Let your Congress-critters know this is not the right thing to do.

I've a friend who lives in San Francisco who is in a moderately successful band. They recently concluded a tour through the midwest, where they played Indianapolis, Louisville, Nashville, and Chicago, among other cities. No STL dates at all.

Les Claypool's Frog Brigade is on tour as well, and skipped STL but did play in Peoria, Louisville, and KC this spring.

Last year, the closest Nightwish came was Chicago.

I get Songkick notifications for other bands -- mostly metal and eclectic -- and more often than not, they are playing everywhere but STL. After living for 20+ years in Seattle, I miss having bands come and play even the small clubs.

To avoid sounding petulant, there have been some tours I looked forward to that came to Pop's in Sauget, but I'm sure there are other bands people here like that have bypassed STL venues as well.

So: Anyone have any ideas why STL gets passed over in favor of Nashville and Louisville?

I recently had two print failures on my Ender 3 Neo. In both, it looked like the part came free from the heated build plate after about an hour or so of printing. Both had good starts in the first 15 minutes or so. I had a successful print finish two days ago.

It has been hot and humid here today, and my printer is in a non-AC shed not connected to the house.

I'm wondering if I should wait to kick off the next print until this evening when it should be cooler. Do I need to clean the build plate? I've not done that at all, other than make sure these isn't any filament left on the plate when it finishes.

UPDATE: It's apparent the problem isn't the heat, but the fact that I haven't cleaned the build plate since... well, ever. Adjusting the title to reflect that.

I took advantage of a recent offer to stock up on filament for my Ender 3 Neo. I purchased six 1Kg spools of Sunlu PLA+ Matte in grey and white colors. I loaded one of the white spools into the printer and did a small test print -- no problems, looks good, everything seemed fine.

So I decided to fire up a longer print, 8+ hours of an ocarina I downloaded from Printables and sliced using Cura Ultimaker. However, I have yet to have a successful print. Three different times, the filament has gotten bound up on the spool, so much so that the feed mechanism just gives up and the print stops. I've cancelled two of these prints after 2-3 hours when the filament got stuck on the spool.

Has anyone else seen this? Is there a fix, short of pulling it all off the spool? I've never had to, but can you even respool the filament without causing more problems? I can't babysit the printer for 8-10 hours, and would like to kick off some overnight jobs again one day...

And just like that, SCOTUS affirms that someone's deeply held beliefs are more valid and in need of protection than someone else's reality.

A story on a local organization reaching out to help the unhoused in my current area. The director of the organization is quoted using the term "unhoused", but the reporter (or their editor) decided to use the more charged term "homeless" in the by-line and the article.

From the article, when talking about the "groomer" slur aimed at LGBTQIA+ people:

"...There’s no drag queens being arrested for sexual assault of children, that doesn’t happen,” Trixie said. “Do you know where that happens? The church, okay? That’s where. This whole country mollycoddles Christians and I’m fucking tired of it, tired of it!

Last year, a friend of mine died in Washington state. Instead of being buried or cremated, he opted to have his remains composted in a process sometimes called terramation. It's an environmentally friendly option to normal burial, and legal in several states including Washington. Illinois had House Bill 3158 on the docket this session to make it legal here as well.

The bill passed the house, but never made it out of the state senate committee, so it's dead for now (no pun intended). I decided to look up how my state representative voted, and because I live in the red part of a blue state, I was unsurprised to see they voted against it.

I wondered why that might be -- could it be a simple partisan thing? Of course, that's part of it, but another part is the opposition. A little research shows that two groups opposing it are funeral directors (less $$$ for them), and <gasp!> the Catholic Church.

Why? Human dignity, they say -- Daniel Welter, retired from the Archdiocese of Chicago, said turning humans into compost "degrades the human person and dishonors the life" that person lived. He compared it to composting vegetable trimmings and egg shells. Funeral directors also commented on the lack of dignity for the dead.

Thoughts? Mine are simple -- I am built from the dust of stars, as is everything else on this planet. It's my birthright to return to it. Anything that prevents that is anathema to me.

I also find it supremely ironic that, at "traditional" funerals, the priest says "earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust" as they lower a preservative filled body in a lacquered box into the ground which is encased in sealed vault, completely separated from the earth and ashes and dust to which the dead is supposed to return.

R. Buckminster Fuller, creator of the buckyball, was a professor at SIU in Carbondale in the 1960's. At that time, he built and lived in a large buckyball home, which has been restored and will soon be a museum to the man and his legacy.

A small town in southern Illinois reaches racial parity in their city council makeup, with a black mayor and equal number of black and white members. Oh, and they also have an openly trans council member as well...

This from a part of the state where some people still fly Confederate battle flags.