Even though I've been on this site for awhile now, I wanted to make a post here as a formal introduction and say hi. Here are some random things about me I wanted to share:

• One of my big hobbies normally is 3D printing. I haven't been doing as much with it lately due to life stuff getting in the way, but I plan on getting back into it soon. I've been primarily using an $82 FDM printer I bought on sale on the Walmart website. It prints decent, especially for an $82 printer, but I'm kind of getting tired of tinkering with it and am saving for something nicer. I also sometimes do small electronics projects, often in conjunction with 3D printing. Also related to 3D printing is CAD modeling, which I've done a decent amount.

• I've also been trying to get more into modeling in Blender recently, and using that along with Unity to make stuff for VRChat. VRChat btw does not require VR as they have a desktop app, and there's a lot of neat and interesting stuff there that a lot of people here might be interested in, like movie worlds with an endless amount of free movies and tv shows, a world dedicated to helping people learn American Sign Language, a "Trans Academy" world as a resource for trans people, various furry worlds, meetup groups, and a lot more. I've really only just started with uploading content and recently I've been working on learning Unity/Blender by customizing a pre-made avatar and existing assets (instead of making something from scratch right away):

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And here are some ear piercings I recently added:

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• I have a very cute dog that I love very much. I think she's a lab/pit mix but I picked her up at a Humane Society where I used to live and I'm honestly not sure.

• As far as leftist politics goes, I'm very interested in "socialism with Chinese characteristics" and actual conspiracies (CIA/deep state type stuff). I also often like reading about organizational theory and economic planning topics.

• I got the chance to visit China recently for something work related and it was an amazing experience. My expectations were a little high and it absolutely blew them away. The biggest surprise for me is just how friendly the people there were. I never believed the (racist) narrative pushed by western media of people in China being cold and unwelcoming, but it was actually one of the friendliest places I'd ever been to. This was also in a city of (I think) 14 million people, just to add that context. Prior to this, I'd taken a free and short intro to Mandarin course on Coursera, but after this I'm probably going to commit long term to learning it long term. I'm just still not 100% sure how I want to do that.

• As far as music, I've been listening to a lot of Japanese rock and have been finding a lot of pretty great stuff. I'm also trying to listen to more Chinese bands, which are a little tougher to find online, but I've found some great stuff through suggestions from folks here.

Anyways, that's about it for me right now. Feel free to ask any questions you might have, and please consider making a post like this yourself!

Also, since this is new, do you all have any feedback on it? Do the rules seem reasonable? Does the kitten theme fit or is it a bit too much?