Sorry I dropped the ball on this topic

I didn't do anything. Kids don't even trick or treat in the complex. The office has games and gives out candy instead.

Did you do anything? Dress up? Show off your costumes/pumpkins/decorations

I'm in a mandatory evac zone. The nursing home where my mom is, is moving everyone to Orlando. My cat isn't up to date with her shots, so I don't think the shelter will take her. I'm going to be staying in my apartment. It's risky, but honestly, I would rather put myself in physical harm than leave Aster here alone and leave, not knowing when I can come back and what happened. I've already been under so much stress my hair is falling out, I can't take anymore mental abuse.

Right now the storm is a CAT 5. They think it will weaken to a strong CAT 3 by the time it gets here. Charlie, which hit this area in 2004, was a CAT 4 and a much bigger storm. It didn't cause flooding and it didn't take down a lot of buildings, just damaged windows and roofs.

I am on the second floor so wind will be a bit worse than at ground level. As long as the roof holds, I think I'll be okay.

100% the power will go out, but FPL is pretty good at restoration. The internet, on the other hand... my internet was out for 2 weeks after Ian, which was October of last year.

I'll update as long as I can.

If anyone else is in the path, try to stay safe.

Do you eat fast food?

I would eat a lot more of it if I had more money to spend My family was a once a week fast food deal. Since living on my own and especially since I don't drive, I have to have things delivered. I get Domino's pizza regularly. I was a Pizza Hut fan my whole life but they don't deliver to my apartment (unless I go through an app that will cost much more). The only other pizza places that will deliver to me are Papa Johns (which I boycott) and Pioneer's which might be local? They are very expensive and what if I don't like it? So I stick with Domino's. It's actually really good!

I like Burger King for burgers and fries. Wendy's is good too but more expensive. I do love that they still have the baked potato.

My sister's favorite was Arby's, she even worked there for a while before she got sick. We ate that a lot because we could use coupons and end up getting like 30 sandwiches for fairly cheap. This was back when they still had 5 for $5 deals. I doubt you can get that today. I love the curly fries and buy them frozen from the grocery store.

My all time favorite fast food joint is Long John Silvers. We had one locally that was in business forever but the building was damaged by hurricane Irma and the owner sold it. I don't even know what it is now. There's one in a nearby town and my sister and I made the trip there a few times just for some. I do wish another one would open here though.

Weirdly, we have Culver's here, which is from Wisconsin (my home state). I think the burgers are too greasy but I do like the fried cheese curds. The frozen custard is okay, but I prefer Dairy Queen's Blizzards. I've never had Dairy Queen food, just the ice cream cakes and Blizzards.

McDonald's is okay. I like the breakfast the best. Fries are good too and the little cheeseburgers are pretty good.

Hmm, what else is there? Oh, chicken! We have Chik fi la but I've never had it and never will. Popeye's is good, so crunchy! There's a Zaksby's somewhere nearby because we get the commercials. I ate there a few times when I lived in South Carolina. The Zaks sauce is so good. Kentucky Fried is good, that's my mom's favorite. I never really do fast food for chicken, I like to get hot tenders from Publix delivered instead.

I've always liked Taco Bell (and never had an issue with my stomach with it), but the local one is not good. They always mess up the order and the fillings are very sparse. There's a local Mexican place just down the block from me that I order from when I want it.

Apparently, there's a taco place that's becoming the most popular in the US, Del Taco? I had never heard of it. I think it started out west.

I've eaten at a lot of fast food places overall though. Travelling with my dad in his semi we always ate fast food, unless we were in Vegas. So I've tried a whole bunch. I really liked White Castle. We would stop at one in Georgia.

What do other countries have in terms of fast food? Anything local, or is it all US companies? I know the Sphinx in Egypt looks across the desert at a KFC.

Know a fact? Share it here!


Poison dart frogs are not poisonous in captivity. The toxin comes from the insects they eat in their natural habitat. Since these insects are not fed to them, they are safe to handle and popular as pets.

I cleaned up the sticky links, some sites were gone or moved.

Does anyone have any newer resources they know of or use? A lot of the tutorial links are so old, with old info, like using Mod Podge as a sealer. I mean there is an Angelfire site up there

I was thinking of adding a where to baits section and linking the HQG1C blanks and I discovered someone on Facebook making amazing 3D printed pony blanks.

What else could be added? New techniques? Like what? Gimme some ideas!

I'm still planning on making a new wing tutorial. I also picked up some new sculpting materials I still need to try out.

I feel this needs it's own thread.

I'll quote some responses from the other thread here.

as far as AI goes i'm very very skeptical. i think it's something that could be beneficial if it worked well and could do mundane tasks. the problem is so much of LLM type AI doesn't work well. that's the kind of AI that takes in a bunch of data and provides output. ChatGPT, Diffusion, etc. i'm not super familiar with the generative AI for art. it seems like it could be cool for creative artists but i do think there should be some kind of compensation/opt out for artists who's work is used to train the AI. do these companies even know who's art was used thought? i doubt it. and the idea of people selling AI generated art doesn't sit well with me.

i'm not an artist but i am a web developer and the code hosting services i use have rolled out AI coding assistants that learn off code that people store on their hosting services. there is no compensation for using people's code to train the AIs. in fact they charge you to use the AI and your code helped train. there is also no guarantee that the code training the AI is good, working code either. the results based on my personal testing are hit or miss. it's nice for repetitive stuff. but as far as anything challenging i find the results disappointing based on the hype.

i could go on and on about AI and how much i don't like it. i would never think it's bad to play around with for fun. I've done this myself with ChatGPT. my real worry is jobs lost and poor quality output. there are already a bunch of junk AI books on Amazon put out by scammers trying to make money for nothing. i also worry that companies with greedy leadership who don't care about quality and want to increase profit will try to replace employees with AI. there isn't much regulation yet and the people who run the leading AI tech companies suck and don't care about people. TBH i think they're a bit out of their minds. replacing humans with bad AI is bad for employees who lose jobs and customers who have to deal with a poor experience. there isn't a vision from these people to make the world better. to have everyone do less work and live in abundance. in it's current form AI is a hype bubble and a grift. like crypto and the metaverse was/still is. even the commercials promoting AI in software and devices don't really say much about what the AI will actually do. it's just "hey we added AI. give us more money!"

and yeah the "deepfake" videos terrify me. especially since so many people believe that if it's on video, it must be real. also i've read that a lot of it is porn so that's horrifying for people who may end up in a video without consent.

like most stuff that comes out of big tech, AI could be cool. but not in it's current form.

I am actually less scared of AI (do we need a separate thread to discuss this btw? It's interesting) as in real AI (actual artificial intelligence) than human-developed and human-taught AI, because that enables it to be influenced and manipulated in dangerous ways.

As a writer, too, I take pride in what I write being my own. I don't want someone to look at what I write and think I used something to help me write it. I don't know if that is the same as going out to artistically collaborate using the tech and acknowledging it as a tool...I think it may be different with words than with pictures. Not sure how...just how it feels to me.

I DO worry about it being used by people in universities to cheat assignments going forward. I don't want a doctor who didn't write their own assignments or do their own research to get their medical degree. :/ Plagiarism is already a big issue in universities (speaking as a former GTA, it's something we were trained to deal with). But AI is like having another person write an essay for you, only cheaper :/ I think this could be a problem in the future. Dr Google and all that :/

And I worry about how AI already represents neurodiversity - I saw someone do some research on this, and AI presents an autistic person as a gloomy, skinny, white male in his twenties. It's not helpful.

You both bring up really good points.

@Beth, you're right about it being a nifty new thing that people and companies are exploiting, like crypto, etc. Maybe that's one of my things, because I do think AI and robotics will help humans reach a utopia one day. But for right now it's mostly people using it for fun or profit. And I am kind of sick of all my programs adding AI stuff to them. Photoshop has done it and it's very pushy about using it. And YouTube, when I go to upload content, it's AI this and AI that.

@Taffeta, I sometimes forget there are people who would use it for bad things. You brought up things I've never even thought of, like the doctor thing. That IS worrisome. And yeah, more complex concepts that aren't widely understood tend to be stereotyped, that's the fault of the human coders. It's like that robot from Dubai. I forget her name. In interviews she has said things like robots will take over and humanity is doomed, etc. But again that's on the people who programmed her. ChatGPT is getting like that too. When it was first released it was much more interesting to talk to before people sent it down the meme hole. Now it's like chatting to someone on the site that shall not be named.

Hopefully, somewhere there is a dedicated group of people working on an AI that won't be polluted with awful things. That day might be a long way off still.

So, yes, I agree that it can be dangerous and maybe we aren't ready for it yet. I still find it fascinating.

I took a gamble and purchased this on Aliexpress for $28. I was prepared to get a bad bootleg but she is actually really nice!

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I'm going to see what else the seller has, they didn't have all the figures, but I think they had Sunset Shimmer who I would like too. I'd also like Rainbow Dash but they didn't have that one.