Well, the problem is that the kind of brace you’d want has to be shaped by hand right now.

3d printing will likely get there eventually, but turning out a chest/back brace that’s not only effective but wearable is as much an art as anything else.

I’m not sure where someone without training would get started. Orthotists and prosthetists are specialists; orthotics is a master’s program, and that’s the kind of endeavor your desired brace is.

It’s doable for sure; though whether it’s practical to recreate the decades of research and experimentation that led to where orthotics is today is a different issue.

Iirc, you’d start with thermoplastics, I can’t recall the ones that are used. But they’re shaped by mold, taken from the patient directly, then adjusted during fittings so that there’s no/less issues with long term use. And you can’t just skip the kind of shaping needed. Afaik, nobody is printing orthotics yet. Casts, yes, though that’s fairly new; but those are short term use, so don’t require the same kind of fitting.

I’ve seen, and been present during fittings for, braces for scoliosis, which is going to be similar to the kind of orthotic you’d need.

If you decide to go the home brew route, you’d want to start with a plaster cast of your torso. Best way to go, so you can have a solid form to shape whatever material you go with.

TPU was a common material back when I was still a caregiver, though that has been over a decade ago now, so it may have been supplanted by other thermoplastics.

Carbon fiber was starting to be used back then, but it tends to be too rigid for applications like a torso piece. Maybe with enough foam in between you and the rigid parts, but at that point, why not just go with something less expensive, and more flexible? Iirc, CF was being used for things like leg and ankle orthotics where they’d be bearing weight and need the extra rigidity.

I know that there was CAD based modelling and fast prototyping being done for orthotics, but it was mainly useful in prosthetics, where they could make reproducible units that would then be customized.

Tbh, I would try finding an orthotist irl to meet with and brainstorm. Even if they can’t/won’t help you make your own gear, they’ll likely still warn you off of really bad ideas.

That’s at least in part because you say you have little interest in medical or anatomical study, and that’s what you need if you want your end device to do the job you want. You just can’t fine tune a torso brace without understanding the musculoskeletal system in that area, and what you’ll need to avoid doing.

Like, the curvature of the spine. It may seem like you could just mold your body and make the brace conform to that. But, if the goal is to give support to part of your body, the brace has to apply pressure to your body applying it at the wrong place, or in the wrong way could make things worse. So if you don’t have the time/interest/willingness to gain the level of understanding of anatomy to achieve that, you’ll be better off consulting with someone that already has that knowledge. It’s kinda like self surgery, there’s only so much you can do blind without causing problems worse than what you’re trying to fix.

The first one or the new one?

Haven’t seen the new one.

The first one though? Fucking awesome.

The important thing to me is that, even if someone has no idea about the Joker as a character could watch the movie and see an incredibly well made movie. It’s a great story, the acting is world class, the way it was shot brings depth and emotion to every scene, and the details of the writing are unusually good.

As an example of the last, the background characters, and people with only one line, they have similar ways of speaking, a distinct almost accent in the way the lines are arranged. It ends up feeling like everyone in the movie is from the same place. You know how you go to a city, and there’s turns of phrase, word choices that show up, even when different parts of the city have their own accent? That’s what I’m talking about. Even De Niro’s distinct way of speaking shifts to feeling like his character is from the same city as the clowns.

But, as a joker movie, it’s just as successful. It tells his origin story from a fresh perspective. It does so in a way that even as someone that’s complained about comic based movies doing origin stories instead of just telling a good story with the character/s, I was riveted. I am absolutely fine with the movie being another origin story because it’s just that damn good.

If that’s the one you’re asking about, watch it. Even if you end up not enjoying it as much as I did, you’ll at least have seen a movie that’s crafted the way a movie should be.

Well, I had been taught about Munich and Ribbentrop in public school, both during standard history classes (though they were only mentioned in passing during US history, as part of the background of what happened before the U.S. joined in)

The famine, I didn’t hear about until maybe fifteen to twenty years ago. Can’t pin it down exactly because of shit that was going on in my life at the time, but it was something I read about in one of the books on ww2 that covered events outside of Europe and the Pacific theater.

And I’ve seen many a debate about the degree to which Great Britain was responsible for it.

But, I’d have to say that none of them are exactly high on the list of what the average person remembers about the era. Most people I’ve even mentioned Molotov-Ribbentrop to had no idea what it is. They maybe remember hearing the words in school, but didn’t pay enough attention to link them to anything. The Munich agreement is pretty much unfamiliar to anyone that didn’t have an interest in ww2 beyond high school history. And the famine is outside of what most people that do have an interest care about. The only books I have on the subject of ww2 don’t mention the famine at all.

Ww2 is far enough in the past now that most of us no longer know anyone that fought in the war. It’s passed into the kind of history that’s “dead”. Even though we all, everywhere still live with the ripples in world events that started then, it might as well be aztec history as far as the typical person here in the US is concerned. Even my generation, that had grandparents that were alive during the war, or fought in the war, the interest is largely no greater than surface level.

And I’m not sure that the details like the two pacts really do matter now. They’re not anything that affects us still, unlike a lot of of events of the war. IMO, the famine is more important since it was a much broader event. Depending on how you look at it, the famine shaped a lot of events for India as a whole in ways that neither agreement did for Europe.

Pirate it.

The only important concern about consuming the work of a douchebag is them gaining from it.

Now, you may or may not be able to ignore the person having done shitty things, it might break your enjoyment of it. That tends to be more of a problem with actors and comedians because you see them, rather than their work.

Seriously, the idea that a given body of work is somehow bad because the person or persons that made it are bad is bullshit.

Cosby is a harder because a lot of his comedy, and the show, were based on him, portraying himself as this decent, fatherly, nice person. Him being a douche the entire time, knowing what we know now, it can be dissonant to see him being a dad, or joking about his wife. Someone like Louis CK, he was never portrayed as some kind of paragon, so it’s easy to just enjoy his work as it is since there’s no “wait a minute” inherent to his performance. You might still have trouble not picturing him being a creep with his dick in his hand, but the jokes aren’t him pretending to be some upright, moral human.

Art and artist are always separate when piracy is an option.

In general, it isn’t about waiting for prices to drop, though that’s definitely a part. It’s more about avoiding early adoption, imo. Waiting until there’s some degree of information about the game that isn’t marketing, then deciding.

The goal is to make sure the game is stable, that it’s something you actually want to play, and avoiding hype based playing. If the price drops, or there’s a sale, that’s icing on the cake.

In the case of visual novels, I don’t really think it applies. The only thing you’ll really avoid by waiting is any bugs that need fixing, and they aren’t prone to a lot of bugs that break the enjoyment of the story. It does happen, but it isn’t like the usual mobile game bugfest at launches.

Brobdingnagian! My favorite word!

There really isn’t much in the way of empirical evidence regarding this. It would be difficult to set up studies and experiments to even get to get that evidence.

So, you’re stuck with anecdotal info.

On that level, absolutely. I did health care as my main job from 92 until 2008. Nurse’s assistant.

During that time, my two biggest patient bases were geriatric and hospice. People that were dying, in other words.

The patients that had no dementia lasted longer than the ones that did, in terms of time from needing an NA to keep them cared for to time of death. The ones that had a goal, a thing they wanted to see happen, or to do, absolutely did better not only in terms of time, but in how they managed their life until they died.

Something as nebulous as “will”, that we don’t even have a way to quantify at all is difficult to impossible to credit with anything at all. But we know that the mind and body influence each other. But I am convinced that we have some ability to maintain our lives to some degree in extremis. The only question is how much, and how much of that is individual.

Looking back at all of it, things blur, but there were so many patients with terminal cancer that just didn’t die while moving towards a goal, that died within days of that goal being met. And it really didn’t matter what that goal was. Could be something as minor as seeing crocuses bloom again, to something like seeing their child married or graduated. But it happened so fucking often it’s a little scary.

I can answer for my wife! She said three folded, when it’s our normal tp, Charmin. Two extra for other brands.

That’s all it takes with her configuration to be dry. I’ll vote on the comments, but since she gave more than a number, and it was variable, figured that might help too.

Fwiw, I make sure to give things an extra squeeze with a few pieces myself. Not a fan of late drips in my drawers. Pee, shake, paper & gentle squeeze. Then wash hands.

Yeah, Don comes up with some really interesting stuff. To the point that even if I can’t provide a response, I’m happy to see their name.

Ahhh, I don’t know about sea lioning, I’ve never seen you doing it.

That’s where you have someone “just asking questions”, and pretending not to know anything about the matter, while they’re pushing an agenda.

You’d have to ask a mod if that’s the part of rule 5 they’re dinging you for, but if you’ve been doing it, the comments are getting removed before I’ve seen them.

The other part of rule 5 is rage baiting, where you post something inflammatory just to get people riled up. Again, not something I’ve seen guy actually do, but I can understand how someone might read some posts that way.

We’ve interacted a decent amount over the last few months, and you do have a different way of presenting questions, and a different way of thinking, I wouldn’t interpret your posts or comments as trolling. You’re consistent, you engage in a friendly manner, and don’t go over the top when someone gives you a little grief. But, again, I may not be seeing everything.

My advice? Avoid politics entirely. Unless I miss my guess, that’s where you’re running into issues.

Brobdingnagian.

It’s a very big word that means very big.

It comes from Gulliver’s travels. The Brobdingnagians are giants, 12 times the height of humans. The word isn’t limited to that scale, but it’s definitely for things that are unusually large compared to us.

It’s the literal opposite of Lilliputian, which is from the better known race from “Travels” that are 1/12 our size.

It’s my absolute favorite word. Not just because it’s a literary reference but it’s fun to say. Brob ding nag ian. It just burbles off the tongue like a drunken stream stumbling among the rocks of its bed. And, it’s a big word that means big, which is just fun wordplay. Like the phobia of big words, hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia, which was inevitable as soon as the idea of a phobia of big words was conceived.

My perversion level is 69.

I mean, if you don’t mind solar cell production also taking a hit, yeah.

It isn’t going to doom the world or anything, but if the mines aren’t recoverable in a fairly short amount of time, it will put a major crimp in solar deployment. That includes driving up the price (which, unless we’re willing to kick off a revolution, is a major factor in a capitalist system) of solar right when it’s really starting to be so much cheaper than fossil fuels that it can be a big shift for energy.

Short term, it isn’t going to do anything at all. Even a few months would be a blip. But if the mines take much longer than that, it’s a big problem for everyone.

And, as an added problem, you’ve got the people that do the work now displaced. They’ll only be able to just sit idle for so long before they have to move on to other jobs, likely well away from the area. So you have a talent drain involved that can ripple out just as badly as the production drop for solar.

I don’t think anyone legitimately gives a fuck about the semiconductor makers taking a hit financially (well, assuming it doesn’t fuck the rest of us down the road too), but the “tech” industry isn’t just companies churning out the next GPU model or AI scam.

Yup, mine are drm free.

That’s what she said

Yup. Totally real. It’s all essentially public information to begin with. You have to have an address for taxes, and deeds need names on them. So there’s a certain degree of information that’s going to be available to pretty much everyone, if they go looking.

Phone books were useful at one point, though less so for individuals. They’re still useful for local businesses.

I love the reference :)

But, since this is a bit of a writing prompt rather than something that can be answered factually, allow me some self indulgence to cook something up. I don’t plan to edit it beyond spelling and typos, it’ll be freeform.

Back in the primordial nothing, so dark and empty that darkness was scared of that dark, non-existence was boring.

The formless void took a good look at itself in the mirror that was it’s own non existent backside in what may be the greatest act of solipsism in history, and said “I need a friend”.

This thought echoed throughout itself, and a ripple failed to spread through the nothingness by turning it into something that could ripple. Thus was regular darkness born.

Darkness and nothingness looked at each other. There was nothing to see, so they decided to grope each other instead. This led, as often is the case, to a lot of disappointment and some degree of carnal juices splattering.

Those juices took root, growing in the dark and the void, binding them together for eternity. The fruit of those twining vines of dark matter jizz created matter.

And, as you know, matter matters. Matter seeks other matter, and the vine flowered. It pollinated itself, creating an infinite array of fruit. Those fruit were what we might call gods. Forces like gravity, electricity, nuclear interactions, essences of the things that would later become storm and sun and moon and furtive masturbation under a blanket so your mom can’t catch you, all the things we eventually worshiped.

Those original fruits were as incestuous as their forebears, banging off of each other until the first light arose from the darkness that birthed all.

Then they looked at themselves and realized they needed a bloody bath because you can’t spend infinite moments of non-time fornicating without getting a little messy.

Thus, they decided to organize the previously idle matter into clouds and juggle them until the bits stuck together.

Stars were born. Stars exploded and reformed into more stars, and planets.

All those explosions generated the kind of places where oceans could form.

By that time, the early gods had kept fornicating until there were more gods than any universe needs, and they were all quite filthy.

So they went to the various water bearing planets and bathed. And had orgies.

What they didn’t realize is that all the grime, jizz, and raw creative forces would turn the waters of some worlds into the nastiest, but most fertile soup ever imagined.

Those little jizz particles clung to each other, forming ever longer chains. Eventually, those chains met other chains and settled down to start families. Those families were the first cellular life forms.

Everything has been downhill since.

Depends on the phone, but some of them, the audio is horrible through the regular speaker for calls, but better via the bigger one. Just not necessarily enough better for everyone.

Mind you, most of the people that do that are just twits, but hard of hearing people might need to use the phone that way to be able to communicate effectively, regardless of phone quality.

Nice!

Why would I change either?

I mean, I’m a hoopy frood, So I know where my towel is, and it’s full of all kinds of nutrients due to the competing microbes that compose its flora. You don’t just waste that kind of ecosystem by changing towels every decade.

And sheets? What about the memories? Every stain is a mark of something wonderful that happened. Except the ones that are marks of something horrific that happened. Or the ones that are just spilled beverages. But, you know, that’s still plenty of good memories you want washed down the drain, you animal you.