Flying fluffy bats~

Great dialogue can come from radical emotional honesty. But in most real conversations, people

dodge questions

answer indirectly

lie (badly)

change the subject

crack jokes to avoid serious answers

lie (convincingly)

say half of what they mean

tell the truth but get so anxious/angry/defensive others now think they're lying

If your dialogue feels unnatural, it might be because everyone is saying exactly what they think, or articulating their thoughts too well. Try letting characters hide things instead.

people don’t always speak in full sentences,

slang can change depending on age range, demographic, etc. &

(AgentStrudel)

Hidden PCB silkscreen art

Slide 2 of 2

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What you're looking at is a subtle artistic inside joke within the world of electrical and hardware engineering.

During the design process of PCB's, engineers have to map out the board's silkscreen (aka the nonconductive layer of apoxy ink, typically in white, black or yellow, that is used to indicate components, design, and test points). This is an essential part of circuit board building that is an integral part of the design process, serving as essentially a communicative manual to anyone servicing it, or something fun to find for teardowns. Think of it as a medical diagram to the board's meat and bones. It is layered on top of the solder mask which in turn protects the copper of the board from corrosion.

Many designers opt to put hidden messages, symbols or popculture references within the leftover/non-essential spaces as a fun way to connect them to their work. It's a piece of the artist within the art, and acts as a fun little real life easter egg to anyone brave enough to open up the tech housing it.

They don't serve any functional purpose to the board, but they sure are cool :)

Images and info sourced from flickr, r/hiddenpcbeggs, and pcbgogo

I, knowing that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity, waited carefully for the lab director to be deep in conversation with someone else on the other side of the laboratory. And then I took my chance.

Test tubes, as it turns out, are really bad as shot glasses. Their shape turns any liquid inside into a stream, so you really can't knock it back quickly - it takes a couple seconds. Additionally, the best way I can describe the taste of virus concentrate was "sterile rot". A very unique kind of bad! Made worse by the test tube's inefficiency as a shot glass.

(by the way we were studying bacteriophages, not animal viruses. these viruses are too specialized on attacking prokaryotes to even recognize our cells as targets at all, according to studies.)

(but also like. if the viruses managed to successfully switch hosts and killed me with a violent infection, itd still be worth it.)