Commentary: Drop the bomb or save humanity? 'Pluribus' and its misanthrope's dilemma

Good on Penn Jillette. Having to come to terms with your entire political identity and philosophy being wrong is not easy and most people could never do it.

Doh. Apple TV crashed - probably due to the load of people watching #Pluribus right now. We made it fully through episode 1 but haven't started 2 before it crashed. BTW/IMO - Pluribus is good. It's an interesting take and Rhea Seehorn delivers.

Latest Ars Technica guide to Win11 decluttering arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025...

I'm dying here. "Opposed ATM rolls".... #dimension20

Copied from a Krebs repost on Mastodon. Great idea though.

Was able to sneak a pen in this week. A Steam'pump' style pen, Garnet Gear is made with some vintage cellulose acetate that I recently was able to pick up. Beautiful material and beautiful to work with.

In the middle of my first attempt at a 360 degree herringbone pattern. Lesson were learned and still are being learned

I don't often repost bagpipe music... but when I do it @#$@ing ROCKS!

Finally got everything setup to be able to turn again. My schedule still leaves me with limited time but I was at least able to get this one out. And for me it's an extra special one. The wood is douglas fir reclaimed from roofing material from Ray Bradbury's house. #fountainpen #booksky

Ran across this article today. It's a good piece that explores a lot of what we are seeing in terms of the degradation of items found in stores. "Quality and care for craftsmanship seem to be things of the past" english.elpais.com/culture/2025...

New workspace coming along. Had to put some things on the floor to get to other things to be able to put em away

Bleah. Ferris Wheel Press, along with Noodlers Ink, is dead to me. #fountainpens www.reddit.com/r/fountainpe...

My latest @theguardian.com Books cartoon

Alright fellow pen types, we got something to look forward too. And by looking forward, I mean ruined chisels. :)

I can't believe it's taken me this long to realize this, but the whole plot to Edge of Tomorrow is based on aliens that have the power to save-scum.

Steampunk with green ribbon fountain pen Prototype 3.0 on a Beaufort Cyclone

Laughs, LAUGHS in luddite. ;tldr: The Chinese are hacking credit card data directly from your phones, bypassing all sorts of protective measures like chip enable cards. Lesson - do not use phone tap to pay. If you have to beware of weird texts about rando fees krebsonsecurity.com/2025/02/how-...

@abigailmarkov.com This you? :)

Sat there and spent a few minutes chatting with a pen turner on the San Juan pier. Obvious nugget of wisdom: when he sells locally it is the 'exotic' woods that sell. Selling to the tourists it's the local woods that move. Hopefully he'll take me up on my offer to mail him some desert ironwood.

1/ Prototype 2, a successful failure As suspected, the watch parts were too thick. What was surprising was just how much 'meat' I had t play with, at least on a Cyclone kit. If I had left the top just a little bowed in the middle I wouldn't have scraped the gears. #penturning #steampunk

Curse be upon your head, imperial measuring system! (guess who got his ratio's wrong on a resin pour)

Wait... Dungeons and Dragons is 50 years old? Ah hell no

First two for the pressure pot tomorrow. Though I feel like I'm about to make the same mistake many others before me have - too much height of stuff on the blanks - I'm going to have to try it anyway because if it works out it'll be awesome. #penturning #steampunk #fountainpen

... fighting the demotivation of having a pen on the lathe thats not quite turning out the way I hoped.

Shiny new toys ROI - 36 or so steampunk pen blanks. Yeah, that's how I'm justifying this. #penturning

2/ Shout out to Jet's customer support. When I called and reported it shorted out, they sent me a new control board with no hassle. When it turns out that it wasn't the board (who got fried too), they sent me out a new board AND motor - with no small amount of hassle on their end but none on mine

1/ Two weeks on business travel, complete with con crud, has kept me out of the shop. But today had to be air filter repair day. Because you have to admit that COPD was the only thing tough enough to take out both John Wayne AND Spock. It's had a short for about 2 months now.

Gremlins have moved on and I was able to finish this one today. ‪Bois D'Arc Beufort Mistral fountain pen in black titanium with an orange osage blank with rings of Glorietta Mountain meteorite. #Penturning

4 tries to get the shipping label on the right side of the page.... Just gonna tuck out and finish this year's Great British Bake-off to give the tech gremlins time to get bored and move along.

AND DONE Finally caught up with bringing all my photos into Bluesky.

Olympiad Dayacom's JR Zeus rollerball / fountain pen in brass with a rotocrylic hydra blank. I had a happy accident with this one. This time on a whim I painted the brass tubes green and it ended up giving the white resin a subtle green tinge. #Penturning

Demeter Cigar ballpoint in antique silver with a Bear Tooth Woods color shift resin blank. There really is no greater compliment than when someone picks up one of your pens at a show and then reaches out to get another one directly. Everything about this was chosen by that person. #Penturning

Ice Cream Cone Notus gold ballpoint. The blank is a piece of spectraply cut and glued into a simple herringbone pattern with some holly wood end caps. #Penturning

Maxwell's Other Hammer Brass hammer with something I found in a bin of rando stuff at the local wood store. I /think/ is a leftover pool cue offcut. It's too dense to be regular spectraply anyway. #Penturning

Old Town PSI's Southwest rollerball / fountain pen in antique pewter with a desert ironwood and faux-stone blank. #Penturning

Steampunk lighter with a McKenzie Penwork's brass and titanium resin blank. These got a lot easier when I learned you can take a 31/64th brass tube and use it to make a sleeve for the blank itself. #Penturning

Derby Equestrian themed ballpoint in gold with a yellowheart, redwood, purpleheart, and ebony wood blank #Penturning

Elaia JR Milton in rollerball/fountain pen in antique silver with an olive wood blank and a ring meteorite inlay. Yes, I put something from space on a pen I named for Athena's sacred tree... because why not! (That and I thought the iron would work well with the finish on the hardware) #Penturning

Atlantis Imperial rollerball / fountain pen in rhodium and gold with one of Bullseye Turning's "Cloud" blanks. The Clouds is a maple burl and resin combo and my photo sadly does not do it justice #Penturning

Owl Owl themed rollerball pen in pewter with a brown and white (owlish colors) resin blank. #Penturning

Been working with meteorite today as an inlay. Have yet to develop powers, or mutations, or anything but rust tipped fingers. Disappointed. #penturning

Wadsworth Magnifying glass with a double dyed maple and resin handle. And a shout out to Tim "I buttel sir" Curry. #Penturning

Coautl Vertex magnetic rollerball with a rainbow spectraply blank, segmented and rotated slightly along the length. And another time I'm playing with my StickyBones dolls~~~ er mannequins #Penturning

Rail Baron Cambridge fountain pen/rollerball combo in gunmetal and gold, with a Trustone black and gold matrix blank. #Penturning

Autumn Haiku Another Beufort Cyclone rollerball/fountain pen combo, this one in gold/black chrome with an absolutely stunning Jakob Janssen pine cone blank. #Penturning

Blue Dragon Beaufort Cyclone in chrome/black chrome rollerball and fountain pen with a blue dragon rotocrylic resin blank. Yes, I tend to make a lot of dragon themed pens. I'd make more if Penn State Industries would bring back my favorite kits! (that's a hint there PSI dudes) #Penturning

Optimist: the cup is half full Pessimist: the cup is half empty Penturner: Gets a 2nd cup to rinse the swarf that landed in the first cup out of my teeth.

Vintage lighter with a hybrid burl and resin blank #Penturning