buckykat

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buckykat [none/use name] @hexbear.net 3d ago

The current is consistently limited more by the switching and by everything getting pulled out of place by exotic magnetic effects than by the actual capabilities of the batteries themselves.

buckykat [none/use name] @hexbear.net 3d ago

Always alarming in entertaining new ways

buckykat [none/use name] @hexbear.net 4d ago

If anybody but me starts our dishwasher, they run it with no detergent in the pre-wash section and on the 1 hour wash that doesn't actually finish cleaning.

buckykat [none/use name] @hexbear.net 4d ago

It's good but the controls do take some getting used to

buckykat [none/use name] @hexbear.net 4d ago

Lost media is when I can't find my old pokemon yellow cart anymore

buckykat [none/use name] @hexbear.net 4d ago

I don't know if despite is quite the right word here. All those priceless landmarks and archaeological sites tend to get in the way of their false claims of indigeneity so they must be

buckykat [none/use name] @hexbear.net 4d ago

We never got rid of it, small plane kulaks have been burning it all along

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buckykat [none/use name] @hexbear.net 4d ago

Step 2 is re-washing the pots and pans and other cooking implements they put away dirty

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buckykat [none/use name] @hexbear.net 4d ago

How tf is cops ripping up and throwing away their stuff gonna make homeless people less vulnerable to the next cold snap?

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buckykat [none/use name] @hexbear.net 4d ago

Every time I cook, step 1 is washing all the crap everyone else left in the sink

buckykat [none/use name] @hexbear.net 4d ago

Don't they know that autistic people only become psychic after living in space?

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buckykat [none/use name] @hexbear.net 4d ago

Like that time Chirac had to call a theologian to ask what the fuck W was talking about with "Gog and Magog"

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buckykat [none/use name] @hexbear.net 4d ago

The TNG era dress uniform is really more of a long coat worn over pants. Worf said it looked like a dress because he's a silly sexist pig.

The skant was supposed to be fully unisex and interchangeable with the shirt and pants uniform, but other than one or two early background extras, it only appeared on women on screen because producers/execs are cowardly scum.

In Starfleet Academy, the cadet uniform has one top but a choice of pants or a skirt worn over black tights, and it's finally woke enough to actually be worn unisex.

buckykat [none/use name] @hexbear.net 5d ago

Refusing to respect intellectual property is a noble enough reason all on its own

buckykat [none/use name] @hexbear.net 5d ago

I thought the little arms tied to the steering wheel were the best part but then I saw the working instrument cluster in the dashboard

buckykat [none/use name] @hexbear.net 5d ago

Printcrime by Cory Doctorow, available here CC-NA-NC-SA

(Originally published in Nature Magazine, January 2006)

The coppers smashed my father’s printer when I was eight. I remember the hot, cling-film-in-a-microwave smell of it, and Da’s look of ferocious concentration as he filled it with fresh goop, and the warm, fresh-baked feel of the objects that came out of it.

The coppers came through the door with truncheons swinging, one of them reciting the terms of the warrant through a bullhorn. One of Da’s customers had shopped him. The ipolice paid in high-grade pharmaceuticals—performance enhancers, memory supplements, metabolic boosters. The kind of thing that cost a fortune over the counter; the kind of thing you could print at home, if you didn’t mind the risk of having your kitchen filled with a sudden crush of big, beefy bodies, hard truncheons whistling through the air, smashing anyone and anything that got in the way.

They destroyed grandma’s trunk, the one she’d brought from the old country. They smashed our little refrigerator and the purifier unit over the window. My tweetybird escaped death by hiding in a corner of his cage as a big, booted foot crushed most of it into a sad tangle of printer-wire.

Da. What they did to him. When he was done, he looked like he’d been brawling with an entire rugby side. They brought him out the door and let the newsies get a good look at him as they tossed him in the car, while a spokesman told the world that my Da’s organized-crime bootlegging operation had been responsible for at least twenty million in contraband, and that my Da, the desperate villain, had resisted arrest.

I saw it all from my phone, in the remains of the sitting room, watching it on the screen and wondering how, just how anyone could look at our little flat and our terrible, manky estate and mistake it for the home of an organized crime kingpin. They took the printer away, of course, and displayed it like a trophy for the newsies. Its little shrine in the kitchenette seemed horribly empty. When I roused myself and picked up the flat and rescued my peeping poor tweetybird, I put a blender there. It was made out of printed parts, so it would only last a month before I’d need to print new bearings and other moving parts. Back then, I could take apart and reassemble anything that could be printed.

By the time I turned eighteen, they were ready to let Da out of prison. I’d visited him three times—on my tenth birthday, on his fiftieth, and when Ma died. It had been two years since I’d last seen him and he was in bad shape. A prison fight had left him with a limp, and he looked over his shoulder so often it was like he had a tic. I was embarrassed when the minicab dropped us off in front of the estate, and tried to keep my distance from this ruined, limping skeleton as we went inside and up the stairs.

“Lanie,” he said, as he sat me down. “You’re a smart girl, I know that. Trig. You wouldn’t know where your old Da could get a printer and some goop?”

I squeezed my hands into fists so tight my fingernails cut into my palms. I closed my eyes. “You’ve been in prison for ten years, Da. Ten. Years. You’re going to risk another ten years to print out more blenders and pharma, more laptops and designer hats?”

He grinned. “I’m not stupid, Lanie. I’ve learned my lesson. There’s no hat or laptop that’s worth going to jail for. I’m not going to print none of that rubbish, never again.” He had a cup of tea, and he drank it now like it was whisky, a sip and then a long, satisfied exhalation. He closed his eyes and leaned back in his chair.

“Come here, Lanie, let me whisper in your ear. Let me tell you the thing that I decided while I spent ten years in lockup. Come here and listen to your stupid Da.”

I felt a guilty pang about ticking him off. He was off his rocker, that much was clear. God knew what he went through in prison. “What, Da?” I said, leaning in close.

“Lanie, I’m going to print more printers. Lots more printers. One for everyone. That’s worth going to jail for. That’s worth anything.”