run the best deGoogled OS out there (Graphene) but paying Google to escape the Google surveillance is just too rich for me. I’ll never get over that one. Fuck Google, even if it means running a slightly less secure OS (CalyxOS from the fine Calyx Institute, which you rightfully list).

Cryptocurrency

Hard no. I don’t partake in scams, even for the sake of privacy.

Other than that, great list. Thanks!

Tell me about it… I have all the seasons on DVD, and all Brittas Empire seasons too. They just don’t make good comedy like that no more.

Hehe yes, they do look a bit like that.

Now you make me want to watch a few episodes tonight… 😃

Rather than print it flat, is there an angle you could print it at that would allow for eliminating most/all of the interior supports? E.g. toe angled down, heel angled up.

Ooh that’s a GREAT idea! I plain didn’t think about that but it totally makes sense. Thanks! I’ll goof around with that tonight in the slicer to see what’s the minimal resource utilization I can achieve. Hell, I might even be able to squeeze both shoes in there.

I’ve never printed TPU for such a long duration. Do you have it printing directly from the filament dryer?

Yes. My plan is to load the brand-new roll in the dryer on Thursday and set it to dry at 70C overnight, print a bunch of test parts on Friday, then if they pass muster, start the big print on Saturday morning.

That’s the plan: get used to the material before wasting 80 yards of the stuff on a print.

All valid concerns, thank you for raising them: this hadn’t crossed my mind.

But I’m not too concerned for the following reasons:

• My current pair of pool shoes are commercial models I thermo-reformed with hot air (if you’re interested in that process, I can post a video if you’d like). Pool shoes are made of vinyl: let me tell you, reforming vinyl at close to decomposing temperature is a nasty toxic fumes affair. Whatever drawbacks TPU may have can’t be any worse for my health.

• They’ll be used mostly underwater in chlorinated water for a couple of hours per week tops.

• My feet don’t sweat much anymore.

First order of business is making sure it fits, before I spend 2 hours punching holes in the model 🙂 There’s another thing I need to add: sole patterns, to prevent slippage. Right now the soles are totally bald, which isn’t ideal. But this is just a test print.

Yeah but… I didn’t define the M600 sequence. It’s whatever came in the stock firmware. Also, I assumed that was the same sequence the printer executes when changing the filament through the menu.

If it’s possible to redefine the M600 sequence, I didn’t see where. Also, I don’t want to do that. So I think it’s time to open an issue in the Prusa firmware github.

did you also check “Single Extruder Multi Material?”

Yes it’s checked.

I’m starting to wonder if I might be better off printing a mold out of PLA and pouring liquid rubber into it 🙂 I mean technically, the shoes would be 3D printed and it would probably create fewer headaches, because liquid rubber is what I use now with regular molds to create my shoes, and it works perfectly fine.

I’m a bit concerned that this whole endeavor will results in quite stringent requirements in terms of hardware, and difficulty in manufacturing, because ideally I would like my design to be reusable in developing countries for others who have a need for custom footwear like I do but don’t have the money. My plan is to turn my FreeCAD design into a configurable OpenSCAD file eventually, that anyone with an el-cheapo printer and some time can use to make cheap bespoke shoes.

So maybe for cheap easy shoes to happen anywhere in the world, maybe a PLA negative and liquid rubber is in fact a better route.

But for now I’ll go with the TPU: I have it so I might as well, and I’ll learn something.

for every 5c below the perfect temp for your material, the time doubles

Great info, that!

We always keep the dryer at 45C (not sure why, we just do…) I just looked it up and it looks like 65C for 8 hours is a minimum for TPU. So unless my colleague left the spool of TPU in it over the weekend - which I doubt - it would not have been enough. Unless he took the spool right out of the vacuum-sealed bag with the silicagel packet in it. I don’t know. I’ll ask him.

For pool shoes, that’s concerning 🙂

I don’t think he printed it wet. We have a filament dryer and we put all our filaments in there regardless of what they are. I’m pretty sure he must have waited at least overnight before printing. He’s pretty thorough. But I’ll ask him.

I didn’t know TPU was that sensitive to humidify. That’s good to know. Thanks!

I do know it shrinks like crazy and it’s not good at staying put on any of the bed sheets we have though, so I know it won’t be a walk in the park - especially with prints that size.

Nobody loses a finger to a power tool by accident.

Everybody learns how to drive and passes a driver’s license. So I guess road accidents have all but disappeared now, right?

Because as we all know, training makes people perfect and totally eliminates risks.

I would be ashamed to show my arm if I had tattooed a swastika or something equally stupid on it, because that’s a mistake I had the choice not to make. But accidents aren’t mistakes, they’re accidents. Just like I lost a few bits due to circumstances I had no control over. Those are the vagaries of life and they’re nothing to be ashamed of.