Month: May 2025

Glue Guide

So here is a strange question. I underestimated just how sharp exacto knives are while cleaning up the seams on my minis. Can i just use the plastic glue to seal it rather then keep changing bandaids each time it comes back open and bleeds again?

u/themonkeyone, who I assume isn’t a plastic model

When I saw this, I realized I really did need to write this up. I cannot allow the public to remain uninformed any longer regarding glue!

Plastic Cement

Also known as: Plastic Glue

This stuff smells like nail polish remover, and it’s no coincidence: they both use Acetone. The Acetone in plastic glue liquefies the plastic surfaces and when they re-harden, they’re very well stuck together. Cement is right; this stuff creates very strong bonds. The drawback is that it’s only good for specific plastics; the sort of polystyrene that you see in typical model kits, but it won’t work if you’re attaching a rock to a base or working with resin parts. It also won’t bind up your skin (otherwise nail polish remover would be far more dangerous. If you take nothing else from this article, take this:

You cannot close wounds with plastic cement!

If something is stuck on with plastic cement, your best bet for cutting it off.

SuperGlue

Now, I’m not a doctor, but I’m assured you can close a wound with superglue. It certainly sticks robustly to skin. Cyanoacrylate, the technical term for this type of glue will readily bond skin, so avoid using it without gloves. If you do, I recommend GoJo. CA glue will work with a variety of materials and form very strong bonds, but it has a few drawbacks: it’s finicky about setting. You get a few seconds to hold your bond steady (pressure is good) and then the glue is no good, you’ll need to try again after removing the now-spent glue. If you glue painted parts you need to make sure you don’t get glue anywhere visible, because it dries opaque. Its quick setting can be an asset though; you can pull off poses that would be slightly trickier for a longer setting glue. I hear you can freeze it off, but I haven’t had success with this myself.

PVA Glue

PVA glue, also known as School Glue, is also used in wood glues. It’s the least consequential of glues; you’re not going to poison yourself with it (unless, I imagine, you drink it) and if it sticks to your fingers you can can just wash it off, or rub your fingers together for a few seconds. It’s popular for basing because it’s thick, goopy, and easy to fix if you make a mistake; just add sand! You can even get it premixed with sand in the form of nice basing paste. It can be dissolved by soaking in water for a day or so and then scraping off with a toothpick.

April web links

Should I write one of those email newsletters instead of posting?

A behind the scenes look [at viper race rave] (phlogios.itch.io)

The line between genius and madness is really in play here. I’m of course interested because it’s retromac and EV Nova related, but it’s also a shining example of people doing really interesting things in the retrocomputing space. Today’s technology isn’t the only valid technology to build for.

Hallucinated package names fuel ‘slopsquatting’ (The Register)

Now that’s a brilliant exploit. Wish I’d thought of it. Finally a use case for LLMs!

mirsoft.info

That site is a relic! you don’t see many sites like that around these days. I was looking for the EarthSiege music to remix, but found the MIDI already perfectly well arranged. You love to see it.

La Brea Tar Pits team clarifies more details about “dire wolf” DNA situation (reddit.com)

Been following this story, because not only do they seem to be deliberately disregarding the famous cautionary tale of Jurassic Park, they’re also doing it in a way that’s raising fraud-eyebrows, not just safety eyebrows.

Another good post about it here.

We’re sorry we created the Torment Nexus (antipope.org)

Did you ever wonder why the 21st century feels like we’re living in a bad cyberpunk novel from the 1980s?

It’s because these guys read those cyberpunk novels and mistook a dystopia for a road map. They’re rich enough to bend reality to reflect their desires. But we’re not futurists, we’re entertainers! We like to spin yarns about the Torment Nexus because it’s a cool setting for a noir detective story, not because we think Mark Zuckerberg or Andreesen Horowitz should actually pump several billion dollars into creating it. And that’s why I think you should always be wary of SF writers bearing ideas.

Turbo Pascal 3.0 Compiler / Code Generation Internals (pcengines.ch)

When you’re as enthusiastic as I am for old school computing, you’re bound to run into people writing with fondness about Turbo Pascal. I had no idea someone had reverse engineered the thing.

Where the wood-wide-web narrative went wrong (undark.org)

This amounts to what you might call a retraction of the sensational wood-wide-web story you probably heard or saw a few years back, but I wish it was longer snd more detailed. Never heard of undark before, but will keep my eye on it.

Unauthorized Experiment Involving AI-generated Comments (reddit.com)

I almost wrote a whole angry post about this, but 404 Media did it better than I would have, so I’ll confine my thoughts to this little blurb.

This is yet another example of the AI community refusing to play by the rules and justifying their disregard for other people’s freedom of choice with self-aggrandizing platitudes about how what they’re doing is ‘so important’ that the cost to others doesn’t matter.

RFK Jr. rejects cornerstone of health science: Germ theory (Ars Technica)

I’m glad that not only did someone finally write this explicitly, but they also slogged through enough material to find a smoking gun.

Colorsquad16 (colorsquad.bandcamp.com)

This is a treasure trove of IDM artists you may never have heard of. Iceleaps, Predawka, _ir and Utopia Cloak make great showings here.