Beginning to mentally reframe myself as a "designer / maker". My short term goal is making jewelry as art and maybe a business, but I love dabbling in all sorts of disciplines and love making tools, and don't want to leave software entirely, so it's difficult to define exactly what I do...

I have wondered about ways to use my metalsmithing skills to make things other than jewelry... and @lackingceremony.bsky.social's keynote at @qgcon.bsky.social now has me thinking about making metal artifacts for TTRPGs and how they might contribute to gameplay 🤔

Things were better when computer was in room. Now everywhere is computer. This is bad. Computer should never have escaped room.

I kinda wanna create a cathartic social media app where the messages just disappear into the void without anyone ever seeing them

Slow but steady progress on the jeweler's bench... finished edge banding and sanding on all 14 drawers, but unfortunately I left my Osmo TopOil 3025 cap loose and it dried out so I can't finish them yet 😩

so many dead canaries and we just keep on mining

A free and democratic society cannot silence comedians because the President doesn’t like what they say. This is an attack on free speech and cannot be allowed to stand. All elected officials need to speak up and push back on this undemocratic act.

I would pay good money to be able to temporarily hide political posts from my social media feeds... would make compartmentalization much easier

Feels weird to think that the first pieces of jewelry I sell are likely to be castings when the thing that I most love about jewelry making is working in metal directly. But I love how this piece turned out, and casting scales so much better....

Here's a sleeping rat dreaming of cheese that I hand-carved in wax at a figurative wax carving class with Kate Wolf in Portland, ME. This is the first thing I've carved in wax that I'm genuinely excited to cast, and I'm seriously considering getting a mold made and selling pendants 😄

Here's a sleeping rat dreaming of cheese that I hand-carved in wax at a figurative wax carving class with Kate Wolf in Portland, ME. This is the first thing I've carved in wax that I'm genuinely excited to cast, and I'm seriously considering getting a mold made and selling pendants 😄

I've been exploring the idea of creating a jewelry business and maybe going back to software only part time or not at all - but I haven't really figured out my creative voice and "brand" yet, let alone a business model 😞

Apparently my accent is now in a weird in-between place where Americans think I'm British and Brits think I'm American 😅

Final tally of my lapidary work from 8 days of classes with Michael Boyd - I focused on the lapidary side, but learned a ton about integrating stone and metal, and excited by all the possibilities this opens up for my own designs 😄

Made these over the past few days in lapidary class and now I'm obsessed with rocks

Miscalculated the amount of 1/4" plywood I needed for my drawer bottoms and ordered some more to make up the difference. But when it arrived and I started cutting, I realized I was still short by a factor of 2 😩

My goto is to ask LLMs how many states have R in their name. They always fail. GPT 5 included Indiana, Illinois, and Texas in its list. It then asked me if I wanted an alphabetical highlighted map. Sure, why not.

Spent most of the day cutting and milling the drawers for my jeweler's standing bench, and started gluing. There are 7 drawers on each side and the smallest are only 1.5" high - perfect for making small and narrow things like files and measuring tools easy to find.

It's jarring how a lot of young queer folks today have a completely ahistoric understanding of the term "gay panic" that seems to be primarily rooted in ignorance of our recent past rather than a desire for reclamation (and I don't think "reclamation" even really makes sense in this context).

Designed drawer stacks to hang under my standing bench, and was making solid progress on them until the template guide bushing came loose, wrecked itself on the router bit, and spun across the floor in a shower of brass shavings. Project on hold until I can get a replacement bushing 😩

I have fond memories of hanging out in TeamSpeak with a couple guildmates guarding a dead-quiet borderland in @guildwars2.com WvW at 3am a decade ago, somehow drunkenly deciding it should be "musical night", and all singing along to everything we did for a couple hours

The reality is that the only thing that can reduce homelessness, mental illness, and addiction is more housing, more investment in shelters, and building more mental health infrastructure. That’s it. You can’t address homelessness without houses and you can’t address illness without healthcare.

Is it weird to go outside at midnight, lie on your back on your asphalt driveway, and bask in the wonder of the celestial dome above? Maybe, but I don't care about the opinion of folks who would judge.

The lingering sense of burnout has made it difficult to stay on top of the current state of physics and astronomy, but I will never lose the feeling that took me into the field in the first place. Looking up at the stars will always evoke a deep sense of awe and wonder.

Just walked alone thru the center of Boston at 10pm as a cis-passing woman and felt safe the entire way... really drives home the utter ridiculousness of the right-wing commentators who are irrationally terrified of cities and public transit

Was at a bloodwork appointment this afternoon and the technician was excitedly telling me how she was pretty sure she'd seen Jupiter and Venus last night and that made me so happy

Feels a little disingenuous that my Bluesky profile photo is from before I had FFS, even tho it's still recognizable and I like it, and my FFS was explicitly intended only to fix dysphoric spirals caused by bad angles...

Downtown for some errands today and took the opportunity to wander through the Fens - always enjoyable!

TFW you're the only person in a queer bar and both bartenders do the absolute bare minimum of interaction then start an animated conversion with the next person who comes in

There is a turkey with a single chick that keeps visiting my yard and I thought it was cute until I looked up how many eggs turkeys lay... now I'm sad 😞

Got myself a pressure washer and as I was washing my driveway I realized I was legitimately having fun. Not sure how to feel about this 😅

it is wild how many non-trans people seem to be taking an issue with this extremely correct thread: transphobia was an extreme minority position that was isolated to fringe reactionary christian conservatives, but through "liberal" publications laundering bigoted talking points it became accepted

Took a class on chasing silver earlier this week - it's not quite finished but I'm happy with how it turned out!

I couldn't let that Confessore piece slide. It was such a disgusting hit piece on a vulnerable community in a moment of crisis. I dissected the article and why its framings are dishonest at best and outright lies of ommission at worst. www.thedissident.news/anatomy-of-a...

Almost finished this kinetic pendant - just needs patina, polish, and final assembly. The top spiral is mounted on a teeny tiny ball bearing 😁

Filed to create a jewelry LLC a couple weeks ago, and I'm taking it slow figuring out what exactly it'll look like, but it's exciting to have a goal to make and sell small pretty metal things 😄

I stopped making dad jokes cause it was a faux pa

Never thought I'd be stockpiling tool steel to mitigate the impact of a trade war but here we are 🤷‍♀️

My favorite typo will forever be "marital artist"

I super miss TrainJam! I'm not in a headspace to organize but I'm curious whether any other folks would be interested in doing something adhoc/informal next year

I often wish I could time travel and yell at my past self. I repressed my transness for 15+ years before transition - didn't fit the heteronormative image of trans people I saw in media, and was terrified of not passing. But I turned out to be a super basic textbook passing binary trans woman 😩

Can't believe it took me 17 years living in New England to realize that the lobster roll is just a super fancy cousin of the prawn salad sandwich, a staple of cheap supermarket sandwiches in the UK

Finally putting the finishing touches on my custom jeweler's motorized standing bench 🎉

Feels weird to think that if I'd been born cisgender and allosexual (or were better at pretending to be both/either) I'd probably have kids in middle school right now

utterly fucking astounding that any Dem would look at what’s happening and think that giving this administration sweeping new authority to prosecute speech on the internet is a good idea

the purpose of banning section 230 is to ban all political, sexual, or critical speech from the internet this is to silence grassroots movements that don’t have the explicit sanction of the wealthy and powerful you are an abject moron or a liar if you believe it has any other purpose

Judith Butler: "Once you decide that a single vulnerable minority can be sacrificed, you’re operating within a fascist logic, because that means there might be a second one you’re willing to sacrifice, and a third, a fourth, and then what happens?"

Got over my anxiety about ruining my solid maple bench top and finally routed out a slot for the bench pin bracket... not perfect, but it'll do!

I recognize my social media presence right now is pretty reserved, but I'm still sad at the dozens of mutuals I lost moving from twitter to bluesky 😩

Just looked up life expectancy and was like "oh I'm like halfway dead" and that feels oddly positive 😂