Usually, you're right. But having the actual machine is only half the problem.

Last place I was at we had this big beautiful ride along mill that was just magnificent. Between the attachments and tooling we had, it was capable of producing any part of itself down to the last nuts and bolts. With the right know how and materials, it was capable of self replication.

We torched it for scrap. Not me, as a dumb dumb welder, but the business. There was nobody we could find with any combination of a) space to put it, b) ability to pay for it, and c) know how to run it. Best we ever managed was two of the three, and since there was no money in it for the business, they elected to cut it down for scrap value. Got one of the best t-tables I've ever had to weld on out of the deal, but it was still a travesty.

So yes, while the machines work fine, it's hard to find people with the skills to run them effectively, the space to actually house the machine, and the spare cash required buy and maintain it.

Well that's not true. It's just a real bitch. As a welder, helium leak check is about the toughest damn QC to pass. Most welding QC has some reasonable margin for error during inspection, but the damn helium doesn't care. You can have a beautiful weld with a tiny imperfection at the start or end and it'll piss helium just as badly as an entirely scuffed bead.

I remember learning about this back when I took a smog certification class back in community College. Learned the only computer approved to run the modern smog diagnostic stuff is from 1986 and it's made by like one company to this day.

Add onto that all the dinosaur lathes and welding machines I've seen over my career and I wouldn't be surprised seeing a commodore running the dmv database for the entire state at this point.

This is fine, and we thank you for your efforts.

What were talking about here is a rogue crotch spawn running around or under tables, occupied or not, and generally acting like they're in their own living room rather than a shared community space.

Honestly IMO if you can keep them at the table, I can put up with the noise. Sure, it's annoying, but so are kids. It's a package deal. And everyone was a kid at one point in time and therefore has no excuse to complain too loudly. That's reserved for when I have to drag a screeching rug rodent out from under my chair and haul it back to the absentee sperm and egg donors.

As a welder, much of my work straddles the line between art and mass production. I've made many, many beautiful welds that will never been seen by another person for at least the next 20 years, if ever. Some of the best that come to mind are stainless steel welds on industrial equipment that get buried under paint or insulation. I spent 3 years welding parts for US battleships and Navy cruisers as well as the occasional weird airforce part. Most of those welds will never been seen by living people after leaving my old shop.

You can't argue that 40k panders to the LGBT crowd because fuckin obviously if you've ever even looked at a 40k title, but you also can't really argue that 40k isn't at least a little sexual.

You got ratlings, pretty much everything slaanesh, aeldari waifus, and the entire Ciaphas Cain series. And while yeah, you don't exactly get steamy love triangles in mainline 40k lore, you also have callidus assassin's and sisters of silence popping up all the damn time. Sex isn't the focus (mostly. Looking at you ciaphas) but it's certainly present in the setting.

It's not rare but it's a pain in the ass to purify and transport. Semiconductor place I used to work had a gigantic 1000 gallon tank of the stuff they had to get refilled every month. Had to have some specialty chemical tanker truck it out. Then there's problems with icing your whole setup once you actually have the stuff and try to use it. It's less of an immediate fiscal strain and more of an expensive infrastructure problem.

I'm really struggling to understand why you're going out of your way to defend such a sleazy hypocrite. Do you have some personal stake in supporting dogshit behavior from people in the public eye?

Because it's cheap and effective. Why splurge on a bottle of compressed nitrogen or argon when all it does is forgo suffering and cost more? Think of the bottom line.

You dare disrespect the mighty Two Fingers?

A relapsing addict doesn't unilaterally decide to check themselves into rehab. The first step to recovery is admitting the problem, which pretty concretely confirms there were problems. And you don't grab "some rehab chick" from a fancy $100k a trip celebrity rehab facility. You find a pretty gold digger.

Bro the last 2 "books" are so unbearably horny I barely finished them. I couldn't finish the newest Cinder Spires book he put out for exactly the same reason. Jim was on such a good run doing awesome shit between Changes and Skin Game, but I guess losing his dog and then his marriage really pushed him into a return to horny.

Emotional abuse can be worse than physical abuse in some aspects. I just find it extra disgusting to use anecdotes from a life lived with his wife to rise to fame only to dump her when he finds an upgrade.

Can't agree. He's funny, sure, but he's also a gigantic piece of human trash on a personal level. I really liked his old bits where he talked about being with his wife and how she stuck with him through his addictions and alcoholism, then he turns around during the pandemic, relapses, dumps his wife, and remarried some lady he met in rehab. Guy is a walking talking contradiction between fantastic stage presence and being a human garbage patch as a person.

Hasn't been anything "recent" for me. Check out the Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. My favorite depiction of "fae" in a modern setting. Yeah, you still have dew drop fairies and gnomes and shit but you also have giant fuckass murder ogres and insane kelpies and war unicorns.

The second Hellboy movie also did a great job bringing that sort of grimdark feel to the fae lore imo.

Goblins ain't got shit on Nuckelavee. Or redcap for that matter. Little bastards murder lone travelers and dye their eponymous hats in the blood of their victims.

I always like the analogy of man's relationship with an ant is how it would be with a fae or elder species and man.

Like if an ant managed to attract the attention of a human and requested it kill a specific ant, the human would respond by simply killing the entire colony as they can't distinguish one individual ant from another.

That's what the fae do.

So toasting a sammich is cooking, but making the sammich isn't?

Lolol really? Taking into account the whole life cycle? Did they factor in how long it's going to take to decontaminate, say, Chernobyl? That's unfair, because that was an accident. How about Lake Karachay?

Just create cheap RTGs with the radioactive waste. Invent the process and give humanity the best of both worlds. All you have to do is increase the power generation from a few hundred watts up an order of magnitude using garbage instead of actual purpose engineered materials. Simple.