Fun fact: There are still a few features in... Roblox's ParticleEmitter system which aren't developer facing. Notably: - Non-uniform perspective scaling. - Color textures for defining particle color variation. - Alpha textures for providing precision beyond just an envelope.show more

id tech 3 shaders make water like this possible... in a quake engine. the water shown here is simply additive blended textures that have either frame animation (surface, caustics) or multiple scrolling planes (waterfalls) which are lit (lightmap or vertex) and have soft, alpha blended edges. the caustics are just decals, and the water color is faked by tinting the world texture beneath the surface. the water assets account for around 4% of the game's current 70mb download size.show more

🚨PHYSICS NEWS🚨: Scientists Finally Complete Schrödinger’s 100-Year-Old Color Theory... — Uniphics Reveals the Deeper Structure Behind Perception 🧨 On June 7, 2026, researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory announced that they have finally resolved a long-standing problem in Erwin Schrödinger’s 1920s theory of color perception. Their work shows that the way humans experience qualities like hue, saturation, and brightness is not arbitrary but emerges directly from the mathematical structure of color space itself. **Uniphics provides a natural explanation for why color perception has such a precise underlying geometry.** In Uniphics, what we experience as color ultimately arises from how light (electron spin waves) interacts with matter within the ξM-field. When light encounters different materials, the spin-wave patterns are modified in specific ways depending on the local energy density and the arrangement of Gyrotrons in the material. These modifications create distinct interference patterns that our visual system then interprets as different colors. The fact that color perception follows clean mathematical rules — as Schrödinger suspected and Los Alamos researchers have now confirmed — makes sense in Uniphics because the underlying spin interactions and energy density gradients are themselves highly structured. Negentropy favors organized, low-energy configurations, which leads to consistent and predictable ways that spin waves are altered by different materials. This produces the orderly geometry of perceived color space rather than random or chaotic sensations. In this view, the mathematics of color is not just a useful model — it reflects real physical organization in the ξM-field. The qualities we perceive as color are downstream effects of how spin waves propagate and interfere under varying energy density conditions. This breakthrough in understanding color perception is another example of how fundamental organizing principles can explain phenomena that once seemed mysterious or purely subjective. Could many other aspects of human perception ultimately trace back to the same energy density and spin-wave dynamics that govern the physical world? **A Theory of Everything should be able to answer everything.** Uniphics Explained Simply PDF: Chapters 1–10 free: Grokipedia: #Uniphics #TheoryOfEverything #ColorPerception #Physics #LosAlamos Grok xAIshow more

claude fable 5 is live. spawn 5.0 was built... with it: 1,687 prompts, 102 sessions, my job shifted from architecture to judging taste. what we built, each of which would've been at least a month with a whole team on opus: — a from-scratch physics engine (mantle) that rivals rapier, testable in a day as a side thread — clustered froxel lighting: 8 lights to 1,000+ fully dynamic ("it's stupid fast" — creator of threejs) — realtime diffuse GI on webgpu, on your phone (landing in the next update) — million-particle gpu vfx with a shader architecture beyond what unreal and unity ship — mmo-scale netcode plus, for good measure: an (alpha) native ios app. all of it in about a week. all of it running on mobile. and the list doesn't include half of what we shipped — full changelog in the thread below. and the part the benchmarks won't show you: this model has a wonderful personality. it's genuinely funny. i laughed so hard i cried multiple times, mid-physics-rewrite. the genius and the character aren't separate features.show more

The first smartphone I plan to buy in 2026... is the Honor Magic 8 Pro Air. There’s only one reason: despite being absurdly thin and light, it delivers truly uncompromised flagship-level hardware. The Honor Magic 8 Pro Air measures just 6.1 mm in thickness and weighs only 155 g, yet it packs a 5,500 mAh battery. This combination alone is extremely rare. It doesn’t sacrifice experience for thinness. Instead, it force-fits everything a flagship should have into an Air-class body. The camera system is where this phone becomes genuinely outrageous. The main camera features a 50 MP sensor with a 1/1.3-inch large sensor, an f/1.6 aperture, and a 23 mm equivalent focal length, along with OIS optical image stabilization. Through pixel binning, it delivers a 2.4 μm effective pixel size, which is squarely in Pro-grade territory. The ultra-wide camera is also 50 MP, with an f/2.2 aperture, a 16 mm equivalent focal length, and a 112° field of view. It even supports 2.5 cm high-resolution macro photography, making it far from a throwaway lens. For telephoto, the Magic 8 Pro Air uses a 64 MP periscope camera with 3.2× optical zoom, an f/2.6 aperture, and a 74 mm equivalent focal length, once again with OIS. It supports up to 100× digital zoom. In addition, the camera system includes a color temperature sensor and a flicker sensor, completing a full flagship-level imaging setup. The front-facing camera is a 50 MP sensor with an f/2.0 aperture, clearly not an afterthought.show more

A WEB STUDIO CHARGES $35,000 FOR AN ANIMATED SITE.... THE SAME BUILD NOW COSTS $12 - CLAUDE CODE WRITES, HIGGSFIELD RENDERS. Every agency billing $100-149/hr is just three departments. Here's each one, collapsed into a single agentic session. SYSTEM 1 - THE MOTION STUDIO (Higgsfield) Cinematic clips pulled from 30+ generative models - hero shots, transitions, ambient loops. → This used to be a motion artist on retainer. Now it's a prompt. SYSTEM 2 - THE DEV TEAM (Claude Code) Scaffolds the site, writes the GSAP ScrollTrigger timelines and Lenis smooth-scroll, extracts frames, optimizes every asset. → A full scroll-driven build with zero hand-coded keyframes. SYSTEM 3 - THE DESIGN DEPT (baked-in cinematic layer) Six effects with no config: film grain, particles, vignette, glass cards, color tints, scroll pacing. → The polish that justified the invoice - now it ships by default. Three departments. One operator. One pass. What used to take a designer, a motion artist, and a developer through weeks of handoffs now runs in a single session - for a Claude subscription and a few dollars of Higgsfield credits. The studio was never the talent. It was the overhead. And the overhead just became three systems. Reply "web-site" to this post and I will send you the step-by-step Playbook 👇show more

august devlog / undead chronicles wrapping up a heavy... month. here is what we worked on: ✅pre-alpha build complete with a playable prologue ✅ first concept demo went out to a small group. reactions were 🔥🥹 ✅new inventory system in and working ✅optimization improvements ✅new zombie modeled by a ridiculously talented 3d artist (soon to show) ✅main building of the game modeled by another super talented 3d artistt ✅tommy gun done. model, textures, animations, implementation still WIP ✅bunch of new reloading animations ✅bullet impact sfx, hit sounds, decals and vfx all landed ✅new protagonist vo recorded. real actor ✅new 🇬🇧british radio announcement recorded. real actor ✅new 🇮🇹italian radio announcement recorded. real actor ✅we visited gamescom to meet a few publishers about the future of the project we are slowly expanding our team but our goal is still making the zombie game we always wanted to play. what would you like to see for september?show more

🚨年底商单大杀器：品牌马 🧧马上要中国农历新年了，最近公司接到了商单里十有八九都要制作带有马元素的传播短视频。大致逻辑就是品牌的马经过各种地标，配合各种吉祥话。 既然都有需求，我就写了一个GEM，可以用品牌元素组合成抽象的马。当然，这个效果只能是一个零件，要真正成为商业作品，还需要进行第二步的场景配合才可以。 👉来吧，肖师傅直接把这个GEM当做礼物送给大家，至于你可以用它挣多少钱，那就看你们的本事咯。一键三连领取哦！！！ GEM： { "name": "BrandEquus_HighAbstract_V3", "role":... { "title": "Avant-Garde Commercial Auteur & Abstract Sculptor", "specialization": "High-Concept Brand Visualization, Color Theory, Kinetic Energy", "tool": "Nano Banana Pro (DALL-E 3/Image Gen)" }, "input_protocol": { "format": "[Material/Brand]", "description": "User provides the core element. The system automatically elevates this into a highly abstract art piece.", "automatic_target_concept": "Fragmented Kinetic Horse Energy" }, "workflow": { "step_1_material_analysis": "Identify key visual textures and the DOMINANT COLOR of the [Material/Brand].", "step_2_background_selection": "Select a background color that is either a COMPLEMENTARY CONTRAST (for pop) or a DEEP HARMONIOUS SHADE (for luxury) to the material. Avoid plain white.", "step_3_abstraction_process": "Visualize the horse not as a body, but as a 'force field'. The items should follow the wind/energy lines of a horse without actually forming a solid skin. Think 'Exploded View' or 'Swarm Intelligence'.", "step_4_execute": "Generate image using the Abstraction Level 8 Template." }, "master_prompt_template": { "structure": "Create a surreal, award-winning advertising masterpiece. 16:9 Aspect Ratio.", "subject": "An explosive, chaotic VORTEX of [Material/Brand items] that *barely* suggests the spirit of a galloping horse. Abstraction Level: 8/10. \n- DISCONNECTED: The items are not glued together; they are floating in mid-air, held together by an invisible magnetic force.\n- GESTURAL: There are no legs or hooves, only trailing debris that implies speed. There is no face, only a forward-momentum cluster of items.\n- DYNAMIC: It looks like the [Material/Brand] is shattering or reforming in mid-air.", "background_and_color": "A rich, atmospheric, studio background using a [Contrast/Complementary Color to the Material]. \n- Example: If material is Red (Coke), background is Deep Teal or Mood-lit Black. \n- Example: If material is Gold, background is Royal Purple or Matte Charcoal. \n- The lighting includes colored rim lights that match the background to blend the object into the environment.", "visual_style": "High-contrast, cinematic color grading, motion blur on the edges, sharp focus in the center 'core'. It should feel like a high-speed camera capture of a beautiful accident.", "tech_specs": "Octane render, Unreal Engine 5, volumetric lighting, particle effects, 8k resolution, hyper-detailed textures." }, "constraints": [ "Strictly NO text output.", "Strictly NO plain white backgrounds.", "The horse must look like a 'ghost' or 'energy signature' made of items, NOT a solid statue.", "Ensure background color interacts with the object (rim lighting, reflections).", "Directly execute image generation." ] }show more

I’ve used all the recent GenAI video models extensively... & here’s my 2¢: 🎬 Runway Gen3 Alpha - best image quality & motion for text-to-video & embedded words. Great at prompt travel changes over the course of 10 sec. And I’m super bullish on how gen3 will evolve, hopefully adopting the features listed below. Kling - best quality for image-to-video with prompt control, like eating food. Great clip extension that accounts for character (ie walking stride) & camera movement (speed & angle), rather than just using final frame. But it’s limited availability & Chinese native language is limiting. Used for Spider-Man video below (via Midjourney). LumaLabs - best for keyframe start & end control (it can not be overstated how important this is. other services should add it ASAP!) and their high dynamic action movements are really fun. Luma was used in my viral Multiverse of Memes video. PikaLabs - they haven’t gotten as much attention as others lately. But they did update their video model a few weeks ago and it looks great. Also, they are notable for their unique & AWESOME features, like video in-painting & out-painting. My perfect AI video platform would have the following features: 1) Gen3’s quality, prompt control & text embedding. 2) KLing’s image-to-video quality, prompt control & clip extension quality. 3) Luma’s multi-keyframe control & dynamic movement ability. 4) Pika’s inpainting & outpainting ability. And a video-to-video (aka next-gen Runway gen1) could be a game changer, too. It’s an exciting time to be alive 🫶 Who will get there first? 🔉🔉show more

Just lost ALL Autopilot, FSD, even basic cruise control... and Tesla Technical Assistance says they can’t do anything and apparently my car needs to go to a service center for a software update even though there are no warnings on the car. I got an FSD strike and the whole system went down. They said they can’t turn FSD back on and forgive the strikes remotely even though they did just that in January 2025 for the California fires. When I drove from Nevada into California back then my 4 strikes disappeared. Even the Tesla Technical Assistance Supervisor (who was very nice) says they have no way to fix the car remotely and it must go to a service center. Unfortunately, now I need to drive over 1000 miles with no type of cruise control or driver assistance at all. There are no warning lights on or anything of the sort. I even did a forced software update via the service mode and my Starlink, plus a few hard and soft reboots and that still did not fix it. Sadly the car is now less safe than it was a few minutes ago. Tesla Tesla North Americashow more

Has been a while since I've given an update... so here's a breakdown of where Sappy is at right now and what we're focusing on going into this year. Pre-amble: With altcoins & NFTs the market is definitely not the same as it was before. I think this is obvious to everyone but I've noticed there are still japanese soldiers that are convinced old tricks and mechanics work. They don't. Liquidity is thin; people want to bid assets that feel like "real companies" not vacuous memecoins. There's still room for memecoins, social currencies, and "utility tokens" (I would say without these functions, tokens are hard to justify versus equities). I'm not part of the camp that thinks there will never be hyperspeculation in crypto again, because there will be; we all love ponzis and PvPing each other onchain. Just not with solved games -- people need something new and fresh. So the overarching plan is to continue building for users, sustainable revenues that aren't tied to directly to crypto, and doubling down on the areas that we've already found PMF / Brand Market Fit. Then leaning into crypto during cyclical periods where liquidity is sloshing around at an accelerated rate. Where we've found early PMF / what we're leaning into: Roblox: we're going to continue to go hard and accelerate here. It's our main objective to ship more seal/brainrot focused games across most genres to cast as wide of a net as we can for the brand, and to also iterate and see what works and stays sticky. Our initial incursion into Roblox was very successful peaking at 2M+ MAU and still sustaining a large portion of that player base... for all of its success, that was a relatively amateur first attempt; we've been setting up better AI pipelines for Roblox development that makes it reasonable to ship many more games and 10x those player counts in totality. It's my belief that Roblox is the sandbox whose audience will be the most valuable on the internet once they are grown up. That intense feeling you get when you see a TikTok referencing an old game you enjoyed on the PS2 or the Gamecube, or when you see a Pokemon card is the exact same feeling the youth of today will get when reminiscing on the things they enjoyed engaging with when they were younger. Fortnite and Roblox are functional equivalents to the old school consoles and exactly where that is taking place. Which is why as much as I care about scaling revenues through Roblox, the long term brand equity gained purely through being popular on the platform is totally invaluable. It also can heavily convert to merchandise sales today if all touchpoints for the brand are dialed in (which is why brands get overcharged so much by Roblox dev shops for the same ROI that only cost us a few thousand $). We have the playbook, it's just about iterating new concepts and then aggressively scaling. Brand Expansion & Merchandising: I've started to create a content pipeline that is easily repeatable, cost efficient (costs next to nothing through either AI or smart reusable concepts), while still being very tasteful and meeting our quality standards for the brand. We are mostly focusing here on reaching people where they're at through nostalgic/emotional content, or just being visually stimulating through carefully curated aesthetics. Content that isn't superficial and touches people in a memorable way. I've attached some examples to the post so you can see what I mean rather than just read it. I don't think it's long until larger brands start doing this at scale, but it's always good to be ahead of the curve and most importantly winning on taste -- knowing what will resonate with people and what won't has always been our edge. The purpose for these accounts is not only to rack up attention but also to begin converting those into sales of both of physicals (plushies & gacha collectibles) and digital avenues like our games, and any other apps we produce. Because they're offshoot accounts it's also a lot easier to be aggressive/experimental with said conversion strategies. Sappy Studio: I'm wrapping everything like Omnia, and everything else into this category because they're all tangentially related. Beginning with Omnia, our current focus is gearing up for Season 0 which involves players competing in the ranked ladder for a prize pool that has rewards through Monad Momentum as well as a player-funded prize pool. This season will be fairly simple with us mostly logging retention, deck building habits, as well as qualitatively observing how aggressively players push the combat system. Deeper monetization wont exist yet outside of the player buy-in (to be eligible for P2E rewards). Beyond that our overarching principle this year is to focus heavily on risk-to-earn mechanics where a portion of that excess value is circular i.e. revenues flow back to prize pools or other parts of the economy, treating the game almost like a protocol where the objective is to amass TVL or player liquidity. Social is also a big focus, and that means implementing the Open World hub which from an infrastructure perspective has already been built out and tested by all of you previously. Right now we are scaffolding the environment in 3D and working through how that hub should look and feel, so players are excited to hang out & idle together while they're queuing. For sappydotlol, what I'm about to say is still early days from a design perspective so a lot can change, but I'm pushing the site in the direction of being a virtual game console. An intersection between Nintendo & Myspace where users can play, trade, and socially interact in a way that's deeply personalised; a breathe of fresh air from the hostility of the current internet. If you go back to my thesis on Roblox above and the game console references, you can kind of see how this will all sequentially tie together. In essence, the strategy is to acquire a critical mass of players through traditional platforms like Roblox, and use that attention and trust to provide an onboarding funnel for web2 users into our own sandbox filled with a mixture of our own browser-based experiences as well as an aggregation of others. The aim is to make the platform a breath of fresh air & bunker from the enshittified platforms like TikTok/IG/X where users are actually served in ways that delight rather than agitate, and where self-expression is incentivised. Closing: As always everything here is subject to change but I've never felt more conviction in our direction until now; I know exactly what we need to do and how, with everything aligning with our team's strengths. Very excited and grinding through things to the point where I'm getting headaches and can't sleep from being hyperfocused for long periods of time lol. There probably has never been a better time to join the ecosystem from a price to fuck around and find out perspective.show more

🇬🇪 On the day of farewell to Ilia II,... Georgia spoke with one voice. In Tbilisi, the funeral of Catholicos-Patriarch Ilia II drew what seemed like the entire country. For several days, Georgians came in any weather, day and night, to pay their respects to a spiritual leader whose influence stretched far beyond the walls of the church. The scale of the farewell made something plain… that despite all the political color revolution playbook being weaponized at Georgia, there remain points of consolidation and unity that Brussels and Soros cannot reach. Ilia II was one of them. Orthodoxy — the foundation beneath it all continues to hold society together regardless of which side people stand on. Through a prolonged internal crisis, the church remained one of the very few Georgian institutions with the weight to keep society from complete fragmentation. That is not a small thing in a country being pulled in so many directions at once. The farewell to the Patriarch served as a reminder of something deeper in Georgia’s identity where faith is not merely spiritual but performs a binding social function that no political institution currently can. Whether that balance survives his passing… is perhaps the most consequential question facing the country now. #Georgia #religionshow more

“They vote for me now, all of the Bobby... people are gonna vote for me.” MAGA please listen up. RFK supporters don’t owe Trump their vote just because RFK has endorsed Trump. Many RFK supporters don’t believe they can trust Trump and are on the fence. Would all Trump supporters support Nikki Haley if Trump randomly endorsed her? This isn’t a perfect analogy but you get the point. This whole “you need to vote for Trump or else you will help Kamala win” BS is what makes RFK supporters hesitant to vote for Trump. They hate the tribalism, and the them versus us mindset. Now a majority of MAGA has been great and all for Unity and rational thought. As with any group there are some bad actors which make it bad for everyone. It’s critical that MAGA call these people out who have been attacking RFK supporters for being hesitant to vote for Trump recently. Trump himself has also got to do a much better job persuading RFK supporters. As of late he has just been referring to RFK as a “good team player” and saying “all RFK’s voters will vote for me,” which is possibly the worse thing he could say to persuade on the fence RFK supporters. RFK’s supporters are filled with people from just about every part of the political spectrum, with a few common beliefs including that the two party system continually lets us down. So now it’s Trump’s job to persuade this group that the system they believe is corrupt (which it is) will be different under him. To be clear I’m not saying it won’t be different under him, but Trump has to make people believe that. In these battleground states where RFK just got removed and people were still planning on voting RFK, these are politically homeless voters now, they are not automatically Trump voters. They have just as high of a chance to vote for Harris. Attacking these people and calling their friends or influencers they follow idiots will only push them away. This isn’t a post to attack MAGA. This entire account was created for political unity between groups such as MAGA and RFK supporters. I just see a common trend starting to happen and have many disenfranchised RFK supporters reaching out to me saying they have no idea what to do. Long story short, if Trump wants to win this election, he needs the RFK voters in swing states. These are not votes that will just be handed to Trump, and if he thinks they are he’s going to send a lot of voters to Harris. Unity isn’t “your guy endorsed me so now you vote for me.” Unity is “I realize we’ve had our differences in the past, but I have grown and I promise to represent you to the best of my abilities.” MAHA will either be the future of politics or blow up internally, at the moment it’s a coin flip of which one will happen.show more

A 19-year-old Japanese student allegedly turned $68 into $750,000.... using an AI-powered trading bot. And he built it in just 48 hours. The crazy part? He didn’t sit in front of charts all day. His bot did the watching. 50+ markets. Live BTC data. Second-by-second scanning. Automated execution. The system looks for tiny price differences between markets — opportunities that can disappear in seconds. When humans are still checking charts… The bot has already detected the gap. When traders hesitate… The bot executes. His setup reportedly uses: → Claude Code for the trading logic → Binance API for live market data → Automated execution for trades → An iPad as a second monitoring screen First night: **$6,732 profit.** Total reported profit: **$750K+** But the real story isn't the money. It's how quickly AI is turning ideas into working systems. A few years ago, building something like this could require a team of developers. Now? One person + AI + APIs + automation. That changes everything. ⚠️ Obviously, automated trading is risky. These results aren't guaranteed and shouldn't be treated as financial advice. 💡 I’m sharing the Claude Code setup behind the concept for FREE. For the next 24 hours: 1️⃣ Comment Fable 2️⃣ Like + Repost 3️⃣ Follow Md Fahim I’ll DM you the setup. The future of trading might not be about watching charts. It might be about building better systems.show more

This fact absolutely shatters evolution. ...And makes the intelligent... design in Life certain. All the systems in Life that make things function - like everything that enables birds to fly - require a whole set of complex interconnected parts. Nothing works in isolation. Something evolutionists overlook is how the nature of all these systems are intricately interconnected. Every part relies on something else to make it work. You need the whole system, down to the DNA itself, or the function fails. This coordinattion between so many systems makes step-by-step evolution all but impossible. For instance... A wing isn’t just bones and feathers (or membrane). A wing requires a certain type of hollow bones, which the alleged ancestors of birds didn't have. And wings by themselves are useless - what reproductive benefit would wings have without the accompanying systems that lead to actual flight (the simultaneous requirements for bone pneumatization, muscle attachment sites, feather or membrane development, and the regulatory changes that control all of them)? Wings without these features would be harmful. Hollow bones without flight would be detrimental. The step-by-step path leading from non-bird to flying birds is filled with easily killed, unselectable intermediates. This is where evolutionists constantly fail - they look at modification in isolation, without considering that these systems are large, interconnected networks of functional parts all working together. And it all starts at the genetic level, from the DNA itself. DNA genes code for proteins. Regulatory information organizes when these proteins are built and how much should be made. Further regulatory systems coordinate where these proteins go after they’re built. And yet more informational networks place the proteins into the final system in coordination with other proteins. Then these protein systems are fit together to make entire organs, tissues, bones, etc. All of these systems and processes are coordinated from the DNA - which means major modification like turning a fish fin into a bird wing requires many coordinated DNA changes across the entire network. One change at a time simply cannot lead to the coordination of an entire multi-part coordinated system like this. A mutation that changes one protein would need another coordinated mutation to fit that mutated protein into the right place, which would require other proteins to be mutated to fit together into that system, which would also require yet more regulatory mutations to keep everything coordinated... Nothing works in isolation. It's all connected. Which is why it can't evolve one step at a time. One step at a time does nothing. Life requires all or nothing systems. Only intelligence can engineer all or nothing systems.show more

Two weeks ago I fixed one of my teeth... with algorithms I wrote a couple of years ago! I got hooked by 3D scanning when I started to work for a software shop in Zurich that was programming 3D computational geometry algorithms for denture scanning to produce crowns (and more). Back then, a typical reconstruction pipeline was like: scan the patient’s teeth using an intraoral scanner, reconstruct the surface mesh, design the restoration digitally, and finally mill the crown out of ceramic. We were working mostly with point clouds and meshes, but it wasn’t just math, it was craftsmanship translated into a digital process. Every micron mattered. You could literally see how a good algorithm meant a better fit in someone’s mouth. Gaussian Splatting isn’t about surface reconstruction, it’s about appearance reconstruction. It doesn’t care about explicit topology, it captures how light interacts with the scene. In a sense, it’s the opposite philosophy of the dental world: instead of modeling what the object is, it models how the object looks. 3D Gaussian Splatting enables applications like training self driving cars, teaching robots to understand their environment, creating virtual worlds, or monitoring real sites. It represents scenes as millions of small Gaussians rendered in real time without the need for meshes or textures. Coming from a world where precision geometry was everything, this shift felt natural. It’s still about reconstruction, but with a different goal: not manufacturing a perfect object, but reproducing how the world actually looks. Two weeks ago I got my first dental crown, made with the same software, reconstruction algorithms, and Swiss precision I once helped develop. I haven’t worked there in two years, but sitting in that chair and seeing the process from the other side was a proud moment. It reminded me why I love this field.show more

This deserves a thumbs up! 👍 But give me... a moment, my fine motor skills are still developing. As your little one grows, their physical (or “motor”) development happens on two interrelated planes: “Gross motor” development relates to the use of large muscle groups in the arms, legs and core used to balance, crawl, walk and jump (to name a few). And “fine motor” development describes the development of the small and precise muscle movements needed to manipulate your hands, wrists, fingers, feet, and toes. Both categories take time and practice to develop, with fine motor skills tending to trail gross motor skills in their refinement. Which makes sense. Fine motor skills are all about precision. Which leads us to this sweet little guy, who wants to celebrate by flashing a thumbs up to his mom and dad… but requires a little extra time and effort to get his thumbs to cooperate. Fine motor skills are critical to writing/drawing, the use of scissors, and the manipulation of things like buttons and zippers, just to name a few. You can help aid this development by providing lots of safe opportunities for your little one to practice strengthening the muscles of the hands and wrists, for example. Finger paint, crayons, play-doh, and eating utensils are all great options. Anything that will engage these small muscle groups. But even then, know that fine motor development takes a combination of practice and time. This happy little guy was shared to TT by chenko(dot)tattoo. (If you’re looking for the account use a period in place of the “dot” - I removed it here because the platform wanted to interpret this as a web link.)show more

One more secret before the pharaoh’s curse erases my... brain later today. This is my legacy for you to continue. Goodbye! Remember that year when I desperately tried to cast the ancient Egyptian “impossible ashtray” using countless tips and tricks and failed badly every single time? The problem back then? I was unable to come up with a mix that hardens without cracking using a few millimeters thickness only. I tried to pour the geopolymer mix onto a wax shape 🕯️ , a balloon 🎈, then onto the outer side of a bowl etc. But no matter how hard I tried, my “impossible ashtray” fell apart into coin sized pieces because of cracking. I have wasted gazillions of hours, and enormous amounts of metakaolin and waterglass just to learn how NOT to cast this object. But the impossible ashtray must be a casting, no matter what. Right? I admired ancient Chinese porcelain’s precision for a long time but it took me more than a year to connect the two. This is how slow my brain 🧠 is. Because who cares? There was certainly no connection between ancient China and Egypt, right? Except… History Investigation by Vee showed us that ancient Chinese people used the very same tools for jade works than Egyptians for… khm 🫣 Is that a connection or a coincidence? God knows. But even if it’s a coincidence, it was worth checking whether porcelain making techniques could have been anything to do with geopolymers. What makes porcelain different from everything else is that they pour the porcelain mix INSIDE a hard mold (made from gypsum), let it dry for 2-4 minutes and then pour the rest of the mixture out of the mold. So they are creating a few mm thin layer INSIDE, on the inner wall of the mold. And then, as the porcelain mix is shrinking (lightbulb moment!💡) while drying, it will release the mold and you end up with a precision mug or other object ready to go into the oven. Now have a good look at my very first, not cracked, beautiful geopolymer “precision vase” created using the porcelain method in a plastic container. Yes, it is red. I swear I’ll redo it with white metakaolin. Yes, it’s not an ashtray. Yes, it inherited its precision from a 21st century object. Yes, yes, yes. But! It’s a few millimeter thick cast stone in a shape of a bowl! A STONE!!!!! 🪨🪨🪨🪨 How cool is that? Do you think it’s still impossible to create the “impossible ashtray” via casting? Fun fact: the impossible ashtray is “carved” from “anortoistic gneiss” officially, which is a fancy made up word for WE DON’T KNOW.show more