If you really can't tell if you've adequately cleaned a surface unless it's pristine white, I feel sorry for anyone who has to live with you.

Isn't that the whole point of the op-ed, though? They're saying that Lemmy and Mastodon aren't comparable to Reddit and Twitter and aren't going to replace them, because the friction is too high and the differentiators don't matter for the majority of people. The differentiators matter to us and we're totally happy to be on a smaller network, but I think the op-ed is a fair reality check for the subset of people who came here thinking this would replace the big platforms.

Sorry, I phrased that in an unnecessarily inflammatory way. You're not wrong, plain surfaces are easier to clean, especially when you're cleaning up after other people and pets. I hope the folks you live with appreciate what you do for them!

Well that's eerie as hell

Porcupine Tree is my jam. Saw them perform this in Denver last year, total blast, would recommend. They've released so many great albums, and Closure/Continuation definitely keeps up the trend.

This offhand comment that was quoted in the article is really unsettling:

“Here, the tax dollars naturally goes to the citizens, not the immigrants,”

This isn't a conservative vs liberal policy thing, this is more insidious. This person's worldview subconsciously classes "citizens" and "immigrants" as mutually exclusive groups. There's "us, who were here before and belong here", and "them, who came here from somewhere else and shouldn't receive the benefits of our government". It seems like it wasn't long ago that the dominant left-vs-right conversations I observed were mostly discussions about economic and foreign policy where both sides had reasonable points and compromise was possible, but this isn't that. This ideological divide built on religion, xenophobia, nationalism, etc. can't end well.

Hm, I didn't think of that. The tv is supported by a couple of beams but otherwise the bottom is completely open for airflow, but I have no idea if passive convection will work since I covered it with a solid piece of acrylic on top. Maybe I'll hack in some PC fans at some point.

It's oak (I can't remember if it's white or red, it's been so long since I bought it). I did manage to avoid splotches, but different pieces came out with vastly different shades because I didn't stain it all at once, and my technique and the stain both changed over time.

At long last, we have created the Torment Nexus from classic sci-fi novel Don't Create The Torment Nexus.

Thanks! For now I'm just using static images, but at some point I'd like to try software that handles line of sight/fog of war, and maybe animations. I'd love to hear suggestions.

Cardboard aided design is a vastly underrated engineering tool :)

Thanks! I designed it to be versatile. The play surface should work well for other tabletop games, and if I throw a removable felt liner in there it would do great for card/dice games. Someone also suggested that I could add removable joystick modules to each of the player stations and do tabletop Pac-Man and other arcade-type games.

It's also built to work as a regular dining table: https://imgur.com/OkASfSW