early_riser

I have a few.

Caerulium: a blue, non reactive metal with a similar cultural role to yinrih as gold has for humans. Claravian sacred objects such as thruibles and aspergillia are often made of caerulium. The Commonthroat word for caerulium is rdfsjHg, which means "sky-metal"

Tailstone: a magenta-colored crystal that's used for FTL communication. Partisan Territory is the largest supplier of tailstone to the rest of Focus. The word tailstone is a somewhat inexact translation of the Commonthroat sKGqrCg, which uses the word rC meaning to flick with the tail. To flick oneself on the side with the tip of the tail, as though shoeing a bothersome insect, is similar to a human dismissively waving the hand.

Polymerite: A material that can be molded or extruded like plastic. After being cured through exposure to gamma rays, it becomes as strong as steel. Polymerite comes in a number of grades, all of which are naturally neon-colored and translucent. This gives a lot of yinrih tech a distinct late 90s aesthetic.

Floatstone: This one's fictional in-universe. It's a substance said to be able to negate the effects of gravity. Many yinrih choose to live permanently in orbital colonies without any artificial gravity in order to free up all four paws for grasping and manipulation. Many dream of having the convenience of living planetside with the freedom of movement afforded by microgravity.

I've wanted to do this for a long time. My current ADHD hyperfixation is NodeBB, but I think my questions fit most anything that you want to be available to the general public and not just yourself and your friends.

Basically, I want to host a NodeBB instance intended for the general public out of my house. What are the risks of doing this? In particular, what are the risks of doling out a web address that points to my personal IP address? Is this even a good idea? Or should I just rent a VPS? This is 80% me wanting to improve my sysadmin skills, and 20% me wanting to create a community.

I have a DMZ in place. Hosts in the DMZ cannot reach the LAN, but LAN hosts can reach the DMZ. If necessary, I can make sure DMZ hosts can't communicate with each other.

I have synchronous 1 Gb fiber internet. Based on the user traffic of similar forums, I don't anticipate a crush of people.

I know the basics of how to set up a NodeBB instance, and I've successfully backed up and restored an instance on another machine.

I'm not 100% on things like HTTPS certs. I can paste a certbot command from a tutorial, that's it.

Anything else I should know? Thanks!

EDIT:

I also have a domain, a couple of them, actually. They're like potato chips; you can't stop at just one.

I don't plan on self-hosting email used for forum registration and announcements. I'm not a masochist.

The usual greeting phrase is Light shine upon you, friend. Despite the phrase's religious character it is just as common in secular circles. Refusal to use it marks one as an ideologue even among the religiously indifferent.

In the most common greeting gesture across yinrih cultures, The greeter rears up on his hind feet and pats himself on the belly twice with the left forepaw. Many humans assume this is an invitation for tummy rubs. Acting on this assumption is a quick way to get slapped with an assault charge.

In reality, the gesture indicates trust by exposing the vulnerable underbelly to the person being greeted, trusting they won't take advantage of their weakness.

All Yinrih cultures have very strict proxemics, and interpret human petting as a gross violation of their personal space. Since Wayfarers (followers of the Bright Way) are very eager to befriend humans, they will accept or even offer a human-style handshake, but not without a certain amount of cringing at first.

Yinrih, for their part, hear that a "firm" handshake is considered a good greeting gesture. Unfortunate human recipients of yinrih handshakes get to learn how sharp yinrih claws are.

Why are there three of these? I only posted it once.

I am unreasonably annoyed by the trope of races based on animals using ear holes in their clothing and especially armor. The Raison d'etre of a hat is to protect the wearer from sun, rain, cold, wind, or blunt force. Nobody but nobody is going to ignore the most delicate, sticky-outy parts of their head when designing a hat.

With that rant out of the way, here's how I've dealt with this problem for my monkey foxes.

Yinrih ears, like those of Terran canids, are motile, cartilaginous structures that serve a few functions beside the obvious entry point for sound. They help with thermal regulation, and they play a role in communicating emotion visually[^1] in a similar manner to human eyebrows.

The first problem one encounters when developing headgear is that it's uncomfortable to have weight pressing on the ears. One solution, employed by healers' cloaks[^2] is to have a support that keeps the cloth above the ears and allows them to swivel.

The other solution is to have rigid, form-fitting ear guards that protect the ears at the cost of limiting their mobility. This approach is used by powered armor helmets as well as in healers cloaks.

The guards used by healers are usually plastic or cardboard and are worn under the cloak.

Powered armor used by peacekeeping and law enforcement additionally use the ear guards as identifiers. The backs of the guards have colored retro-reflective chevrons that indicate rank or role.

Thoughts? What about other common nonhuman racial features like horns, tails, wings, or trunks?

[^1]: Yinrih primarily rely on pheromones, both through an ambient musk and via their ink, to communicate emotion, but can use ear and eyelid position to convey acute emotional reactions. Since humans cannot detect yinrih pheromones, yinrih who spend time with humans learn to be more expressive with their ears in order to make up the difference. [^2]: Healers take drugs to render themselves hairless save for the whiskers. They are the only yinrih who regularly wear clothes, in order to protect their now furless skin from the sun.

So I've seen these things mentioned around various ham related communities, and my immediate thought was why is this its own thing instead of an app/website/software? They go for nearly $500 at HRO. At that price it'd better cure cancer.

Yes I did recently learn geochrons used to be mechanical time displays and have been around for a long time, but in a vacuum I don't understand their utility when stuff like ham clock exists.

I have things that I can confidently call conworlds going back to my middle school days in the late 90s.

My current Lonely Galaxy setting is a rework of an earlier project I called variously The Last Grand Adventure or En after the in-universe name of the world. It has roots going back to my freshman year of college in the early 2000s.

I conworld mainly as a means of escapism. My current conworld was born out of a time of extreme stress. I couldn't handle the real world, so I retreated into my own. Perhaps not the most healthy way to cope, but eh.

Admittedly my attempt at this isn't too far from the typical "they just eat fish" solution, but I thought it would be interesting to play with how they acknowledge their respective statuses as predators and prey.

The two species have different but complimentary funeral rites. When a prey animal dies, it is ritually butchered and its meat consumed by a predator. When a predator dies, seeds are buried with the body so their remains fertilize crops that are eaten by members of the prey species. Specific individuals or families are chosen by the deceased in their will to carry out this task, and the relationship is treated like being a godparent.

Some text from a constructed world I play around with that leans into an 80s tech aesthetic. FTL communication exists, but the data rate is comparable to a dial up modem. Vibrant multimedia experiences like we see on the modern web do exist, but isolated to planet-wide internetworks. Interplanetary communication is a purely text-based affair.

The text is read from right to left, and is just the word for operating system in one of my conlangs.

What is the music of your world like?

All yinrih languages rely very heavily on subtle changes in pitch and volume to indicate meaning. As such, words cannot be put to a melody as it would make the lyrics unintelligible. Nevertheless, there is a form of "singing"--really melodic howling--which alternates between a spoken chorus to convey meaning interspersed with tuneful howls to evoke emotion. This is the principle form of Claravian sacred music. Indeed, the Commonthroat word for liturgy literally means an act of howling.

While words cannot be put to a melody, a melody can be shaped to form words. Once can play or howl the tone and volume contours of syllables to suggest words, much like many languages can be whistled.

The musical instrument pictured above is a string instrument that is strapped to the back and plucked with the tail while the musician is moving.

Other instruments include a theremin-like contrivance that uses all four paws, as well as various keyboards and touch-actuated electronic instruments.

So how about you?