dual_sport_dork 🐧🗡️

Progenitor of the Weird Knife Wednesday feature column. Is “column” the right word?

I **make** knives now, too. Why not buy one at [flightlessforge.com?](https://flightlessforge.com/ )

Last Notes

2026-08-23 18:35:02 UTC

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If I shill mine again so soon you guys are going to shoot me. But I make knives because I think it's neat and I enjoy being able to create something both useful and tangible, especially in this era of trying to turn every fucking thing into "AI."
It is staggeringly unlikely I'll ever be able to find enough buyers in my particular niche to quit my day job, and even if I do I'd doubt I'd be able to crank out product fast enough. That's still not stopping me from doing it, though. You couldn't stop me, even with a brick wall.

2026-04-22 19:02:11 UTC

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Before you even get to that, the point everyone forgets is that if you're using the typical type of zap-and-you're-in-dinosaur-times method of time travel as invariably imaged by fiction, the planet will be in a very different place in the universe from where you are right now if you travel to any time. Even just a few seconds, in fact.
You're going to have to come up with one hell of a hand-wave to cover how your location stays glued to some particular spot on the Earth's surface even as you're whizzing off decades or centuries into the future or past. It's probably not even good enough to mumble about local frames of reference or what have you, because there is no such thing as a truly global frame of reference (because what would it be referenced *to*?) or even static spatial coordinates in the universe. If the simple Newtonian movement of the planet/solar system/galaxy/etc. doesn't get you then the universe's constant expansion probably will.
You might want to bring some oxygen and a very fast spacecraft with you.

2026-04-14 12:59:19 UTC

But he is red. One house finch, possibly one of the ones preparing to nest under my kitchen window awning.
Full size [here.](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/9089c852-1ff9-4f7b-ad33-2152b84203fd.jpeg)
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/5484561a-2213-4e6d-aa95-0489b908c626.jpeg

2026-01-04 00:15:22 UTC

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It's even worse. You didn't buy the picture of a monkey, you bought a link which *may* if you are lucky still resolve to some server somewhere which hosts a picture of a monkey.

2025-12-26 17:28:49 UTC

That would be feel *out,* not feel-*up,* unless you're into that kind of thing in which case I can't help you right now.
Some people aspire to greatness and others have it thrust upon them; so it was for me as well when the lemmy.world admins outright insisted I take over this sub as moderator in the absence of the other listed mod, @npub1czh…cskt, who has been inactive for almost two years. So far I've left this place as I found it, including leaving that sidebar rather forlorn barren. The community so far just implicitly inherits the lemmy.world sitewide rules, which we can do nothing about, and that's it.
I'm making a rare appearance here because I noticed the wailing and gnashing of teeth over AI content with the recent Die Hard Lego set post. At the moment I handle moderation based entirely on user reports. If a bunch of people flag something, or just one person who makes a decently compelling case, I'll remove the offending post or comment. A sidenote also to that one guy from the other week who sent me a report over a post they simply disagreed with and did not provide a reason: That one didn't meet my threshold.
Anyhoo, I'm getting the feeling there's a rather strong sentiment around here that people don't like AI generated content. So here's the question:
**Should we prohibit posting AI generated *stuff* here an actual rule? Yea or nay.**

2025-09-27 21:40:46 UTC

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The synopsis in the manual also states that Bowser turned the residents of the Mushroom Kingdom into "stones, **bricks,** and field horse-hair plants." In a given playthrough, most players probably smash a lot of bricks. Bricks which used to be Mushroom Kingdom people, who are now dead. Because Mario killed them.
It's a big maybe on Mario being the hero because he may or may not actually succeed in reaching Bowser and rescuing the princess depending on how much the player happens to suck, and/or of Luigi winds up being the victor instead.

2025-08-08 02:19:34 UTC

It made it almost exactly to its two year anniversary. Just 13 days short, in fact.
The other day I noticed [my A2](https://lemmy.world/post/17334793) seemed to be clogging and drying out an awful lot, and was giving me trouble even after a quite thorough cleaning of the nib and feed assembly. Then the light bulb in my head finally started to give a flicker, and I took a closer look at the little trap door in the nose and sure enough: It's not springing closed anymore.
So obviously I did the only logical thing and placed an order for a brand new and very shiny **A1** Press, the metal bodied variant, to have something to tide me over while I figure this out.
![](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/a6786475-0200-41cd-8c7c-5207beab95a0.jpeg)
The A1's very nice. I slapped my modified oblique nib assembly into it and it's off and running like champ. Superficially it's every bit of a poor man's Vanishing Point and for only $8 more it's a no-brainer for anyone holding a busted A2... Provided it manages to hold up as well or better. That says maybe.
But never mind that, because today I says to myself, I says: What do I have to lose if I rip my old A2 apart? Because this right here, this could be *content.*
The nose cone of the Majohn A2 (and presumably the A1 and A3, the OG Pilot Vanishing point itself, and other similar variants) is glued on. It's obviously not meant to be functionally user removable, but I managed to get the adhesive to let go via the simple expedient of throwing caution totally to the wind and briefly boiling the front section in a pot of water. I figured this was probably a less dumb avenue of attack than cooking it with my heat gun, which is what I was going to graduate to if this strategy failed.
![](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/0eadb65c-961f-459e-ab01-27e2039effb1.jpeg)
But it didn't. Wa-hey. So here's what the business end of an A2 looks like with the nosecone ripped off. It's totally held together with a vaguely unctuous glue that seems to remain somewhat flexible, which may or may not be a consequence of my boiling it. It feels like ordinary contact cement and I imagine when you go to put the thing back together maybe you could substitute it with the same.
The trap door is a tiny stamped steel part and it seals up against a rubber (or possibly silicone) bucking seal that's just pressed into the end. An infinitesimally microscopic little torsion spring is what serves to keep the trap door shut against the seal.
![](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/dd942aaa-4920-4639-a089-683f3f64cdc6.jpeg)
Except as you can see in my case it... doesn't.
![](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/e7d0e30a-cc2e-4c41-8508-1f69c73d91eb.jpeg)
It's busted clean off right at the end of the coiled section, where the arm goes up to hook into the trap door. It beats the hell out of me how that happened, but I guess it's just one of those things. I'm glad it happened to my $27 knockoff and not my $180 genuine Vanishing Point. ("If you have a genuine VP, why don't you just use *that?* I hear you cry. Because I don't ever take my Vanishing Point, my Dialog, or my vintage Sheaffer Targa into the field. I may be stupid, but I'm not made of money.)
![](https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/7c050900-b849-436d-96f2-72e763ac1536.jpeg)
Anyway, once you're in there it's easy enough to get everything out. Even the rubber seal is removable, and just indexes into a little notch in the guide tube at the end of the pen. The spring and trap door are held in with the same cross pin that's also the pivot point for the door.
It's worth mentioning that the guide tube is *also* just glued in, and its alignment relative to the pen body is crucial to allowing the nib assembly to slide in and out freely. If you find yours is binding up after ripping your pen apart, you'll want to gently heat it up and stick something in it to help you straighten it out until the glue cools. It didn't take much heat to get the adhesive to let go, and that raises the irritating possibility that just leaving your A2 in a hot car could be enough to compromise the adhesive and give you problems. I imagine this is probably not the case with the genuine article, and probably goes a long way towards explaining the roughly sextuple premium in cost. I'll probably goop this up with T-7000 glue or something when or more likely *if* I ever put this back together, to make sure it stays put.
Because the question is, now what?
The spring is seriously tiny. Insofar as I can tell you can't buy it as a repair part separately, even for a genuine Vanishing Point. So the only option is to bin the thing, or have a go at making your own replacement. I measured its wire diameter at 0.26mm which is pretty much 23 wire gauge. One unit of 23 AWG watchmaker's spring wire is $27.50 but a **whole new pen** is only $27.99. The only reason to even attempt to wind my own spring for this would be for the lulz, and of course for the content. Clearly only a fool would even try.
...
So, I just ordered a roll of that wire.
Wish me luck. I have a feeling I'm going to need it.

2025-02-07 18:30:03 UTC

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My wife works at the local library. She got a DVD back the other day with a "please rewind media" sticker on the inside of the case.
So there are people in the world with no concept, and then there's that.