A lion can hunt because they come with weapons biologically attached. Humans not so much. And even you could fashion a spear with little effort. Which by your definition would make you a apex predator. And it did so for millennia.

I’m an old toolmaker that still has a small shop. I could make firearms from scratch if I wanted to. There is nothing special or complex about them. But I choose to purchase them from stores. So perhaps that demotes me from being a apex predator.

The problem with new PEI sheets everyone sells, is that they make the PEI so thin that it wears out so fast. It’s like when they go to cut a slice off the PEI tree, they damn near miss the whole tree. And the popularity of textured sheets doesn’t help either.

I have a smooth PEI sheet that came with my Prusa Mk3s 6 years ago. It has 1000’s of hours of print times on it. After about 4 years of heavy use, it just wasn’t much good anymore. And I didn’t feel like buying a new sheet, so I took the chance and very lightly hit with some 1000grit wet/dry sandpaper to renew the surface. It now holds better than when it was new. And I can probably sand it again if it ever needs it. But new PEI plates aren’t coated half as thick either. So my Bambu plates will have to be replaced at some point.

Large predators have a species memory that tells them in general messing with a human scent can easily lead to a bad day for you. Because we have spent millennia hunting and killing them. So they have learned to avoid us directly.

This does not mean that that in certain instances, such as starvation or if they feel cornered and trapped, that you can’t get hurt by them. So when I go out into the forest, and where I live we have black bears, wolves, and now permanent cougars-- and not the ones you might find in a bar on Friday nights either --the only one of those three I find a bit dicey to be around is the cougars. Bears and wolves really don’t like people and make themselves very scarce very fast once they know you are there if there is an open escape route they can take.

Big cats, on the other hand don’t appear to be the brightest bulbs in the box. And tend to be more of an issue for humans mucking about in the wilds where the cats are found. When I do venture out into areas that I have seen sign or even worse, spotted a cat, I do tend to carry a pistol for self defense in those areas. I’ve not needed to use it and very much hope not to ever need it. But being ‘forearmed is to to be forewarned’ so to speak.

That and the easy free meals and wamr place to sleep for not much effort in return.

Smart apex hunters always conserve as much energy as they can during a hunt. Because you don’t know when your next meal might show up. And firearms do make hunting a more sure thing. Hunting game, of any kind, is high risk-- higher reward effort. Most hunters go home empty handed or with little to show for the effort. But, if you do get it right, the effort can be handsomely rewarded.

So if you are smart enough to develop ranged weapons, you eagerly use them to hunt supper.

Until Lemmy can offer me the active specialized subs I use reddit for, it’s pretty hard to drop it completely.

They stated 250C was for annealing to final product. That’s a temperature any bog standard toaster oven or kitchen oven can do. Sadly, they said nothing I saw about actual extrusion temps.

With out Bezo’s name recognition very, very few would have heard about Slate and their little pickup/SUV. That’s a level of advertisement that money simply can’t buy as a startup. We certainly wouldn’t be talking about them without Bezos’ name being attached to them. And they certainly wouldn’t have access to the investors and financial doors his name can easily open.

I have. Then I realize Slate doesn’t get a chance to change vehicular design without him.

What congress can do is refuse to pay for the war/police action. They still need to write the checks. Wars don’t last long with out money.

Perhaps. Until there is a real crisis that does require immediate action. There is no good answer here. Have a window of discretion, or be unable to trigger action and get innocent people killed due to inaction.

Which do you prefer?

The POTUS has a window of discretion where he can act unilaterally without congressional approval. And they ALL have done so over many terms.

The hard stop is when congress needs to appropriate funds to pay for the war/police action.

The last 4 years of my working life, I taught some math in my small rural local school. I introduced a tradition of calculating Pi from scratch by various “silly” means. All shamelessly stolen from Matt Parker of Standup Maths fame on Youtube. The students, (4th through 8th grade), were always highly entertained and may have accidentally learned some math…

When you least expect it, Pi is there.

Not according to her. And I ain’t about to argue the point with her…

As a retired mechanical engineer, the joke is that we don’t really remember the value of Pi, but we think it’s somewhere around 3. But maybe we should use 4 just to be safe.

In any case, I have to remember 3.14 because one of my Daughters was born on Pi Day. Which, according her, is the second most important day of the year, just right behind Christmas Day, when she was growing up. So when she got into high school that meant that we had to bring enough pie to be served in each of her math classes on that day. (Oddly enough she prefers cheese cake over pie on her Birthday).

Now I’m not saying being born on Pi Day influenced her life any, but she has a PhD in Mech Engineering.

No US president is a peace dove. Between supporting proxie wars to police actions to declared war, they all end up getting people killed by bombs.

The only ads I see are on a local sports podcast. The advertisers are all local businesses. From restaurants to local credit unions. And those I’m fine with.

FDM printing ABS/ASA is far easier and safer than resin printing since most CoreXY printers are enclosed these days. A simple fan and ether venting to the outside world or through activated charcoal air filters is a relatively simple procedure. Printers with all of that filtration are easily purchased these days. Even vapor smoothing can be done outdoors if it’s warm enough.

They understand just how hard it would be to comply. And that’s the point. Make it hard enough to meet the requirements to not make worth a business’ while to comply. And the politicians can say “We didn’t ban PornHub. They blocked you from access.”

It’s a common tool both the left and right use to control behaviors. Governments around the world do this all the time.

The only other one I know of, outside of a dual exturder Voron, is the Qidi I-Fast IDEX printer. It’s expensive, somewhat over $1000, but it has a lot of goodies too. 350C extruder, heat chamber, and a decent sized build volume to print just about any engineering filament.