My question doesn't relate to the actual printer but idk what other subReddit to post this.
Hi guys, I've just ordered the A1 mini with AMS Lite. My idea is to use my drone to make 3D models which is easy enough. I can create and edit the models in Blender and create .STLs but how can I add a bit of colour to my prints? What software to use and how to create it? Can I map out the colours somehow from my 3D models? For example this is something I've created: https://poly.cam/capture/c4e38eeb-f874-4f3d-a642-ca42e0443799 I could use green, brown and 2 mixtures of grey but how would I go about creating this for print?

Over the past year, a friend and I have designed a cube with 300 custom cards. Custom cards are an extreme extension of cube design and there's a lot more potential for things to go wrong. Here's what I've learned.

Play with your Designs as Soon as Possible

Design four cards. Print them, put them into two old draft decks, and play a game. If they're not in the right colours, treat them as colourless. If you don't have someone to help, play against yourself.
This is the most important and urgent task. There are things you learn in 20 seconds of gameplay that you couldn't learn from hours of thinking. A custom card doesn't exist until it's been cast.

Custom Cards are Too Powerful

Cards you design are stronger than you expect, even when you think you're being careful. There are two causes:

• People underestimate new cards. Nobody expected Oko or The One Ring to be powerful because we hadn't seen powerful cards with those types of effects before. Smuggler's Copter, Umezawa's Jitte, and White Plume Adventurer were similar mistakes.
• You like the cards you design. You want them to get attention, and players like powerful cards. Emrakul, the Promised End was too strong in standard because she was too important to be weak.

There's a longer discussion about the role of power and when imbalance is good. Just be aware that your custom cards will be more powerful than you think.

Custom Cards are Too Weird

By far the most common pitfall. People design weird cards because if they wanted normal cards they would just use the official ones. However, wotc manages to design cards every year that are both normal and exciting. Many problems come from weird cards:

• They're hard to understand. Often they have lots of text, behave differently than you expect, or have their strength buried under distractions. Remember that people who have never seen these cards before need to quickly read them, understand them, and compare them to 14 other cards. Necropotence is popular now but suffered on release from this. People don't give custom cards the same chance.
• They don't do anything. These tend to be situational gotchas or overly linear buildarounds, which makes deckbuilding less interesting. Lions Eye Diamond and Dark Depths are cool, but they have provenance and history that your custom cards don't have. Lions Eye Diamond was also hated for years.
• They disrupt the structure of the game. A powerful weird card draws too much attention to itself or a small aspect of the game, making other things irrelevant. Not every card is the star of the story. Many early prison cards like Moat, Armageddon, or Winter Orb do this. When people dislike monarch or initiative, it's usually because they warp the game around themselves.
• They have too many ideas. When someone makes their first custom card, they have years worth of ideas waiting to be shared. Trust me, you will run out of ideas before you run out of places to put them. A card only needs a single idea and sometimes I design multiple cards based on a single idea. Split it into two cards, or write the idea down and come back to it later. If it's a good idea, you'll find a place for it later.

You might think normal/simple cards don't let you express yourself, but there's still important decisions to make. For Cyber Dragon, I had to decide how much it would cost when discounted. By making it 3 mana, it gives you the choice of whether to play a 2-drop before and makes you think about if that 2-drop will die by next turn. A 4/3 flier is an inefficient distribution of rate, and a 2 mana discount is meaningful without being necessary.
You can create fun and novel experiences with simple textboxes, flavour, and the right numbers. Summon Boulder, Ancestral Migraine, Espresso Kami, The Knight, Rakdos Charm 3, and Parhelion III are all simple designs I'm proud of.

Believe in your Cards

My advice is mostly negative so I want to underscore that you can make fun cards. Whenever you playtest you discover some cards are not as fun as you thought, but you also discover seemingly boring cards that are a lot of fun. I thought Monastery Swift Mentor Spear wouldn't be fun, but after playing with it I love it. When you playtest early and often you can afford to take risks and find really new designs.
Believing in your cards means putting your best work in the spotlight. Your most powerful cards should be cards that people will love. What's important is to earn your audience's trust. People are less forgiving with custom cards, so all it takes is one Moat or Daze to turn them off. That trust is like the willing suspension of disbelief and lets people overlook frustrating experiences. Jadelight Ranger and Huntmaster of the Fells were everywhere in standard, but still beloved because they were so fun to play with.
It's also okay to have cards you have less faith in. Usually it's something that's fun to read or play occasionally, but annoying when it's a pillar of the format. Make them weak or narrow and let people enjoy the idea. Mill can be annoying to lose to, which is why wotc keeps it as a fringe or unplayable strategy for the die-hard mill fans.

Put it on the Back Burner

A Valve developer said that to make a good game, you have to make two games and throw one of them away. Designing cards is hard, and it feels bad to discard something you worked on. But you need to accept that sometimes you reach a dead end. If a card doesn't spark joy when you play with it, set it aside and come back to it later. I have about 50 cards I've designed, many with illustrations and names, that I've cut so that people can focus on the cards I really believe in.

Red Flags

Effects I try to minimise. They show up often in initial designs, so it's important to only do when necessary.
"Draw a Card"
"Draw a card" is secretly the opposite of believing in your cards. It usually means that your card needs to do something, but you're not sure what. You're basically making it a copy of another random card in their deck. Part of strategy in magic is how different effects are better at different times. Sometimes you have to find a use for a 3/3 when they have a 4/4, or use a removal spell in the right way at the right time. Card draw is just always good, not concerned with timing or decisions, and fits into any strategy.
It also gets problematic in large doses. A deck of all card draw never actually does anything. It lets players get ahead without interacting. It causes mana flood. Full hands in the late game present too many options. The wincon-less Teferi, Hero of Dominaria decks were emblematic of this. The deck was only interested in drawing cards, making mana, and staying alive. It would be less frustrating if it played Baneslayer Angel or The Wandering Emperor.
The paradox is that players love card draw because there's no risk of it being bad. You don't need players to like your card if it replaces itself with another. But remember that you're designing a puzzle and you can't just give players all the answers. You have to make them work for it.
1 Power Creatures
It's important for games to reach a conclusion. 1 power creatures tend towards long drawn out games where creature combat and damage doesn't matter. Drafters of Dominaria (2018) had games where both players walled up behind 1/3s and just passed turn until they found a bomb to win with.
1-2 mana creatures are hard to design because you don't want a lot of 1 power creatures, but giving them more power can end the game too quickly. I like to make them small to start with, but get bigger later on or under certain conditions.
Relatedly, you need to make some 4 power creatures. This helps games end, adds excitement, and provides variety in creature sizes. It's hard because you don't have room for a lot of expensive creatures. And if your 5 mana creatures have good abilities (eg. Mulldrifter) then you have to make them small, which takes up space for big creatures. Again, you can pick up some of the slack with creatures that change size.
Repeatable Effects
Doing something every turn is a red flag. It encourages players to stall to get more activations. Fortunately magic has many fixes.

• Limited number of uses (Sagas, Mazemind Tome, flashback)
• Doesn't accumulate between turns (Birds of Paradise, Rootwalla)
• Diminishing returns over multiple uses (Chronomaton, Prodigal Pyromancer)
• Consumes a finite resource (Phyrexian Arena, Stoneforge Mystic, escape)
• Ends the game (Planeswalkers with ultimates, Sheoldred)
• Easy to disrupt (Planeswalkers, attack triggers)
• Switches to doing something else (Bloodline Keeper, saga creatures, Treasure Map)

Mana Denial
This sounds unnecessary, but you'll underestimate how often you get an opportunity to mana screw your opponent. Just do what wotc does and write nonland on everything.
Similarity
When two cards are very similar, it invites comparison between them. Whichever one is weaker will be hated by players, even if it's only a little weaker. If it's similar to an existing card that's powerful, it will either be overpowered or hated. People used to complain that Serum Visions was too weak for modern, despite it seeing frequent play in tier 1 decks, because it's similar to Preordain. You can get away with weaker versions of cards if the original is very obviously too powerful for the cube.

Concepts about Power

Inefficient Distribution of Rate
Credit to Patrick Sullivan for this concept. Every card has multiple aspects, and it's important to understand when those aspects are pointing towards the same strategy. For example, Fireblast lets you sacrifice two lands to deal 4 damage. The drawback (sacrificing two lands) is minor if the game ends shortly afterwards, and dealing 4 damage is likely doing that. That is an efficient distribution. But say Fireblast had a different effect worth about 4 mana: destroy all creatures. Despite having a theoretically stronger effect, in practice this is a weaker card because it wants a short game but the effect is prolonging the game. That is an inefficient distribution.
Generally speaking, inefficient distributions are more fun. They allow you to make cards that are exciting because they look overpowered, without actually being overpowered. They also reward deckbuilders who can find a way to marry the conflicting strategies into a single deck. Llanowar Elves is an inefficient distribution, since giving opponents a target for Shock is a big drawback in ramp decks. If Llanowar Elves was an enchantment, ramp decks could play no small creatures, making it hard for opponents to use their cheap removal. Llanowar Elves provides more ways to interact with ramp decks, and rewards players for finding ways to use the 'inefficiency' with Birthing Pod or Craterhoof Behemoth. Monastery Swiftspear and Arclight Phoenix are 'storm' payoffs that lean in a totally different direction to typical storm decks, creating new archetypes that play with creatures and don't kill in one turn.
Power vs Impact
High impact cards include big creatures, sweepers, planeswalkers, or cards with repeatable effects. They give games excitement and momentum, but they also get more scrutiny. It's easy to be upset about losing to Grave Titan when what really beat you was turn 1 Birds of Paradise. For that reason I'm more willing to take risks on low impact cards and keep high impact cards at a lower power level. But you also need people to play high impact cards to get games over with. Brainstorm and Polluted Delta are powerful cards with low impact, whereas Grave Titan and Teferi, Hero of Dominaria are comparatively weak but feel strong because they're high impact. High impact cards can get people excited about weak cards because they still sometimes win games.

Playtesting Advice

• Powerful cards get data faster. If something is really weird, test it at a high power and tone it down once you know how it plays.
• Removal can obfuscate testing. Removal is an important part of magic, but part of why it's good is the way it 'smooths over' problems with an environment. If you test with little removal, it's more obvious when a card is causing problems. Remember that your players won't always have removal when they need it.
• Look for the root of a problem. Often an unfun card has a specific flaw that can be addressed. Sometimes you need to reduce a card's impact, reduce the frequency of an effect, or simply increase the mana cost. It is surprising how many things are more fun when you have to spend more mana to do them.

Card design is something you could study for a lifetime. While I've learned a lot of things about specific aspects of it, these are my most universal tips.

My partner 35M who is a very active and healthy has been complaining for pain in his left hand for about 2 days. Mainly his thumb, wrist and side of palm is hurting. Today the pain escalated so he wrapped it around with medical cloth to put some pressure on the are but I think he did it too tight, his hand was losing color. I told him to take off and when he did he suddenly felt dizzy, nauseous and then all the colour ran out of his face and he passed out for maybe half a minute after which he woke up. We went to a&e, they were not concerned about the fainting, checked his heart, breathing and sugar levels - all came back normal, his heart rate was a bit longer than usual on the print but still normal. They gave him some physio exercises and that was it. I’m really worried as he hasn’t injured his hand, how can it hurt him to the point of fainting?! Is that even the reason? Should we investigate further and get a referral to some sort of specialist or am I overreacting?

TL;DR at bottom
Hello, I work in a medical simulation lab and we have a 3D printer (Prusa i3 mk3) that it seems no one else has had much interest in, so I've been going down the rabbit hole the last few weeks and learning more about it and exploring some potential applications. I have no prior experience and have just been watching some YT videos and playing around with it.
My biggest issue I'm hoping for some guidance on is trying to figure out the best orientation for objects and the use of supports and stuff like that since most of the stuff I'm interested in printing is small and oddly shaped.
A couple of examples I've tried printing and failed are this oxygen "Christmas tree" adaptor and this oropharyngeal airway.
I tried printing the Christmas tree in this orientation, and the first try didn't adhere and I could see it rocking back and forth. The second one (pictured) overall looks decent except the tip which got a little warped, but the inside had a lot of stringing and the threads were messed up so it's definitely not functional. I noticed the thingiverse post shows it printed on the edge, is that really a better orientation to try? I'm also going to lower the temp in the next attempt to see if that helps the stringing (we use PLA, that one was at 215 so I'll try maybe 200?)
The OP airway attempt started promising with good adhesion, then crashed midway through. The slicer didn't give any warnings, but I'm wondering if it's too steep of an angle since it's very curved and I did not use supports. The thingiverse post for it also shows it oriented on the tip, which is what prompted this post....
Both of those seem very counterintuitive to me, so I was hoping someone could explain the logic as to why that is the best.
Finally (sorry this is getting long) I wanted to make something like this barcode scanner holder with a screw clamp. I was thinking this orientation, but now I'm not sure. If I'm printing something with threads, is it better for them to be printed horizontally or vertically, or does it just depend on the specific case?
I would greatly appreciate some insight or tips, or any specific resources that might help me get a better understanding.
Thanks!
TL;DR: Is this and this really the best orientation for printing those objects? And do you think this print will work or is there a better way?

Hello, I'm a lunatic author who put his books on Steam. I'm all alone there, as far as I can tell - due to the basic restrictions on Steam pertaining to anything that requires third party software (and how this rules out traditional ebooks). So I created the NB Book Binder, in the hopes that other authors might carve out a new market with me:
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2958290/NB_Book_Binde
The NB Book Binder is a tool that allows authors with no programming knowledge to convert their literary works into a polished package which boasts various features including:

• Audio book support, with auto-page turning
• Controller support and a big font mode for reading books on a TV screen or on the Steam Deck
• Inserted image support with manual control over scaling and support for transparency
• Automated table of contents generation
• A variety of colour themes, along with the option of a custom theme
• A passage-by-passage optional display method that prevents same-page spoilers, aids concentration and adds a little extra magic.
• An unobtrusive page turn animation... oh, and actual author-defined pages, allowing for a digital experience that more closely matches the print edition.

The Binder program itself features a guided process, built-in documentation, and support for the creation of book collections.
It's due to be released as soon as it emerges from its required "coming soon" period on Steam, which will end in two weeks. A demo should be available before then.

Buckle up because this is a pretty long story. So it all began last year on Victoria Day. My fiance (26M) and I (25F) were taking our daughter (2F) (she was 1 at the time) to the park in the evening. We were hanging out there for about 30 min when a little girl who had been there alone started making conversation with me.
She was saying some pretty out of pocket things like how her birth dad was on the news for beating her mom, and how some other children had pulled her pants down in the forest. It was a lot to process the things she was saying. She said she was 11 years old but honestly seemed a tiny bit slow for her age especially compared to my 8 yo niece. I asked her where her parents were and she said her mom can't really walk because of a foot injury.
We had packed cookies and snacks with us that we were eating and we offered her some. She accepted with no hesitation. I asked when she was planning on going home and she said she was waiting for fireworks at the park. We waited there with her until past dark and there were no fireworks.
We didn't feel comfortable leaving this little girl alone at the park so we had her call her mom from our phone in case she was worried and her mom didn't even ask who's phone she was calling from. We walked her home (about a 12 min walk) and asked to see her mom when she arrived home.
Their yard was full of garbage and dog shit and her mom came out (missing some teeth) and thanked us for bringing her home. I said out of pity that if she ever needed help with her daughter or something that she could call me and she took my number.
The next day I took my daughter to the park again. The little girl was there. She ran up to me and hugged me and the first thing she said was "My mom said I can come to your house!" I thought that was absolutely insane. I had no desire to have her at my house considering I have no relation to her and it just seems weird.
I didn't even believe that her mom would have said that considering we just met yesterday. So I had her call her mom and her mom said yes! I didn't have the heart to turn this clearly neglected and hurting girl no. So I said sure she could come for a bit.
It was really hot that day and we do not have air conditioning. We had just bought a giant inflatable pool the other day so I said she could come swim if she wanted. I walked her to her house to get her bathing suit and to talk to her mom. I asked what time to have her home and her mom just said "before dark" Crazy.
So I had her over and we went swimming in the little pool. I also had a little kid summer activity bag from my church. One of the activities was a gratefulness exercise with a bag of skittles. Every different colour skittle you got would represent either a place you were grateful for, a memory, a thing or person and so on. When she got the colour for a person she was grateful for she said other than her mom, it was me.
We ordered McDonald's and walked her home. After this, we hung out a few more times, at the park and I took her for a fishing trip. When we were on the bus home from fishing she was telling strangers her address which was embarrassing. I was like this is not my kid! I keep trying to teach her to be cautious and tell her about safety but she doesn't get it.
She was always asking to come over at this point but I honestly felt uncomfortable with it so I tried to keep it to just outings together. We also helped the mom out with food a couple times even though we are very low income ourselves, and had the girl over a couple times when the hydro was cut off at her house. I also gave her a few bags of my pre-pregnancy clothing since her clothes were all raggedy.
My fiance had been with us a few times I hung out with her and one time, we went to pick her up with our daughter in her wagon. The girl said she wanted to go the park but she was really tired from school so I offered for her to go in the wagon.
Someone from the neighborhood saw us pulling her and asked her if she was okay as if we were kidnapping her. Ever since then, my fiance wants absolutely nothing to do with her and doesn't want to be with me when I'm with her. He doesn't want people to think he's a weirdo.
Her mom told me neighbors had called CAS on her and animal control. Her mother and her boyfriend hoarded animals. They had 2 adult dogs, a puppy, 10+ rats, guinea pigs, a bearded dragon and probably even more animals I can't remember.
The mom asked me to come over for when the girl would be home from school because she was going to be upset that they had gotten rid of most of her animals when she was at school. I felt so bad for her.
The winter came around and I stopped seeing her. One time in the winter her mom told me she wanted to see me so I offered to pick her up from school and go to park for a few min.
I arrived at her school with my daughter about 5 min before school ended. I waited there until a few min after school ended and her mom texted me saying that she was sick and had stayed home. I was so pissed.
At the end of February I was doing a placement for my college (Community service worker program) at a program for kids in my city living in poverty. They do Saturday programs, summer camps, bday and Christmas gifts and home visits every week to all the kids. It just so happened that she was in the program.
I was excited to do a home visit at her house, thinking she would be pleasantly surprised to see me. We knocked on her door and her mom answered, crying and saying that the little girl was taken by CAS and was now staying with her grandfather and aunt.
Apparently the mom's boyfriend was beating her with the girl in the same room and the police were called. I would see the girl briefly at Saturday programs and she was always wearing something I gave her.
One day I was assigned as a supervisor on her bus so we were able to sit together and catch up. She said she hated her grandfather's house and had to sleep on the couch there. She said she missed her mom and missed her room.
She said her mom had her on weekends now and asked to hang out. At this time I was having my 7 yr old nephew and 8 yr old niece at my house every weekend (that's a whole story for another day) So I thought that was perfect and introduced them all.
They all got along really well and so they would hang out on weekends at my house. My placement finished at the end of April and I didn't hear from her for a little while.
A few weeks ago her mom added me on Facebook (weird because I never told her my last name and we have no mutuals). Her mom said she was granted custody of her daughter again.
She was asking for her daughter to come over again. I told her that there's really nothing to do at my house and my niece and nephew were not there so there was really nothing to do at my house. She insisted she wanted to see me so I went to the park with her.
When I walked her home I asked if she could get me a glass of water from her house. When she came out she asked me if I wanted to see her pet rat. I said yes, expecting her to go inside and grab it.
To my horror, she opened up a compost bin right outside her house and the rat was in there!! Then she said "there's my bearded dragon" and "there's my guinea pig" They were all wrapped in clothes or in shoeboxes. Her mom came out and shut her up before she continued but who knows if there were more animals in there.
I was horrified. I started walking home and got about halfway there and stopped at the lights waiting to cross. Then I heard her yelling my name and running as fast as she could towards me. I was like "what? What's wrong? What's happening?" And she looked at me, out of breath, dripping sweat, her face so red from chasing after me. And she says "My mom said I can come over to your house!"
It really hurt my heart. But my fiance had already told me he doesn't want her at the house without the kids there and honestly I don't either. I just feel so bad turning this girl away when she clearly needs someone.
I really don't know what to do in this situation, I'm supposed to take her fishing tomorrow and I'm honestly not looking forward to it. I'm thinking of bringing her to church with me instead and she can go to the Sunday school and I can take her home after.
I need some advice on what to do here, recently she has also been telling me about how she just got her period and talking about her pubic hair and other personal stuff. I know that it's because she looks up to me as a female role model but since I'm literally just a stranger from the park I feel it's inappropriate.
Can you guys weigh in? Am I doing the right thing here or should I have never gotten involved?

Hi!
I'm Megan. I'm 34, I'm 5'2", plus sized with dark copperish hair and brown eyes. I have 3 facial piercings(nose, septum and Medusa), and 4 tattoos, 2 of which are ghosts lol.
I will warn you that I'm fresh out of a long term, abusive relationship. I'm in the process of restarting my life. And that looks a little messy right now.
Anyway...
My biggest obsession is the paranormal, specifically spirits and ghost hunting shows but I like cryptids too. I will talk to you for hours about ghost related content except Ghost Adventures cause fuck Zak, he can suck a chode for all I care. I also love anything spooky and odd, and also true crime. Big big fan of cows and everything cow print. Music is a big part of my life and I love EDM, indie, grunge and post grunge the most. I love the summer for the warm weather and being able to go to beach, and fall for spooky, cozy vibes. My fav holiday is oddly enough Christmas though. I love cooking, video games, going for walks, camping, and cruises. I'm a mixed bag of interests and we'd be here all day if I posted them all.
I also want to add that I'm autistic so please understand this before messaging. Sometimes I can't people, and I need you to understand that I'm not trying to be rude by being short or to the point. 420 and alcohol friendly but I don't do hard drugs anymore.
Looking for someone who's none of the phobics (transphobic, homophobic, etc etc) and not ableist, sexist, ageist, etc..just basically someone who's tolerant and nonjudgmental and not an asshole. Looks doesn't matter to me, as long as you're a good person. I want to be able to send reels and tiktoks to, talk about life, joke and laugh with, maybe game with or watch movies with you. I need someone who understands my situation and is willing to be patient with me. I'm trying my best but I'm in a really raw spot..I don't wanna be alone, that's why I'm reaching out.
So if that's you, please message me. Try to say more than a simple 'hey'. Introduce yourself if you will, helps me see if we'd be a good match. I probably won't respond if you just say "hey whatsup" or throw a petname at me and call it a day.
I have pics if that's important to you and I have discord and snap we can move the chat to if we vibe.
If you read all of this, kudos to you! Hopefully, we'll talk soon.

How I became friends with an 11 year old I met at the park (sad)
Buckle up because this is a pretty long story. So it all began last year on Victoria Day. My fiance (26M) and I (25F) were taking our daughter (2F) (she was 1 at the time) to the park in the evening. We were hanging out there for about 30 min when a little girl who had been there alone started making conversation with me.
She was saying some pretty out of pocket things like how her birth dad was on the news for beating her mom, and how some other children had pulled her pants down in the forest. It was a lot to process the things she was saying. She said she was 11 years old but honestly seemed a tiny bit slow for her age especially compared to my 8 yo niece. I asked her where her parents were and she said her mom can't really walk because of a foot injury.
We had packed cookies and snacks with us that we were eating and we offered her some. She accepted with no hesitation. I asked when she was planning on going home and she said she was waiting for fireworks at the park. We waited there with her until past dark and there were no fireworks.
We didn't feel comfortable leaving this little girl alone at the park so we had her call her mom from our phone in case she was worried and her mom didn't even ask who's phone she was calling from. We walked her home (about a 12 min walk) and asked to see her mom when she arrived home.
Their yard was full of garbage and dog shit and her mom came out (missing some teeth) and thanked us for bringing her home. I said out of pity that if she ever needed help with her daughter or something that she could call me and she took my number.
The next day I took my daughter to the park again. The little girl was there. She ran up to me and hugged me and the first thing she said was "My mom said I can come to your house!" I thought that was absolutely insane. I had no desire to have her at my house considering I have no relation to her and it just seems weird.
I didn't even believe that her mom would have said that considering we just met yesterday. So I had her call her mom and her mom said yes! I didn't have the heart to turn this clearly neglected and hurting girl no. So I said sure she could come for a bit.
It was really hot that day and we do not have air conditioning. We had just bought a giant inflatable pool the other day so I said she could come swim if she wanted. I walked her to her house to get her bathing suit and to talk to her mom. I asked what time to have her home and her mom just said "before dark" Crazy.
So I had her over and we went swimming in the little pool. I also had a little kid summer activity bag from my church. One of the activities was a gratefulness exercise with a bag of skittles. Every different colour skittle you got would represent either a place you were grateful for, a memory, a thing or person and so on. When she got the colour for a person she was grateful for she said other than her mom, it was me.
We ordered McDonald's and walked her home. After this, we hung out a few more times, at the park and I took her for a fishing trip. When we were on the bus home from fishing she was telling strangers her address which was embarrassing. I was like this is not my kid! I keep trying to teach her to be cautious and tell her about safety but she doesn't get it.
She was always asking to come over at this point but I honestly felt uncomfortable with it so I tried to keep it to just outings together. We also helped the mom out with food a couple times even though we are very low income ourselves, and had the girl over a couple times when the hydro was cut off at her house. I also gave her a few bags of my pre-pregnancy clothing since her clothes were all raggedy.
My fiance had been with us a few times I hung out with her and one time, we went to pick her up with our daughter in her wagon. The girl said she wanted to go the park but she was really tired from school so I offered for her to go in the wagon.
Someone from the neighborhood saw us pulling her and asked her if she was okay as if we were kidnapping her. Ever since then, my fiance wants absolutely nothing to do with her and doesn't want to be with me when I'm with her. He doesn't want people to think he's a weirdo.
Her mom told me neighbors had called CAS on her and animal control. Her mother and her boyfriend hoarded animals. They had 2 adult dogs, a puppy, 10+ rats, guinea pigs, a bearded dragon and probably even more animals I can't remember.
The mom asked me to come over for when the girl would be home from school because she was going to be upset that they had gotten rid of most of her animals when she was at school. I felt so bad for her.
The winter came around and I stopped seeing her. One time in the winter her mom told me she wanted to see me so I offered to pick her up from school and go to park for a few min.
I arrived at her school with my daughter about 5 min before school ended. I waited there until a few min after school ended and her mom texted me saying that she was sick and had stayed home. I was so pissed.
At the end of February I was doing a placement for my college (Community service worker program) at a program for kids in my city living in poverty. They do Saturday programs, summer camps, bday and Christmas gifts and home visits every week to all the kids. It just so happened that she was in the program.
I was excited to do a home visit at her house, thinking she would be pleasantly surprised to see me. We knocked on her door and her mom answered, crying and saying that the little girl was taken by CAS and was now staying with her grandfather and aunt.
Apparently the mom's boyfriend was beating her with the girl in the same room and the police were called. I would see the girl briefly at Saturday programs and she was always wearing something I gave her.
One day I was assigned as a supervisor on her bus so we were able to sit together and catch up. She said she hated her grandfather's house and had to sleep on the couch there. She said she missed her mom and missed her room.
She said her mom had her on weekends now and asked to hang out. At this time I was having my 7 yr old nephew and 8 yr old niece at my house every weekend (that's a whole story for another day) So I thought that was perfect and introduced them all.
They all got along really well and so they would hang out on weekends at my house. My placement finished at the end of April and I didn't hear from her for a little while.
A few weeks ago her mom added me on Facebook (weird because I never told her my last name and we have no mutuals). Her mom said she was granted custody of her daughter again.
She was asking for her daughter to come over again. I told her that there's really nothing to do at my house and my niece and nephew were not there so there was really nothing to do at my house. She insisted she wanted to see me so I went to the park with her.
When I walked her home I asked if she could get me a glass of water from her house. When she came out she asked me if I wanted to see her pet rat. I said yes, expecting her to go inside and grab it.
To my horror, she opened up a compost bin right outside her house and the rat was in there!! Then she said "there's my bearded dragon" and "there's my guinea pig" They were all wrapped in clothes or in shoeboxes. Her mom came out and shut her up before she continued but who knows if there were more animals in there.
I was horrified. I started walking home and got about halfway there and stopped at the lights waiting to cross. Then I heard her yelling my name and running as fast as she could towards me. I was like "what? What's wrong? What's happening?" And she looked at me, out of breath, dripping sweat, her face so red from chasing after me. And she says "My mom said I can come over to your house!"
It really hurt my heart. But my fiance had already told me he doesn't want her at the house without the kids there and honestly I don't either. I just feel so bad turning this girl away when she clearly needs someone.
I really don't know what to do in this situation, I'm supposed to take her fishing tomorrow and I'm honestly not looking forward to it. I'm thinking of bringing her to church with me instead and she can go to the Sunday school and I can take her home after.
I need some advice on what to do here, recently she has also been telling me about how she just got her period and talking about her pubic hair and other personal stuff. I know that it's because she looks up to me as a female role model but since I'm literally just a stranger from the park I feel it's inappropriate.
Can you guys weigh in? Am I doing the right thing here or should I have never gotten involved?

Hey there peeps!
I'm a relative newbie in the 3d printing world, had an ender 3 for yonks and took it into work at the beginning of the year to print some vesa monitor spacers. It's worked well, so has been treated to some upgrades by work to reward it.
We recently designed a insulation cutting jig to use as a promo item at an upcoming show, but it looks like it will morph into a proper product and I sweet talked them into letting me buy a Creality K1 which is running brilliantly and producing tons of product.
My "day" prints are 23hrs and use 650g of filament and I can't get larger spools. My "weekend" prints are 41hrs and use 1150g of filament!
Now obviously I can weld filament and spool a bit extra on, and I've got a manual process for this (in fact, I can go upto 1300g roughly). I'm aware of products like the Mosaic Palette but I don't need multi-colour or material at this stage (and if I do, I think the Prusa XL with multiple extruders will be best, future problem lol!).
Are there any products out there that will auto load a second spool when the first runs out, that are economical?
Thank you hive mind, in advance!

*Chat Preferred. Only accepting trades for items under “COLLECTABLES”. Items are verified using SIGMA Investor (thru and gravity), Pocket Pinger, Weight, and magnet.
PROOF
GOLD
2021 1/10 AGE- $265
50 2023 Wyoming Goldback- $225
2.5 Acre (In Assay)- $215
ROUNDS/BARS AND COINS:
3x 1 oz Nadir Bars (In Assay)- $36 EA
1 oz Coca Cola Bar- $37
1 oz The Perth Mint Kangaroo Bar- $39
2023 Merry Christmas Colorized Bar- $35
The Royal Mint 007 “Diamonds Are Forever” 1 oz Bar- $40
1973 Mothers Day Vintage 1 oz Bar- $36
Silver Trade Unit 1 oz Round Morgan Design- $35
2x Golden State Mint Year Of The Dragon 1 oz- $38 EA
2x 2023 King Charles Royal Arms 1 oz- $38 EA
2x Steamboat Willie 1 oz Rounds- $34 EA
Americas Rarest Coins 2 oz Silver “Bust Dollar” Design- $75
1953 Cinco Pesos- $20
50 Gram Geiger In Assay- $70
10 Oz “The Wedge” DHF Silver Bar- $380
Silver 1975 Philippines Proof Set (complete)- $90
2000 The Dawn of A New Millennium 1oz Silver- $35
1 Gram Geiger In Assay- $10
16x 1 oz Silver Towne Mighty Eagles- $510
7x 1 oz Misc Nicer Rounds- $225
Cale Yarborough 1 oz Round- $45
1978 Cien Pesos- $20
1974 1 oz Liberty Medallion- $35
20x 1 oz Tokelau 2024 Proof Mustang- $36 EA or all for $34 EA
$3 Face 90% Lot ($1 Wash, $1.20 Rosevelt’s, $.80 Mercs all with dates and some are higher grades)- $64
2x 1962 Proof Sets (Some missing random pieces like cardboard or paper)- $26 EA
10 oz Bar- $315
1 oz Peace Dollar Round- $40
2x 2023 Kookaburra (W/Capsule)- $35 EA
4x 2024 Kookaburra (W/Capsule)- $35 EA
1 oz 2023 5 Mark Germania Mint Allegories (W/COA)- $45
500 Gram The Holy Mint Bar- $525
1964 Accented Hair Proof Set (Complete)- $70
22x 2024 1/10 Silver Brittanias- $10 EA or all for $9 EA
2001 S Proof JFK Half- $12
Foreign lot In Flips (31 Coins)- $25
Foreign lot Loose (21 Coins and most are Canadian)- $15
1 New Penny (26 coins dates all in the 1970s), 1/2 New Penny (16 coins dates all in the 1970s), and 2 New Pence Lot (26 coins dates all in the 1970s)- $40
1970 1 Piso Pope Paul VI (Non PM)- $5
1966 Jamaican Commonwealth Games Coin- $4
1983 Netherland Coin Set (Cracked Open Case)- $7
RANDOMS:
5x 1 Gram Argor Palladium- $65 EA or $63 EA for all
SLABS:
2022 1oz Serbia Nikola Tesla Natural Healing NGC MS70- $115
1964 Washington Quarter NGC PF67 (Crack on slab)- $15
1946 Walking Liberty Half PCI MS65- $95
2017 S ASE NGC PF70 Ultra Cameo San Fransico Slab- $120
1922 D Peace NGC MS63- $85
2023 Morgan CAC First Delivery MS69 Slab- $100
Bradford Exchange 2023 T2 BU ASE- $40
1855 Germany 1 S Hamburg MS63 NGC (Toner)- $80
2007-S PCGS PR70DCAM John Adams- $11
COLLECTABLES: Will trade for low premium Silver and Gold. [WTT] [WTS]
1x 2021 Cameroon Crucifix Coin- $120 EA
6x Fiji 2022 Snowflake Coin W/Crystals (Sealed)- $85 EA
3x Fiji 2023 Wonders Of Nature Great Barrier Reef Coin- $145 EA
2021 Star Wars IG-11 NIUE Coin- $105
2021 Samoa Splash Of Colour (Color 🇺🇸) New York City Coin- $175
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shipping/payment:
🚛*Shipping- is $5 for 1-8 oz (Ground Advantage), $6 for 9-12 oz (Ground Advantage) and $10 for over 12 oz (Priority Mail) both with tracking numbers. American shipping only 🇺🇸 (prices are for lower 48). I am shipping out of Oklahoma, if you are close I may be able to ship cheaper ground than priority on higher weights. Be sure to inquire if you expect that to be the case.
🧾*Payment- I accept Zelle (preferred), Venmo, cash app, and PayPal FF (least preferred and not available for low flair users). Please no notes/comments or I will refund (if you are forced to use one add an emoji or . ) Thanks!
💂 *Security- I will not give my password to anyone for any reason. I have enabled two factor authentication and have other steps to help protect myself and the buyers. I also use the same setup to take proof photos, so any deviation in that is a red flag 🚩.

*Chat Preferred. Only accepting trades for items under “COLLECTABLES”. Items verified using SIGMA Investor (Thru and Gravity), Pocket Pinger, Weight, and Magnet.
PROOF
GOLD
2021 1/10 AGE- $265
50 2023 Wyoming Goldback- $225
2.5 Acre (In Assay)- $215
ROUNDS/BARS AND COINS:
3x 1 oz Nadir Bars (In Assay)- $36 EA
1 oz Coca Cola Bar- $37
1 oz The Perth Mint Kangaroo Bar- $39
2023 Merry Christmas Colorized Bar- $35
The Royal Mint 007 “Diamonds Are Forever” 1 oz Bar- $40
1973 Mothers Day Vintage 1 oz Bar- $36
Silver Trade Unit 1 oz Round Morgan Design- $35
2x Golden State Mint Year Of The Dragon 1 oz- $38 EA
2x 2023 King Charles Royal Arms 1 oz- $38 EA
2x Steamboat Willie 1 oz Rounds- $34 EA
Americas Rarest Coins 2 oz Silver “Bust Dollar” Design- $75
1953 Cinco Pesos- $20
50 Gram Geiger In Assay- $66
10 Oz “The Wedge” DHF Silver Bar- $380
Silver 1975 Philippines Proof Set (complete)- $90
2000 The Dawn of A New Millennium 1oz Silver- $35
1 Gram Geiger In Assay- $8
16x 1 oz Silver Towne Mighty Eagles- $510
7x 1 oz Misc Nicer Rounds- $225
Cale Yarborough 1 oz Round- $40
1978 Cien Pesos- $20
1974 1 oz Liberty Medallion- $35
20x 1 oz Tokelau 2024 Proof Mustang- $36 EA or all for $34 EA
$3 Face 90% Lot ($1 Wash, $1.20 Rosevelt’s, $.80 Mercs all with dates and some are higher grades)- $64
2x 1962 Proof Sets (Some missing random pieces like cardboard or paper)- $26 EA
10 oz Bar- $315
1 oz Peace Dollar Round- $40
2x 2023 Kookaburra (W/Capsule)- $35 EA
4x 2024 Kookaburra (W/Capsule)- $35 EA
1 oz 2023 5 Mark Germania Mint Allegories (W/COA)- $45
500 Gram The Holy Mint Bar- $525
1964 Accented Hair Proof Set (Complete)- $70
22x 2024 1/10 Silver Brittanias- $10 EA or all for $9 EA
2001 S Proof JFK Half- $12
SLABS:
2022 1oz Serbia Nikola Tesla Natural Healing NGC MS70- $115
1964 Washington Quarter NGC PF67 (Crack on slab)- $15
1946 Walking Liberty Half PCI MS65- $95
2017 S ASE NGC PF70 Ultra Cameo San Fransico Slab- $120
1922 D Peace NGC MS63- $85
2023 Morgan CAC First Delivery MS69 Slab- $100
Bradford Exchange 2023 T2 BU ASE- $40
1855 Germany 1 S Hamburg MS63 NGC (Toner)- $80
RANDOMS:
5x 1 Gram Argor Palladium- $65 EA or all for $63 EA
COLLECTABLES: Will trade for low premium Silver and Gold. [WTT] [WTS]
1x 2021 Cameroon Crucifix Coin- $120 EA
6x Fiji 2022 Snowflake Coin W/Crystals (Sealed)- $85 EA
3x Fiji 2023 Wonders Of Nature Great Barrier Reef Coin- $145 EA
2021 Star Wars IG-11 NIUE Coin- $105
2021 Samoa Splash Of Colour (Color 🇺🇸) New York City Coin- $175
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shipping/payment:
🚛*Shipping- is $5 for 1-8 oz (Ground Advantage), $6 for 9-12 oz (Ground Advantage) and $10 for over 12 oz (Priority Mail) both with tracking numbers. American shipping only 🇺🇸 (prices are for lower 48). I am shipping out of Oklahoma, if you are close I may be able to ship cheaper ground than priority on higher weights. Be sure to inquire if you expect that to be the case.
🧾*Payment- I accept Zelle (preferred), Venmo, cash app, and PayPal FF (least preferred and not available for low flair users). Please no notes/comments or I will refund (if you are forced to use one add an emoji or . ) Thanks!
💂 *Security- I will not give my password to anyone for any reason. I have enabled two factor authentication and have other steps to help protect myself and the buyers. I also use the same setup to take proof photos, so any deviation in that is a red flag 🚩.

[First] [Previous]

Thank you u/abrachoo for the meme.

Transcription Subject: Takke, Venlil/Unemployed
Date [standardized human time]: February 26, 2137
Nervously, I walked towards the soon-to-be-opened restaurant, ‘The Orangery.’ I have been jobless for a month now, and I might have to go back to living with my parents if I can’t find any work soon. I really have to nail this interview. Relax, you have experience in this line of work, you got this. I checked one last time if my black fur was still neatly combed and clean before I knocked on the door and opened it slowly. “Hello, may I enter?”
“Depends, are you here for the interview?”
“Yes?”
“Good, come in. You’re the first, and I want to keep this quick.” I opened the door fully and saw a tattered-looking venlil, covered in scars from head to toe, sitting at one of the tables. “Are you coming?,” he asked, impatience at my hesitation marrying his tone. I swallowed and made my way over to the table. He idly gestured to the seat as he went over a list. “Name?”
“My name is Takke, but most people call me Tak.” I gave a formal greeting with my tail, expecting him to do the same. The man, however, simply leafed through a stack of papers while searching for something.
“Takke…22 years old…2 years of experience as a waiter and 3 as a cook,” he read from my resume, not paying me any attention. This man clearly has predator disease; I hope he isn’t my boss and is simply HR, although I doubt it.
“Sorry, what is your name, sir?” He continued reading my resume for several more seconds, completely ignoring me.
“Gilt.” After several minutes of awkward silence, he spoke up again, “Do you have a problem with working with humans?”
“Ye-what, why do I need to work with humans? They wouldn’t go to a salad restaurant, right?” I suppose I could if I only have to serve one once in a while, and if they don’t get aggressive.
“I’m no bigot, anyone can eat here…and maybe you could come into contact with a human in other ways,” Gilt said, moving his ears and tail in discomfort.
“Other ways?” I asked with concern.
“Oh, you know, perhaps…a delivery guy! Yes, a delivery guy could be human, you should be able to pick up food, from a delivery man, no matter if he’s a human, venlil or other.”
“To answer your question, mister Gilt, I am open to working with humans,” I half-heartedly lied.
“Good!” he exclaimed, waging his tail slightly. “And now for the final question, how desperate are you?”
“I’m sorry? I don’t follow.”
“How desperate are you for this job?”
This is starting to sound like a…”Quite, sir, to be honest. Why do you-?“
Gilt cut me off before I could finish my sentence, “Good, you’re hired.” He suddenly leaned forward and grabbed my paw for some reason, shaking it vigorously. “Your first day is overmorrow at second claw, you will be oriented then. Here are the keys. And sign this contract.” He quickly pushed a contract towards me. After a quick glance over it’s contents, I signed it, not having much choice but to work for this crazed man. Well, I could always go and live with my mother again, although I’d rather not. It’s not that I don’t love her, but she doesn’t have any sense of privacy, and I’ve gotten quite used to living on my own.
“Thank you mister Gilt, I will not let you down.”
“Yeah, yeah, now let’s move it, I still have to buy a lot of furniture at the thrift store,” he said all while pushing me towards the door, before suddenly pausing to think for a moment. “But only quality furniture of course, because this a legitimate place, with quality furniture,” Gilt said as he resumed pushing me out of the restaurant.
As we exited, a white venlil with blond spots walked up to Gilt. “Hello, I am here for the interview.”
“Go away, we already got someone,” Gilt snapped at the spotted venlil.
“Hi, is this the Orangery?” a second venlil asked, walking up towards Gilt.
“No, go away!”
Transcription Subject: Takke, Venlil waitecook
Date [standardized human time]: February 28, 2137
The Orangery stood on the far edge of the shopping centre, out where people only ever came for a specific store or locale. It stood snug in between a groomer salon and a rare tailor, something that had become more popular lately with the arrival of the humans.
Entering the shop, I was greeted by a strange collection of furniture one could politely call ‘colourful.’ No table was the same, only a few chairs had a matching other counterpart, and when they did, they were not even always placed at the same table. It could have been done as an artistic choice, but I’m not sure it was. On the walls hung framed pictures of green rolling hills, often displaying strange grazing animals that had an uncanny resemblance to a venlil, but quadrupedal and bearing a nose. On the counter —near the entrance— stood a plush version of one of these animals. Weirdly enough this version had its eyes facing more forward than those on the pictures, looking nearly as though it had binocular vision. Another strange detail was that there were several potted plants placed throughout the restaurant. Keeping plants inside is not something usually done in venlil culture, usually reserved to only a couple of species. Gojids and kolshians, most notably.
Passing the strange decorations and furniture, I took a look at the well-stocked bar. What was noticeably, some of the bottles only contained a measly 6% alcohol. Should I be expecting other species too?
The kitchen was fairly normal, the only thing out of place being that the wares were oddly big, as though they were made for a larger species. The most notable proof of this was the apron hanging from a hook. There were 3 words printed on it in a language that I did not recognize. I guessed that it was for a nevok considering the size of it. Why would a nevok be working here, don’t they usually charge much more then other species? Perhaps a takkan, there are not that many bipedal species that are this big. Now I think about it, I have no idea with how many people I’m going to work with, or anything about this company to begin with. I thought as I put on the oversized apron, the bottom hanging so low that it almost became a tripping hazard. I began taking inventory of everything in the kitchen so that I would know where everything was before I would officially start.
The chime above the door must have rung, but I was too focused on taking inventory to process what I heard. A creeping sensation came over me, and I saw a large, looming thing from the corner of my eye. I quickly spun around with a jump and saw that a massive human was standing in the doorframe. I quickly concluded that it was a man, as it was clearly missing the enlarged mammalians human females had, and it definitely had the increased muscle mass that some of the males had. He was even bigger then the humans I had seen and avoided in the streets; he had to have ducked to fit through the doorframe. This must be one of those ‘alpha males’ I have read about. His face bore a matte white mask. It was made out of some thick plastic like it was meant to protect his face, it was featureless, except for small holes around the mouth and 2 larger holes for the eyes, each complete with tinted glass covering.
Those 2 eye holes bore into me; I couldn’t move while he stood there looking at me as I was further backed into a corner, the human blocking both exists. “Sorry that I’m late, the bus had to take a detour due to an accident. I’m Maarten, I’m going to orient you into your new job,” it said with a low grumbling voice, while I stood flabbergasted from what he just said.
“Y-you must be mistaken sir, this is the Orangery, we serve salads. I work for Gilt,” I said, pulling all my courage together to get this predator out of the restaurant.
“I know. Gilt is my business partner, we both own this restaurant. Er, well he’s the one who signed the lease contract, but still.” He stood still for a moment, presumably thinking, but I couldn’t read any emotion from him. Without a tail or ear movement, and the mask obstructed any facial expression the human could possibly make. “Wait, let me guess, Gilt never told you that you would be working with or for a human?”
I gave an ear flick that signed ‘no.’ In return, Maarten dragged a hand over his mask and let out a drawn out sigh.
“Of course he didn’t. Takke was it, right? Could you please hand me my apron? So I can get started on showing you the ropes.” I began to undo the strap on the back as fast as I could, not wanting to be seen as stealing the fake pelt of a predator. “I can’t believe someone from the cooking store at the refugee centre had ordered a bunch of aprons saying ‘Bite the cook.’” At that, he began making a barking noise that my translator told me was laughter. I hastily took off the apron and threw it on the ground like it was on fire. I cursed myself for possibly angering him. He simply grabbed the apron off the ground and took a good look at my name tag that was still attached to the apron. His emotionless mask stared at it for a few moments. “T...A…K? Is that correct?”
“Y-yes, that is what everyone calls me. How did you read that? Almost no one but venlil can read Venlilian.”
“I have been here for months, of course I picked some up. Having to use a visual translator for everything is getting…tiring. Anyway-“ He walked over to a cabinet that hung low enough for him to look onto it with ease and grabbed a venlil-sized apron. “-This one is yours,” he said as he threw it directly into my paws.
“I bought a cookbook and a whole ton of Earth vegetables, that way we can be the only restaurant in town that serves human food. Well, there was this food truck selling burritos, but still. And don’t worry, the salads won’t contain any predatory stuff, that’s illegal. That means, no: meat, milk, cheese [pasteurized milk], honey [insect puke], eggs, or mayonnaise [condiment made from eggs].” I was bewildered by how casually Maarten summed up a list of the most grotesque things one could eat like it was the most normal thing in the world, and unfortunately my translator did its work perfectly in explaining what each item was. I know humans call themselves omnivores, but I didn’t think they meant it this literally. “Actually, I’m not sure if honey is illegal, I have to look that up.”
“I…I thought humans didn’t eat animals any more and only ate lab grown flesh.”
“Only the rich still do. Oh, you mean the eggs and mayonnaise. Don’t worry, the translator messes up on that one.” Oh good, it’s some fake lab-grown eggs like their flesh-food. Maarten leaned against the freezer as he leafed through the cookbook, as he nonchalantly spoke, “The eggs are not fertilized, so their’s no baby bird inside.” What?!
“How can you even tell that they’re unfertilized? And how do you get to the eggs in the first place, do you just grab them out of a nest?” I was getting a bit shaken by the sudden reveal. The humans on television were always portrayed as extremely kind-hearted beings that would never hurt another creature. We were constantly told that they had overcome their predatory nature, and now this one is telling me they still eat other animals eggs like it was nothing. And what was that about drinking milk? From who? Their own? Or is it from cattle? VENLIL?
“No, it’s not like we go hunting for them, we just keep this bird called chicken [nearly flightless predator bird] that we keep as livestock [cattle], they lay eggs when we give them a lot of food.” I’m going to faint, what next, humans actually do want to keep us as cattle? I began supporting myself on the counter to stabilize myself a bit. “Hey, are you alright? Shit, I told you too much, didn’t I?”
“No, I’m fine, that was just a lot to progress,” I half-heartily lied.
“I suppose I treated you too much like a human,” he says with a deep sigh. “If it makes you feel any better, I have not eaten any of those ‘predatory’ foods since I arrived here on Skalga, not even meat. How about this, we’re just going to cook, no more talking about predatory stuff. It’s just you, me, a bunch of vegetables, fruits and knives,” he said, finishing off with an awkward cough.
[Fast-forwarding by 5 hours]
“-the krakotl exterminator kept trying to fly high enough to reach the feline predator, but she kept failing due to the high gravity. Her venlil partner kept telling her to get a ladder, but that only angered her even more,” I said with a hardy laugh. Maarten joined in, his barking laugh sparked only a little fear. His canines were fully exposed too, as I had asked him to take off his mask since it had prevented me from reading any of his emotions. I’m starting to understand those human sympathizers, they’re big and scary looking with their predatory looks and behaviour, but they’re clearly people.
“They’re exterminators, why didn’t they just burn the tree down?”
“Not only was that some holy tree from a group of gojid’s who worship the protector, but they also have new rules. According to that venlil exterminator, they’re no longer allowed to burn human pets. Instead, they have to catch them and bring them back!”
“Bloody [blood covered] hell [punishment afterlife], they’ve turned into some shitty version of animal control.” Maarten’s stomach growled, which startled me for a moment. “I could eat a horse [large prey, grazer]. How about you, shall we eat some of this stuff?” I wish he would stop saying stuff like that.
I grabbed one of the many bowls of salad we had made. The one I choose was one made with a strange yellow scaled fruit called a pineapple. The recipes were in the most part fairly simple, although some things had a finesse to it that I still had to practice. On top of that was remembering the exact combinations and how to make the dressing and the ‘vegan’ mayonnaise. Good thing that Maarten leaves the recipe book here for me to use, even if I have to use a visual translator to read it.
I placed my bowl down at one of the many tables when I saw a piece of paper sticking out of the front door. Someone had slotted it in from outside, and it was now jammed in-between the doorframe and the door itself. Looking closer, it was made from the same paper as they make flyers, and the same size too, however, what was on it was anything but advertising.
It was a collage of photos. All of them had humans on them posing for the camera, most of which held a gun of some sort. What was more shocking was what else was on the photos. Several animals, but all dead, save for the few canine predators sitting besides their owner. I did not recognize the animals, but what was disturbing was that they more often than not looked like people from the Federation. One looked like a male Sulean with a brown fur instead of black and white, and another as well like a sulean but without the antlers. The third looked like a small sivkit, and another photo had a species that looks like a mazic with massive tusks.
I trembled in horror as to what I was seeing, when suddenly it was snatched out of my paws by Maarten as he came up from behind, looming over me. He crumbled the paper up while he grumbled something about Humanity First messing up relations. He was about to throw it into the trash as he suddenly changed his mind and instead stuffed it into his pocket. I didn’t know anymore if I wanted to work for a human. Then again, where else was I going to work?
A/N:
As always I really appreciate comments, it gives a lot more satisfaction than a few up arrows.
A special thanks to u/InstantSquirrelSoup for proofreading. Check out his fic: Arxur Hospitality.
A quick thanks to aMANTEIGAdo for the Liiry fanart
[First] [Previous]

Source https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13479399/kate-middleton-considers-buckingham-palace-appearance-king-charles-official-birthday.html
This one is odd for a number of reasons.

• It's written by a person whose name I don't recognize (sadly I've become familiar with the most-favored royal rota reporters' names by now). So there's that.
• The wording is weird: "The Daily Mail reported." Past tense? Wait a minute, you are The Mail. So where's the story saying that Kate may attend Trooping? Is this the same story? It must be. Edit: The Mail took this "story" from The Mirror.
• No source. Not even a b.s. "inside," "anonymous," "friend" source. No source credited whatsoever.

The Princess of Wales is considering making an appearance on the Buckingham Palace balcony after the Trooping the Colour ceremony, it was claimed today.
Royal officials confirmed yesterday that Kate will not attend the Colonel's Review on June 8 – which is the traditional rehearsal for Trooping the Colour, held on June 15.
But the Daily Mirror reported that the Princess is understood to be considering walking onto the famous balcony in a fortnight’s time if she is feeling well enough.

And that's all they say about Kate. The rest is filler blah-blah.
I think Kensington Palace is running scared after the public reaction to K.P.'s official announcement that Kate wouldn't be there. So the Palace is planting teasers now, as if Kate really wants to come, but she just can't, poor girl. What's curious is that this planted story is not from one of the regular K.P. lapdogs like Rebecca English. I wonder if English told them "That nonsense is too much to print, even for me."
Edit: from whence The Mail is taking its cue, apparently. On this primary, still no source: "Kate... is understood to be considering" etc. One sentence to justify a headline. Weasel words.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/royals/kate-middleton-considering-major-trooping-32930677

The Princess of Wales has not been ruled out of making an appearance at the King's official birthday celebrations next month.
Kate, 42, who is having preventative cancer treatment, is understood to be considering making an appearance on the Buckingham Palace balcony following the Trooping the Colour ceremony if she is feeling well enough. Kensington Palace yesterday confirmed the Princess would not be officially taking part in the final dress rehearsal for the King's birthday celebrations on June 8, but did not rule out her attending the main event a week later. ...
Palace sources have insisted that the Princess is not expected to return to official duties until given the all-clear by doctors and any appearances at royal events would be sporadic at best. The King, who has also been having his own treatment for cancer, has however confirmed he will attend his birthday celebrations in London.

Hi Sci-Fi fans! I am back with a few more reviews. I bounce around primarily between SF, horror and Fantasy so if you like those genres you can find some of those reviews on my profile as well. Let’s get to it!

Lowest reviewed to highest.

Devastation of Baal by Guy Haley

Basic Outline- Leviathan has come to Baal! The tyranid swarm is staging a full scale assault on the birthplace of Sanguinius. Can Dante and the Blood Angels save their home?

Thoughts- I have been on a bit of a 40K kick between reading the books, lore and playing Rogue Trader on PS5. Dante (review below) really cemented to me how good a space marine focused 40K book can be if the author manages to tell a human story despite the inhuman personality of many of its characters. Haley doesn’t succeed as well here. The story tries to encompass the entirely of the battle for Baal and its two moons but as a result takes on too many POV’s many of which feel unnecessary and are too infrequent to really become attached to the characters. I honestly feel like if Haley had stuck to maybe three (the water seller and his son, Seth and Dante) the book would have felt more intimate and personal in a similar way to Dante. I had heard the critique that Haley’s depiction of the tyranid perspective was flawed and poorly drawn and I have to agree. It just felt repetitive every time being like it doesn’t care about itself, it is just a blood cell etc. We get it I understand the concept can we move on? The unfortunate thing is I can see the great book that is hiding in here which is demonstrated in the last 25 pages or so once we focus on the climax with Dante and the repercussions following the battle for Baal. Haley is at his best when he focuses on individual character stories and I hope as I continue onto Darkness of the Blood he gets back to it (although I am going to take a little break from 40K novels for a while).

Rating-3/5 stars. Some good moments sprinkled into a story that is too crowded with POV’s which feel unnecessary or repetitive.

Hominids by Robert J. Sawyer

Basic Outline- Ponter Boddit is a Neanderthal physicist who is accidentally transported to our parallel earth. Mary Vaughan is the biologist sent to investigate if he is a hoax or the genuine article. They must reconcile our many cultural and historical differences as well as investigate if they can return Ponter home.

Thoughts- Prior to picking this up for myself I had read a few people’s opinions on the writing of Sawyer and a lot of them were fairly negative. Many harped on his tendencies to over describe situations and unfortunately talk about how this series goes completely off the rails by the end. Obviously, this is the first book so I have not gotten into that and despite worrying about where it might go I have to say I enjoyed it quite a bit. I am a sucker for “first contact” books and I think despite this being a parallel worlds first contact instead of an alien contact I think it qualifies. As to Mr. Saywer’s writing style I found it to be guilty of the occasional diversion from what might be considered the main thrust of the story but it gave colour to the world and reminded me of people’s randomly flying associations they make internally he is just putting them onto the page. I enjoyed the characters and as a Canadian found it charming to have the setting be so familiar to me (taking place in Ontario). The world and culture of the Neanderthals was fun to explore and compare even though at times it can be a little too idyllic. There were some elements that were negative from our cultural perspective but on the whole our humans per usual come off looking worse than the neanderthals. Which I don’t actually mind since you know what we do to the world hasn’t been exemplary. There were some aspects of the story which dragged a little (aspects of the trial regarding Ponter’s disappearance) but mostly I flew through it. A couple of moments felt a little farfetched (governments not taking a heavier hand with the area/discovery and scientists overlooking a giant obvious concern for any first contact scenario) but as I said it was an enjoyable read and I am looking forward to seeing where it goes next despite worries about the rest of the trilogy due to readers’ complaints.

Rating-4/5 stars. A great start and an interesting/different take on a first contact story. Good neanderthal world building with Canadian flair.

Dante by Guy Haley
Basic Outline- Chapter Master of one of the greatest Space Marine legions is Dante a mysterious and powerful figure to the Imperium of Man. Before his over millennia long rise to prominence he was just a poor boy scraping to survive on a desert moon. Witness the humble beginnings of a legend and the start of one of his greatest trials.

Thoughts- This book really surprised me. I have now read a handful of 40K novels and while some have been quite enjoyable (the Eisenhorn trilogy) many have been varying degrees of boring bolter porn to downright shoddily written dreck. For a space marine book in particular to humanize their main character in such a successful way was great. Going back and forth between young Luis trying to survive his dream of becoming a Blood Angel (the better half of the book by far) and fifteen hundred year old Dante making decisions which impact billions of lives was a great contrast and really intriguing to span the gap between who he was and who he became. Some of the moments were heartbreaking including a noble sacrifice in the later stages of the book which was quite touching and one moment where you really feel the impact of the length of time upon even these mighty immortal warriors. I think this has set a new standard for me as far as 40K novels go, it had some great action, excellent character exploration and incorporates the amazing setting that is 40K quite well. I am excited to read on into the rest of the omnibus and take on Devastation of Baal.

Rating-4/5 stars. A surprisingly human take on the immortal godlike beings that are the Adeptus Astartes. Maybe not the perfect start to enter this immense world but if you are interested in Space Marines in particular you could do much worse.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula Le Guin

Basic Outline- Genly Ai travels to the desolate frozen world of Winter to invite the locals to join the rest of the worlds of humanity. However, there are large obstacles to his goal, a growing conflict between the nations on Winter and the cultural and physical differences between the genderless natives and the rest of mankind.

Thoughts- I have to admit that I had lofty expectations for this novel especially after posting my previous review of The Dispossessed and saying I enjoyed it immensely to which several people commented that this book was even better. As I started this smaller book (approximately 300 pages) after about a third I was if not struggling starting to wonder when the greatness would occur. I did not have as much of an attachment to Genly in the same way as Shevek from The Dispossessed as he seemed even more naïve and coarse when he should be coming at least as a trained ambassador even if he had never actually done one of these missions before. The book picked up in the next hundred pages once the POV of Estraven is introduced (the Prime Minister of one of the nations on Winter) but by then I was thinking how is Le Guin going to wrap this up in a satisfying way with only one hundred pages left? And with the last hundred I go goddamn Le Guin you did it again! I was invested, emotional and happy with where we ended. This book was obviously hugely influential in dealing with gender roles, sexuality and critiquing our own relationships between men and women and this was all in the sixties long before such conversations were commonplace. It very much took too long from my perspective to get going both from a story perspective and from a thematic perspective (the real conversations about gender and Earth’s backward way of thinking of them really don’t take off until the last hundred pages) which is my biggest problem with this novel. Perhaps for others this is fine but I felt for me The Dispossessed was paced better. The last third of this novel is excellent combining the best of adventure, survival and emotional storytelling. I just sort of wish this was parceled out a little more throughout the narrative. Le Guin is clearly a master and now after reading two of her seminal novels I am eager to continue to read her bibliography.

Rating-4/5 stars. Le Guin continues to reinforce her reputation as truly one of the Sci-Fi greats. It meanders a bit too much for the first two thirds before delivering a fantastic ending.
The Martian by Andy Weir
Basic Outline- Mark Watney is left stranded on Mars after a catastrophic storm on the surface. What follows is a desperate struggle for survival with all the elements of Robinson Crusoe but you know on Mars with a wise ass.

Thoughts- This book breached what I would consider the “normie” or casual reader sphere when it was released in 2011. Even during that time frame when I wasn’t reading much fiction, I heard of it and wanted to pick it up before seeing the Ridley Scott film. That didn’t happen and I ended up loving the movie and it became in my opinion, one of Scott’s best films. I am here to reinforce the thoughts of many people and say the book is just as good (barring one element I will get to later). Weir writes such likable and relatable characters especially Watney who is endearing and hilarious throughout the book with his gallows humour. You really root for him because he does the work, he keeps it light even in the darkest moments and is constantly tested. The tertiary characters are well drawn and feel real from the exhausted Bruce to the cantankerous Mitch or devasted commander Lewis. I have seen the film a dozen times and even while reading I was getting chills and was worried for Watney as he makes his journey and goes through roadblock after roadblock. That is writing that should be lauded when I am barreling through the book, hanging on every word and I know the outcome. There are some elements that differ from the film, I particularly enjoyed an extremely dark conversation concerning Johanssen which was in the book and missing from the film which was blackly hilarious. Also some parts of Watney’s final trip to the Ares 4 site was cut from the movie and was a nice little final F U to watch him try and solve even more problems. I will say and many people have mentioned it elsewhere the book does sort of just end, whereas Scott’s excellent adaption gives a more proper and satisfying conclusion.

Rating-4.5/5 stars. I was shocked that I enjoyed this book as much as I did considering I have watched the film so much and it was adapted fairly closely. Excellent character work and suspenseful writing make this one of the best survival stories I have ever read.


Thanks so much for reading if you made it!!

If you want to read my previous SF reviews I will post the links here:

https://www.reddit.com/printSF/comments/15em4pe/summer_scifi_reviews/
Books reviewed include: Sons of Sanguinius Omnibus, Hereticus, A Memory Called Empire & A Desolation Called Peace, Ancillary Justice and A Fire Upon the Deep.
https://www.reddit.com/printSF/comments/17ws4eb/fall_scifi_reviews/
Books reviewed include: All Systems Red, Ancillary Sword, Stories of Your Life and Others, The Dispossessed and The Mountain in the Sea.
[Potential Options Upcoming books:]()

Owned- Metro 20233 by Glukhovsky, Dante, Darkness in the Blood & Astorath: Angel of Mercy by Haley, The Word for World is Forest by Le Guin, The Windup Girl by Bacigalupi.

Wishlist- The Praxis by Willams, Children of Time by Tchaikovsky, Jurassic Park by Crichton, Ancillary Mercy by Leckie.

Adding modern art to your interior design can completely change the look of your house by giving it depth, personality, and individuality. Modern art provides countless opportunities to improve your house with its vivid colours, inventive shapes, and diverse medium. If you are someone who wants to incorporate or infuse modern home decor into their space through modern art, you are in the right place. In this blog, we will guide you through the process of incorporating modern art into your home decor.

Understanding Modern Art

The word "modern art" is used to describe a wide range of artistic creations created during the late 19th and mid-20th centuries. It includes many different styles, such as pop art, cubism, abstract, and minimalism. Among the essential elements of modern art are:
Bold Colours: Eye-catching, vivid colours with sharp contrast. You can check out this colourful Goddess Laxmi statue, which can be a good fit in your modern art collection.
Distinctive Forms: Creative compositions and shapes that defy conventional depictions.
Novel Materials: Using non-traditional materials and methods, such as 3D printing with biodegradable plastics or incorporating recycled materials into construction processes.

Choosing the Right Contemporary Art for Your Home

Identify your Personality

It is important to select work that aligns with your individual taste. Think about the subjects and aesthetics that appeal to you. Which do you like better: the intricacy of abstract pieces, pop art's vibrancy, or the simplicity of minimalism? If you enjoy:
● Abstract pieces, you can check out Abstract Light Colour D by Satguru’s.
● If you enjoy simplicity, you can invest in a Dhyaan Buddha statue.

Think About the Space

The size and purpose of the space are important considerations when choosing artwork. For example:
Living Room: Over the sofa, a big statement item might act as a focal point.
Bedroom: Subtle, soothing modern art paintings can help create a quiet atmosphere. For your bedroom, you can check out True Love Saga, which is a modern take on the Radha Krishna statue.

Home Office: You can increase productivity by infusing engaging and inspiring artwork in your home office room.

Positioning and Layout

Feature Walls and Focal Points

To create a focal point, place an eye-catching object in a prominent spot, such as above a couch. A feature wall devoted to a group of artworks can spark conversation and provide visual interest.

Wall Grouping and Gallery

Think about how different pieces relate to one another in terms of size, colour, and style when arranging multiples. You can either arrange decor items with similar colour schemes and mismatched sizes or mix and match different styles for a more eclectic look.

Equilibrium and Ratio

Make sure the artwork matches the furniture and is appropriate for the room's scale. While smaller pieces are better suited for more intimate settings, larger pieces look great in spacious rooms.

How to Choose Colour Schemes for Modern Art

When selecting modern art for your home's décor, colour matching is an important consideration. For a room to be harmonious and aesthetically pleasing, the artwork's colours should contrast with or enhance the room's current colour scheme. For a unified look, choose artworks that feature colours that are already in your design, such as accent colours from your textiles or furnishings. On the other hand, if you use strong, contrasting colours, the artwork will stick out and become the room's focal point. Neutral backgrounds, like white or grey walls, accentuate vibrant modern art by allowing the colours to shine through without competing with other design elements in the room.

Conclusion

Modern home decor can improve the aesthetic appeal of your space, giving it a more lively, dynamic, and personally tailored feel. You can create a peaceful and inspiring space by learning about the qualities of modern art, choosing pieces that suit your style, and carefully positioning and lighting them. Try different looks, switch up your assortment, and use your house as a blank canvas to showcase your individuality.
If you are looking to buy modern art for your home decor, you can check out Satguru’s. They are one of the best shops to buy home decor items in Mumbai, known for their amazing collection of modern art. From paintings to sculptures, their collection will spoil you for choice. Along with modern decor, they also have an amazing collection of intricate Indian traditional decor like diyas, urlis, and statues. Visit their website to learn more about their products.
~https://satgurus.com/collections/modern-art~