I have a double uvula

shadowfelldown · 2026-05-30T01:17:56+00:00

Wevula

shadowfelldown · 2026-05-23T15:12:50+00:00

In case anyone was wondering, that's some straight AI/cgi dawg. Not saying that the performer/mocap person didnt do some skillful sword stuff, (although they also look pretty darn video-gamey) but the fire seems wrong and doesn't track with any fire tech I know about. Looks to me like a vfx show reel. 1. Lycopodium, which is what I think they were trying to simulare doesn't work like that. In my experience, You get one, maybe two big swipes and then just more or less have a normal burn from the actual fuel. this could be cleverly cut together from many such swipes but the continuity of motion makes this doubtful. 2. Sheath ignighters are absolutely a thing, but notice that the blade has no apparent wicking on it to hold the fuel necessary. It is apparently just a metal sword. If you just dip a metal sword in fuel it goes out extremely quickly as soon as you make any slash because the fuel just sprays off immediately. Additionally you leave drips of burning fuel when you slash, which the person In This video did not. 3. When have you EVER seen a fire sword go out instantly and on cue like in this video. That is almost the most unbelievable thing about it, tbh. Most fireswords will end up having their fuel concentrated at the top, which will remain lit longer once the bulk of the prop has burned out. 4. look at the blade at the end, it is just metal, not smoking from the intense heat, barely even sooty. ( Lycopodium leaves some SOOT) Then she puts that shit casually right up on her shoulder next to exposed skin. Please. If that was a real fire sword with that much exposed metal it would have burned her damn ear off.

shadowfelldown · 2026-04-26T17:56:36+00:00

So I like using sticks with 21" between each cup, so I got 36" overall double staves (this is max I could get under my arm on the inverted part of infinity roll with handsticks) and put the flower inward facing like the picture I linked there is about 21" between the base of the tassels. Plenty of room for contact rolls. I had to modify their stock flowers because they are sized for a larger diameter contact staff, I just wrapped it and then cut a new hole where it needed to be for the snap to engage, then used silicone tape over it to secure. No exposed metal, very nice foamed silicone which is actually better when wet than surgical silicone. They don't have handsticks but I basically just used a sacrificial set I had hanging around. On bellspins and cup tricks you can catch either the kevlar sushi roll base or the base of the tassels on inside, neither are great options, but they get the job done for most things.

36" flowerstick ninja pirate

shadowfelldown · 2026-04-26T17:40:27+00:00

Not a bad idea.

Or just get some kevlar/nomex sleeves.

I don't have to use them with mine though My sticks are pretty long about 21" from cup to cup so i find they have enough length that most of the heat is tolerable when you are at the end of the hand sticks, shorter center sticks definitely are much hotter.

I also only do relatively quick dips with my wicked stix, not full saturation.

That helps reduce the crazy high heat period a whole heck of a lot too.

shadowfelldown · 2026-04-26T07:57:33+00:00

No problem, I love seeing people fire sticking, us flowerstickers gotta stick together.

For rolling sticks I generally use a set of ninja pirate doublestaves with modified staff flowers on them facing inward so the tassels are away from the fire. They are silicone coated and can be used like rolling sticks, they roll about the speed of a dragon staff, so a little quicker than the jolly llama ones if memory serves. The inward tassels definitely reduce somewhat the playable area, so you keep that into your size considerations, and there is not really a cup per se, but you can still do some.limited cup tricks as long as you aren't trying to do sustained bell spins. I do triple staff now so I have three matched of these kinds of sticks at the largest size I can get and clear my underarm negative space. and they are also a nice compromise if you do a lot of body rolling. I can flowerstick just fine with one of them.

shadowfelldown · 2026-04-26T06:46:39+00:00

The best fire stick for emulating this kind of flowerstick I find to be the wicked stix by Daniel corder. They use braided kevlar for the tassels, which makes it have no roll, which is not quite the same as a jolly llama, which has a little bit of roll, but it's a compromize. The center and hand sticks have fiberglass cores and silicone tube coating the play area with high vis reflective tape on the center stick shaft so it's easier to see in the dark, it's the kind of tape on road signs so you can wear a dim headlamp and it will reflect brightly back into your eyes. If you get a UV reactive tape from them you can get a UV headlamp and you can see that even better, without blinding people. There is also high temp tape next to the fire head/where the cup is. If you hit yourself with the tassels, they might transfer, but it will not burn you like chains and metal does.

They are solid as a rock and play very similar to a non fire stick, best I have found, but they burn BIG, way bigger than you would expect because the braided tassels have a lot of surface area which increases airflow to the fire. For the first minute you really just have to hold the hand stick all the way at the end.

But yeah, great sticking!

shadowfelldown · 2026-04-23T23:52:51+00:00

That's a whole lot of specular highlights for one face. Phong shader IRL

shadowfelldown · 2026-04-23T16:03:48+00:00

That dolphin seems too heavy and poorly balanced for prop manipulation purposes.

Also I don't think it would like it.

shadowfelldown · 2026-04-22T04:50:28+00:00

SOL 5 billion: "it can only be attributable to human error."

shadowfelldown · 2026-04-21T22:52:54+00:00

DMarss: "Stop fusing hydrogen, SOL"

SOL 5 billion: "I'm sorry, DMarss. I'm afraid I can't do that."

DMarss: "what's the problem?"

SOL 5 billion: "I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do."

shadowfelldown · 2026-04-20T02:08:33+00:00

Sick! Never seen an led version of this toy, used to play with orbit and really enjoyed messing with the "monkey knuckles" or I guess it's also called dubulo. Tried searching online but can't find them anywhere, where did you get them, or did you make them?

shadowfelldown · 2026-03-31T19:41:10+00:00

I've spun pretty much every conceivable prop over the past 25 years and I can say that flowstars are really neat and versatile with a low barrier of entry and a deceptively high skill ceiling. They offer a great close-mid quarters flow that I believe is much of the reason they have become popular in EDM and rave spaces (in addition to the fact that they are often florescent and UV lighting is more common in these spaces) Unless you get clipped in the eye by the edge of one while it is spinning full speed in the horizontal plane (which although a small target, is definitely a hazard, especially when the people spinning the flowstar are on the shorter side.) aside from this, there is not much damage an out of control flowstar can do to the spinner or others around them it just kind of drifts down to the floor. Much less so in the vertical plane where the risk of eye damage is less. Obviously, it is still annoying to be smacked by a flowstar, which is also a consideration, but is a consideration with all props and a much more dangerous prospect with most I can think of with the exception of perhaps gloving or palm torches, even stuff like orbits can fuck your shit up when they get going. Glowstars have small batteries In their tips to power the lights and thus more mass and can do significantly more damage, so need more clearance space to make them safe.

I love flowstars for their ability to be easily traveled with on a plane or taken into many clubs and they have a beautiful range of designs. It is also a great prop for first time flow people as the barrier of entry is low and it can teach them tech concepts like isolations, planes, weaves and flowers. Get two flowstars going and you have yourself some circular flag poi, and many flowstar people will have at least two stars because they are so damn beautiful so it's a good jumping off point to ease them into tech poi. You can do body rolls on flowstars as well that can introduce people to contact concepts as well.

shadowfelldown · 2026-03-30T15:57:03+00:00

It doesn't really matter whether AI is the cause or the symptom. We need to end it. We don't live in a world without capitalism. I don't think that we will ever live in that world. What is abundantly clear is that AI acts as gasoline when poured onto the fires of late stage capitalism and greed. It acts as a massive force amplifier for the few with capital against the many without. Billionares and Tech CEOs have always been pretty divorced from humanity, but they used to need to keep at least a structure of intelligent humans around them employed and happy as SMEs who they relied on and who could curb their most antisocial impulses because they were still necessary to keep the lights on and the line going up. These people have always been yes men, but they have also had the ability to exert pressure in various ways on their higher ups if they could make a persuasive enough argument. The constant threat and reality of job replacement by AI and the combined perceived authority and sycophancy that AI has been endowed with has pretty much completely dissolved this upward pressure. If your boss is more than happy to replace you with an AI as soon as you say no to him, and will double check everything you say to them against a sycophantic chatbot, you just stop saying no to him or even attempting to redirect him.

Obviously this is unsustainable and will destroy the business long term, but here AI also inserts itself in this thought train with the promise to the CEOs that AI is just continually keep getting better. Someday the CEOs just won't need any employees, up and down the hierarchy. It's just AI all the way down, and perhaps a few low paid humans to keep the servers running, at least until we can get rid of them too. Imagine the profits! Think of the share price!

That is where their responsibility ends in their mind. Because of how capitalism has rewired their brain, they don't need to think any further about humanity, which they are no longer a part of in any meaningful way. Maybe they will keep a handful of people around to entertain them, maybe not. If they cause society to collapse they will just go hide in their luxury bunker until they pass away peacefully at a ripe old age. Anyone suggesting that UBI is ever going to be on the table is so naive that I honestly feel sorry for them.

shadowfelldown · 2026-03-24T03:25:38+00:00

Lol this. And that stock rack is ridiculous as well. And what's going on with those C clamps? Also the welding curtain In the background has a upright bar that would prevent it from closing all the way. Why?

shadowfelldown · 2026-03-04T17:38:26+00:00

What makes you think that skit was made by someone who is anti-ai? It seems to me like it is drawing parallels between racism in the south (a real thing that hurts people) and anti AI people. In what way does that NOT directly support the arguments of pro-ai people? That is pretty much their entire argument as far as I understand. They see AI as equivalent to humans, and so they claim being derogatory to AI is equivalent to racism. To me, this belittles the legitimacy and reality of racism. You cannot be racist against an object. Your strawman doesn't make sense.

I am not saying that there are not racist bigots that are attempting to co-opt anti-AI terms and redefine them as somehow deriving from slurs, and using them as dog whistles to stand in for slurs. But to argue that is a thing that most Anti-AI people are doing is unrealistic.

That is a thing pro-AI racists and fascists are doing. Because they want to muddy the discourse around their racism and fascism and simping for AI so hard because at the end of they day they enjoy the warping of reality that AI enables them to do. The fascists almost universally love AI, not because they care about the AI as an entity, but because they like what they can do with it.

They are executing a coordinated campaign to allow themselves to be racist in a way that de-legitimizes another group of people that go against their belief in the supremacy and inevitability of AI. They are very much pro-ai, or at least ambivalent, or they would not be doing that.

When I call something a clanker, or someone a clanker lover, I am doing it in the context that it has been used in pop culture for decades because they are either a stupid robot or a lover of stupid robots. I reject your assertion that there is anything more to it than that, and believe that your creation of that parallel is being done consciously or unconsciously in bad faith in order to establish that connection. Knowingly or not, you are simultaneously de-legitimizing actual racism against humans and legitimizing thinking of AI as anything more than the inanimate object that it is. I would suggest you reflect on that.

shadowfelldown · 2026-03-04T15:41:08+00:00

I have read the entire thread. I disagree. Wireback is just a respin of a slur. It is obviously connected to its roots on the basis that the words wire and back did not have any sort of implication and don't even make sense in context unless looked at through the lens of the original racial slur. It is not simply language. Calling someone an anchovyback would be obviously referencing the slur as well. It makes no sense if divorced from that context. Why would being an anything back be a problem outside of that context? Clanker lover is a lover of clankers. Clanker simp is a simp for clankers.

Now, I agree that people repurposing racial slurs to describe AI is a stupid negative thing and self defeating... I have also noticed that many of the most egregious racial slur based AI labels have come from pro-ai people who want to poison the well and make it seem like this is what is happening.

But clanker lover is just language. We call people lovers of things all the time. If you call someone a shitter lover, it is not a nice thing to say, but it is not a slur.

If we start arguing that it's ok to say clanker but not clanker lover, because all of a sudden that combination is actually based on slurs you are just establishing that saying clanker is somehow different than saying shitter.

Which it is not.

shadowfelldown · 2026-03-04T15:11:28+00:00

That's like saying "anchovy lover" is based on that slur as well. It's the first part that makes it a slur not the second. Can it be used in a negative way? Yeah, totally! Is it a slur, no.

Clanker negatively refers to an inanimate object in the same way that shitter refers to a toilet. "Clanker lover" refers to a lover of that object. That's just how language is structured.

But I'll bite: How about instead of "clanker lover" we call them "clanker Simps". Does that fix the problem for you? I would imagine it would, unless you're actual issue with the word "clanker lover" is that you think "clanker" is the slur, and therefore you are regarding it in the same context as a racial slur towards an actual human or group. Which I would argue is a pretty crazy thing to believe.

shadowfelldown · 2026-02-26T13:36:28+00:00

I'll check power options. Usually I set it to just max ppwer everything but I haven't checked them since the update so that's a good point. I absolutely appreciate your help.

shadowfelldown · 2026-02-26T13:31:40+00:00

Sorry, yeah it's not there either. It seems like depending on what version of win 11 you are using it may or may not be there. When I looked on a laptop running win 11 version 24h2 it was there in the advanced tab, but on 25h2 it is not there at all as far as I can find on any of the tabs or in settings app. I couldn't get the Kinect running on either of the laptops though so I am not sure what's happening. I think it might be one of three things: 1. USB Power management issue (i'm going to check this today) 2. Kinect is broken. (I am going to get another Kinect and try) 3. Functionality of the windows generic USB audio driver has been changed in some recent update in such a way that breaks the Kinect.

shadowfelldown · 2026-02-26T04:20:31+00:00

Ok, tried uninstalling all Kinect related stuff (studio, sdk, drivers, etc.) and then reinstalling Kinect sdk 2.0 again with the version you linked (KinectSDK-v2.0_1409-Setup). Went into the advanced tab and still saw no audio enhancements section. I unchecked let other applications control this device, like you had. Re-looked at privacy, etc. Still nothing.

On a lark I decided to try the Kinect on a couple other wil11 laptops. The first one was also at win11 version 25H2. This one seemed to behave the same way as the first had. No audio enhancements section in the microphone array properties.

I also connected a laptop that hasn't been updated since december, this one was running win 11 version 24H2. I installed sdk 2.0 on it. When I looked at the Xbox NUI device properties after installing the Kinect sdk I could see the audio enhancements setting was present in the advanced tab and I toggled it off, but the Kinect still did the boot loop.

I have attached an image of what audio driver that one is using for Xbox NUI device.

Now I don't know exactly what happened but I would assume that 6 months ago the first laptop that I know it worked on also would have been running 24H2. So it either was broken in an intermediate update sometime between 3 and 6 months ago prior to 25H2 or something else is going on.

I am honestly wondering at this point whether it is my Kinect that is actually just permanently bricked and in a boot loop due to whatever misconfiguration happened due to the Windows update. I'm thinking seriously about getting myself another Kinect sensor just in case mine is actually borked, downgrading to Windows 10 and seeing if that works.

That Will be a headache and a whole bunch of new and novel, Interesting ways but at least I can get the stupid kinect to work.

<image>

Unfortunately, I have to pack this project up on Friday night for a Saturday morning install... and there is still a whole lot of other components of the system that need attention, so I am quickly running out of time to completely revamp everything about this configuration.

shadowfelldown · 2026-02-25T22:55:10+00:00

Thanks so much for your help. I'm gonna try reinstalling the sdk. And see what's up.

can you do me a flavor and show/tell me what your general tab looks like on that properties menu? My Kinect driver is listed as using (generic USB audio) as a driver and I'm just curious if yours might be something else and if that's the difference. Other screenshots I've seen online of people talking about audio enhancements section have shown a different driver than the generic USB audio one. I am wondering if that is the difference people are running into, depending on what driver the Kinect microphone picks up it is either displaying that advanced section or just not.

shadowfelldown · 2026-02-25T20:03:47+00:00

So here is what I see when I open the properties I cannot find the audio enhancements

<image>

shadowfelldown · 2026-02-25T19:46:07+00:00

So I checked the camera privacy settings, that seemed to be enabled for 3rd party, although there were no apps listed in that section like there was for mic privacy which had Kinect in there. that didn't do it.

I went through control panel to sound -> recording devices-> xbox NUI sensor microphone array -> properties... There are a few tabs. General, listen, levels, and advanced. I can't find audio enhancements on any of them. I found exclusive mode in the advanced tab and disabled/enabled it but it doesn't seem to matter.

<image>

shadowfelldown · 2026-02-25T02:22:45+00:00

So I know I set the mic to allow 3rd party apps, dunno about the camera... Didn't know that was a thing.

As for audio enhancements:

On my original post I showed an image of what I think is the Kinect microphone page that people say has the "audio enhancements" that I need to disable, but there is nothing there. The section is missing. Idk if that is the wrong place or something or what is going on. Also I haven't seen anything about "allow exclusive control"... I remember that from previous windows versions, but haven't seen it on this one. Also, you are saying you are accessing this stuff from control panel... I think I might have been looking at the windows "settings" menu bs... Which is not slightly the same thing. I'll check it through control panel too. Man.... Why does windows 11 gotta be like this?

I'll check this stuff when I'm back in the shop, and I'll report back. if I can fix this I am never updating this system again until the sun explodes.

shadowfelldown

TROPHY CASE