Jeremy Bornstein @jjb@mastodon.social

"Police are delinquents who turned bad." (« Les policiers sont des délinquants qui ont mal tourné. ») From Valentin Gendrot's book on his 2+ year infiltration of the Paris police.

Here's a demo of the folded bore shakuhachi. This is just a quick recording from my phone, so audio quality per se is nothing special, and I'm still getting used to playing them, so neither is the performance--but I hope it gives you some idea of what the instruments sound like now. https://photos.app.goo.gl/MbStkvXU7k7ECPN88

Here's the twisted-bore 1.8 that just came off the printer this morning. (Ergnomics are not yet great, but still better than previous folded-bore versions.)

Folded bore shakuhachi detritus: this is *fewer* versions than it took for me to get to the point where I have one that I'm actually pretty pleased with. (That's the one in my pocket.)

The other side.

Further folded-bore #shakuhachi #尺八 development. This one is a 2.4.

After some more programming and debugging and printing, I now have version 2 of the folded-bore shakuhachi. To my surprise, this one is already a useful musical instrument with a clear, easy tone. It's a strong indication that this is a useful path and I'm so happy about it! Guitar pick for scale... this is small.

Voting is harm reduction. Even if you think taking heroin is bad, you can still support health treatment for addicts.

I present to you the world's first folded bore shakuhachi.

If you need to keep maskless assholes from getting too close to you in public, it turns out that bartitsu and la canne de combat have a lot more practical use than I imagined when I was studying them.

Not to let peaceful reform get out of hand or anything, but now that more people can see the structural incentive mismatches that prevent the police from being agents of true justice, it's worth noting: pretty much the same things apply to elected officials and their appointees.

I recently realized that English has a double genitive form after thinking about the question of whether to include the apostrophe s in a sentence like:

[*?] I want to speak to a friend of John.

I want to speak to a friend of John's.

Sourdough crepe, made with cheese and curry in the batter, served with apricot jam.

Since so many people have not asked, I have brought the "is Trump in prison yet" bot here.

https://botsin.space/@istrumpinprisonyet/104577151885567936

I have a joke about BDSM but first I need your enthusiastic consent.

I have a joke about mind reading

dois-je leur dire ?

There are refinements to be made before it is a real professional-quality instrument, but I feel like the approach has been validated and I now have little doubt that it's an achievable goal. For the most part this one plays in tune and with excellent tone, which the crappy webcam mic doesn't really let you hear. But so exciting....

Literally as soon as I started playing shakuhachi ~20 years ago I started thinking about 3d printing them, but hadn't taken any real steps in that direction until recently. David Brown, who makes the finest shakuhachi I have ever played, has been kind enough to share his expertise, measurements, and techniques with me, and a couple months ago I started working on a set of programmatically-modeled shakuhachi. My 3d printer is still in shipping limbo, but due to a friend's generosity I have one!

How should we deal with people who are as mean and horrible as Mark and Patricia McCloskey? I can think of a lot of fun, possibly legal, revenge pranks to reward them for being such horrible humans.

Reference:https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/metro/portland-place-couple-who-confronted-protesters-have-a-long-history-of-not-backing-down/article_281d9989-373e-53c3-abcb-ecd0225dd287.html

Maybe I should start a foundation focused on (legal) pranks against horrible people. That actually sounds like fun. Talk me into it?