I currently run a Voxelab Aquila I got for $120 three years ago. It largely replaced a Monoprice Mini, and the Aquila's done some surprisingly good work for me, but I may look for something new to put on the ol' birthday list. I would like a flat bed and some modern QoL improvements built in (he said, side-eyeing the BLTouch clone he never installed), but I'm still looking to play in the shallow-end, price-wise, and anyway Bambu just has "future enshittification" written all over it. I don't do anything time-sensitive, and I'm not afraid to put the whole thing together, so who are the current leaders in the value space? Recent machines from Creality?

Even other Republicans think Ken Paxton is bad at his job. This is some nice judicial snark:

Remarkably, the State’s presentation to this Court takes no position on whether the State Fair of Texas, a private entity, has the legal authority to exclude patrons carrying handguns from the Fair. This may surprise many observers, given that the ostensible purpose of this litigation is to determine whether Texas law entitles law-abiding Texans to carry handguns at the State Fair despite the Fair’s recently enacted policy to the contrary.

Go ahead and read the whole thing, though, including the footnote. It's only 4 pages of double-spaced text with huge margins. They are not even disagreeing -- although they should -- but rather just laying into Paxton for how sloppy the filings were.

...and Episode 7 (you know the lyric)

As a child, we had a book of scary stories that included some absolutely ghastly but entrancing pen-and-ink art. I'm 99% sure they're not "Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark". I don't remember much, but a few things stuck with me:

• a picture of a diver in an old-timey deep sea diving suit and maybe a sea-witch type character draped in seaweed.
• at least one really creepy drawing of a willow tree
• one or more of the pictures also involved a classically gothic cliffside along the sea.
• I want to say the binding was green or teal
• no dust jacket that I recall, but it could have been missing
• as a child, it struck me as old but not ancient, so I'm guessing it was from the late 60s or early 70s maybe
• my parents let me read it, and they were Mormons and frankly not really readers, so I'm guessing it was sort of vaguely considered age appropriate in those days if parents didn't look too close.

Style-wise, as I recall it kind of split the difference between Edward Gorey (thanks, @flyingsquid@lemmy.world for unearthing my nightmare fuel) and the semi-famous Darth Maul concept art from Iain McCaig. I have downloaded the first two volumes of SStTitD, as they are technically old enough to be the ones, but while they're definitely in the same milieu they're not what I'm thinking of. The art in this had heavier linework and IIRC used pen-and-ink crosshatching instead of shading; I also can't find any images in those two that hit me as "THAT'S IT!".

This could absolutely be a wild goose chase down memory lane, but any suggestions?

and I will brook no argument.

It's finally happened. I have no idea WTF is happening with realignment. The players in the drama are constantly shifting, the motivations are murky, the money is not immediately obvious. I am very confused.

Short version: Drew, their employee with the most public facing role and known to be a chill guy and left-leaning, left the company with some celebration but zero explanation. This got folks looking, and they saw that the Goulets are heavily involved with planting (think "franchising" or may more accurately "metastasizing") a new church that was growing out from a larger one that has all the usual disgusting anti-LGBT+ rhetoric, and the new church has a mission statement that includes bible literalism and explicitly places men above women in home life and church roles. Also, Reddit being Reddit, the mods handled it all very clumsily and in a way that makes it look they've traded their integrity for a couple of pens.

Did he do that?!?!?!?!?

Also, kinda burying the lede that the Wolfman-mask alien from the ANH Cantina scene will be an actual character.

Please don't let this suck...

Currently got this one on my work laptop. Model M terminal board with internal converter. The only layout changes I made versus a normal 102-key are that RCtrl is is a Windows key, and the four keys along the right side of the numpad are =, -, +, and the normal Enter.