Light Metal

No!  Not The Opposite Of Heavy Metal
I am talking - obviously! - about 3D printing in metal, where a laser is used to heat up a metallic powder, which is where the 'light' bit of today's title comes from.
     Up until a couple of days ago I'd no idea that there were even such things as metal 3D printers, until I saw an advert for them.  Art?

Thus

     In the explanatory demonstration I watched, a Computer Aided Design program is used to create a virtual 3D model, which is then printed in a conventional (!) 3D plastic printer.  This is then scanned and the details fed into the metal printer.  The secret is an atomised metal powder, which is deposited in the printer, and a laser then sinters this powder together into the part, using successive layers of powder.  The end result is a part that is either impossible or extremely difficult and costly to make using normal casting or cutting processes.  Art?

Like this
(Whatever "this" is)

     The expensively-produced metal powder that isn't used is simply recycled, meaning far less waste than normal methods, as only enough powder is used to completely create the part.  This is super-cool technology that, to this clumsy, un-coordinated and entirely impractical person, borders on magic.
     Conrad has speculated on this before, yet not for a while so you'll hopefully have forgotten it.  Could you use a metal 3D printer to create the parts for another metal 3D printer?  A bigger one, say 50% bigger.  Then you use that one to make another one, 50% bigger still.  Until you get a metal 3D printer than can print you an entire car!
     Well, it's a thought.
     Motley, shall we contact one of these metal 3D printing firms and ask them to build us either an interocitor or a Veeblefetzer?

An interocitor, for your elucidation.
(Veeblefetzers not available)

"Obdurate"
Miranda of our office was having trouble with her Quick Crossword on Friday afternoon (you can tell our phone and e-mail traffic is low, can't you?), so Your Humble Scribe - who had come over on an entirely different matter to do with work - stuck his crossword solving skills into the mix and got all the missing words bar one, which Sarah had already got and shouted over before I could brilliantly solve it "PSYCHE).
     The clue for this one was "Hard hearted (8)" and she'd already got O_D_ _ _A_E, so it was easy peasy to fill in the blanks.  I don't think either she nor Eileen, sitting next door and also puzzling over the clues, were familiar with the word.

Obdurate personified

     "Hard hearted" isn't really correct, either, because the conventional meaning is that of a stubborn person.  As above.  Of course it has it's inevitable roots in Latin, "Ob" meaning "Against or in opposition to" and "Durus", meaning "Hard", and becoming "Obdurare".
     There you go, now you know more than you did five minutes ago.

Spooky
No!  I am not talking about the Dakota converted to a gunship of the Vietnam Unpleasantness era - though we may come back to that - but rather back to the r/reddit "Ask Me Anything" from an ex-CIA agent over on Youtube.  Very interesting stuff.

Just another day at the office

     One question was, did live employees within the CIA look down upon people who left, rather than retiring?  And the unexpected answer was YES, they certainly did.  It was considered bad form, and the disdain increased exponentially if the leaver went to to write memoirs or have a public profile.  Partly from jealousy and envy, explained our ex-spook, because those left in will be wondering if they made the right choice about remaining in.
     On a slightly lighter note, our narrator also told of the time a CIA technician was trying to make a spray that would enable rubber gloves or shoes to temporarily adhere to vertical surfaces.

You know, for times like these

     What he actually created was a disgusting fart spray that hung around for hours and hours.  Which, to be honest, could be quite as useful as very tacky rubber-soled shoes.

     There will now be a pause as I wrap myself around some dinner.
     I'm back.  There was a lot of that pasta melt.  I wonder if it was supposed to feed more than one person?
                          

More Of Them 51 Sci-Fi Books
Apparently one author previously mentioned, Ted Chiang, is responsible for a short story that was turned into the film "Arrival", which is news to me.
     Anyway, back to BookBub and -

This!

     Yes, of course I've read it.  I first heard it mentioned by Samuel Delaney in an interview, when he declared that Larry's working out the physics and energy requirements were entirely redundant and Gandalf - being only 10 at the time I knew not wot of him - could have come in, waved his staff and created the Ring, and that would have been just as valid.
     The story is about an alien mega-structure known as the Ring, because it takes that shape, except it's in orbit around a sun in the Goldilocks zone.  Who built it?  Unknown.  What is it for?  Speculatively, living space: the blurb for this one mentions it has three million times the surface area of Earth.  Are there any aliens left?  Who knows!

Plus, rents are low

     Shall we have another.  O go on.

Yup

     Yes, read this one, too.  A gloomy dystopian end of the world story, as far as I recall.  The plot eludes me, and I remember being both puzzled and unconvinced at the mention of "virtual bullets", which surely are an exercise in uselessness?  It has a bit of a cop-out ending, too, which authors like to play off as "ambiguous" which can be translated as "I ran out of ideas" - something about a badly infected foot wound.

Finally -
I am watching a Norwegian drama called "Ragnarok" as the premise seemed interesting, and what do you know, Norwegian scenery is quite stunning.  The Norks themselves are pretty good-looking, too.

And with that, we are done!