Endless Knot ∞ Finite Wood 

LOLOL

That's how I found Pocket as well. I'm so glad I did!

Jer Schmidt sent me... ru-vid.com/show-UC0T7tvy44mlQCjaTtparOZw

As are your comments. I'm happy that you enjoy.

Appreciated ;)

Thank you.

But... Is that blonde, brunette or red?

Nice of you to notice. It's not the format that's most conducive to success here. Though I did add a splash of mild music to this one, most of them follow a similar (dry) format. I try to keep speculation/opinion restricted to my second channel. Hope you enjoy some of it.

​@@pocket83, Good Girl! 👌 Incidentally, Slave, are you VEGAN? 🌱

That's a piece of trivia I would not have known had you not made the comment. Thanks ;)

Strength and simplicity. Oh, and the fact that those little miters would be barely big enough to see!

Yes! That would've been beautiful. Probably pretty hard to capture it as well for a video, though. Visually, lots is lost in translation on a project like this.

Great and lowly are RELATIVE. 😉 Incidentally, Slave, are you VEGAN? 🌱

Cute pun. And it's a great suggestion. There's a solid wall right now separating our kitchen from the living space, and we'd like to open it up a bit more with a mild remodel: I'd love to incorporate that idea by making an arched opening and then filling in the spandrels with geometry. Why not, right? Clearly, the geometry in my head isn't going away just because I pretend not to see it. Might as well open the gates, and fill the house.

You'd risk it becoming visible. This thing is viewed from the front, where there are still unbroken 'straight' edges, so it's nearly impossible to notice as it is. In fact, it has been hanging in my living room since, and I'd completely forgotten about sanding those pieces thin until now, when you just mentioned it.

@@pocket83squared OK that makes sense. Next question: How to bend strips of wood into circles and arcs, so that you can make knots similar to this but with curves. Like a lot of Celtic knots. I guess you use boiling water / steam and a jig, but how far can you really bend wood sideways?

@@huttarl Not far. Sorry to burst your bubble, but steam-bending still has its limitations. A complete 360° cross-grain bend is probably not possible¹ in any practical sense. One still needs to be mindful of the grain when bending wood, which is why curved laminates are usually made from thin strips with similar grain orientation. That said, my own experience with steaming wood is limited, so I'm not the best person to ask. Every time I've encountered such a project/problem, I've just ended up finding another, easier way. ¹Note that it's still possible to bend a wooden knot from a branch, just not a flat-cut board.

@@pocket83squared Thanks for the quick and helpful replies.

That would be different, not better. A Google search will show you what I mean.

If you want to know the truth, I sigh at the fact that it brings nearly as much interest and engagement as does the remaining 25:59.85 minutes of content. Even the ironic, fourth-wall-breaking ones (which often point deliberately at this trend) will still cause dozens of parrot comments. The keywords and timestamps are usually blocked, by the way, so these comments are mostly invisible; otherwise the top discussion will end up with only one possible theme. Talk about egg on my face. Forgive me the indulgence, but I'm naturally pretty opinionated. That 0.15 second is the one place where I reserve some expressive space for social commentary here.

Tough comment to reply to. Two thousand years later, I have yet to reconcile those problems myself. Excuse me, but I'll have to admit to just deleting a few paragraphs, since it's so easy to get lost in the weeds on that one. Let's just remember to keep in mind that the Emperor's collection of thoughts were _not_ likely intended to be presented as philosophical rigor. From a generous, broad, conceptual point-of-view, his writing is far more valuable to me. As with all worldviews, in terms of consistency, his content may follow only one of two possible paths: either a critical investigation ends in paradox, or it continues along in its own defense, eventually splintering evasively into barely-coherent esoterica, and then further into diffuse vacuousness. At least his stuff was grounded in utility, even if it does seem inconsistent sometimes on close inspection. Too bad we can't ask him. Maybe it's better we can't! He'd might've have made a crappy (modern) leader. He was borderline complacent sometimes, and way too negative. I'm not even sure he would've been a good professor. Probably best if we cherry-pick his ideas, remembering their context, and admit that he must've been at minimum a good Man-simply by virtue of his restraint under the influence of unimaginable power. For the likely state of the case of our Free Will, or rather, our lack thereof, given this physical universe, I'd look elsewhere. (If I had a choice, I mean.)

@@pocket83 I agree, and I have admiration for the writings within a certain context. The stoic perspective has been very helpful to me. Whether it's consistent is beside the point. My disillusion of Free will, however, has been a troublesome experience. Granted, there is a presupposition that we live in a causal reality, and if that is found to be untrue then a revision would be necessary. But until then, each keystroke is preceded by the endless chain of events that lead to it. As I like to say, "It was never not going to happen".

@@Makebuildmodify Maybe this will sound superficial, or even cliche, but here's an idea that might help you. It doesn't give me any problems. This seems odd when I think about it, because I'm swimming in unresolved thought problems to the point of considerable psychological tension, but Hard Determinism is just something that I've been able to accept-deep-down. Let me relate a personal story. Recently, I applied for a position as a Carpentry Instructor at a local school. One full-time spot was available, and eight candidates were chosen for an interview. My presentation was scheduled for early on that morning, and so I'd assumed that I was going first, and that it was in the bag. Somewhere around a decade back, I started to adopt a zero-tolerance policy for lying. This is to say, I _don't_ lie, ever, if I can help it. Of course there are cases that can bend one's flexibility, but for the most part what comes out of my mouth is the closest thing to personal truth that I can safely relate to another. This is a problem in a job interview; in spite of my preparation to not make the mistake, I too readily admitted to my frequent indecision and inexperience in some related areas. Back in the car on the ride home, I was hit with the most perplexing feeling of uncertainty I've experienced in, well, maybe ever. There was just no way to tell if I was going to get the job or not, and the very real possibility that I would _not_ just made me want it more. The ego sets in: now I can feel my rationalizing start to boil to the surface; I'm starting to tell myself, _he was just after some dumb Paul Bunyan-looking redneck._ I wanted to believe that it would be an injustice for me to not get the job. The reality though, was that the person who I'd be replacing was a professional cabinet installer who, no doubt, through years of experience, was better suited to helping young people to prepare for general entry into the trades than I could ever be. In contrast, I'm probably (too) unfocused, easily irritated, and arrogant for the position. When I received the phone call expressing that I would not be receiving the full-time job, but that they were still offering me a part-time position as an evening instructor, I refused. Looking back through a few weeks, I now see the nature of my childish regard for myself more clearly, and how, from the point-of-view of the other guy, it was never _not_ going to happen. Great. Real insightful. Lesson learned, right? Pride deserves the occasional smack-down; if not for desert, at least for the sake of Karma, or even more realistically, for the necessary preservation of averages. But how do I _really_ accept failure (or worse, loss) in real-life? In that deep-down way, I mean? What works for me is to remember the anthropic principle: simply put, whatever question I ask myself about myself would be absurd to ask if it did not directly apply to me. Whatever position we might find ourself in, if it weren't that, it wouldn't be. The insight gained from the experience you've just had wouldn't be available to you, had you _not_ had the experience. The anthropic principle isn't just some evasive semantical hokum; it is a profound (but reflexively revolting) statistical assertion that defines our reality. In every possible rewind of that scenario, the other guy gets picked. If we were to go back in time and change a few of the physical dials in my favor, that wouldn't be this universe, would it? This piece of writing would then be a non-sequitur, and as far as I know from having written it, it is borne of me, and of those circumstances which have defined me as such. Of course, discussions of quantum uncertainty and 'many-worlds' interpretations notwithstanding-and in the least thought-terminating-cliche way I can express this sentiment-it is what it is.

​@@pocket83 I think that my cognitive dissonance is prompted by my default behavior to unconsciously to act as though Free Will exists. Intellectually, given our current understanding of reality, I can see that Free Will is incompatible. It’s obvious that my behavior is at odds with my strong confidence in our current understand of the reality. Cultural inculcation is strong. Concepts I’ve used like merit, blame, justice, vengeance, serendipity, etc., are all at odds with the lack of Free Will. I've tried to reconcile this by viewing my behavior as being pragmatic; using two separate descriptions of reality. Analogous to Newtonian physics vs. Relativistic physics. Both describe behavior at different resolutions. Intellectually, I can see that a particular occurrence was never not going to happen. For problem solving it can be valuable in some respects. Socially, our interactions, understanding of each other, and languages are steeped in Free Will. Because of this it’s only practical to behave as thought Free Will exists. I do find that it’s more difficult to hate or be angry now. And for some reason love, admiration, and empathy haven’t lost any weight. I know that if a “thing” just “is” there is no reason to “feel” anything. But now I find it easier to admire a good “thing” for what it is.

@@Makebuildmodify Sure. To all of that. But the dissonance returns. There's just no way somebody like you or I can leave it at that. I mean, we can-provisionally-just so that we can behave normally, and like you said, act pragmatically. Sorry in advance to continue to push on this, because I _was_ offering a solution for accepting what is an apparent paradox, but I guess the offer was a bit of a low-ball. Who am I to give sage advice on one of the toughest problems ever? I was doing my best, but it still feels as though we're settling for a less-than-satisfactory explanation. At our best, we're on shaky ground with determinist and compatibilist arguments. Dualism, of course, is a known dead-end. What I really think about our conundrum is a bit more complicated, so it's tough for me to express with clarity and concision. In essence, it's not whether free will is possible that matters to us, so much as does the question of whether or not the suggestion of it that's coming from our conscious experience carries any legitimacy at all. That probably didn't make sense. Here, I have an unlisted video about it. Please watch and consider, and then we can continue to push on this weirdness if you're in the mood: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-90e5v_s3Nt8.html

Odd Your only experience in wood strip making is the watching of others do it Strictly via videos or have ya seen it being done irl? Hmmm, the making of wood dowels must make you catatonic At the very least, sad, yeah? Mouldings Chop sticks Lattice HolySh!t,, toothpicks

@@AtticusDraco No, I've made them. "Never" was referring to an active status and not a state of wood strip virginity. And no I'm not bothered watching other people do it. It's just a personal thing. Many of those other things you mentioned do make waist but aren't necessarily wasteful. Like, lesser grade wood and disposable Chopsticks are made from bamboo I believe. This is why I funnel on my woodworking skills into messing with plastic. Every cut can be remelted and used again with my methods. I even plan to start making dowel rods soon as soon as I can buy or build a cutter.