I we ar my PPE. Most commonly eye and ear protection but I’ll wear a dust mask when routing or sanding, etc. Allowing onesself to be injured in the shop is unethical.

I think we could sacrifice billionaires to Peppa Pig and it’d still get the job done.

No, but I did case mod a computer for this once. My Fractal Node 202 my last computer is in has a very bright white power button LED, too damn bright. Fortunately in this case it’s a standard 5mm through hole LED standing up off the board on its leads a bit, bent to point out the front. So I bent it to point upward. Dimmed it down significantly.

Somewhere in middle school they give up on the “if you have two apples and buy two more apples you have four apples” or “if you have 3 pizzas cut into 8 slices each and your family eats 13 slices how many pizzas do you have left?” and they start trying to teach 11 year olds by making them memorize proofs and phrases like the transitive property of equality.

To a lot of high schools and colleges, the aesthetic of academia is much more important than students actually learning anything useful, so they teach math class with a chalkboard full of squiggles rather than any kind of practical approach.

From Algebra class on up, it’s taught as a rules following exercise. “Okay, now we do this, and then who knows what we do next?” And it is amazing how many of them are set up as trick questions, how often out of the infinite span of numbers there’s often one right answer and one wrong answer. “How many of you got five? Well you’re wrong, it’s negative 3.”

Meanwhile, I was learning how to fly. In flight school, you learn how to navigate by dead reckoning. I want to fly this course on the map, which is x distance and x degrees from true north as measured from the chart. Given a weather brief and the performance characteristics of the plane from the pilot’s operating handbook, calculate: true airspeed given indicated airspeed, altitude and temperature wind correction angle, given true course, true airspeed, wind direction and wind speed ground speed, given true course, true airspeed, wind direction and wind speed true heading given true course and wind correction angle magnetic heading given true heading and local magnetic variation time aloft given distance to travel and ground speed fuel consumed given time aloft and fuel consumption

The tool you’re taught to use to calculate all of this looks like this:

It’s basically a circular slide rule, that has a vector plotter on the back. The trigonometry is done by accurately drawing and measuring the triangle, the ratio problems (anything “per hour”) is done by rubbing a couple of logarithms together, and you’re on your own for the addition and subtraction. Ever used a slide rule? They don’t keep track of the decimal point for you. So you have to do these built-in sanity checks, like “Wait, no, the plane doesn’t even hold 70 gallons of gas, there’s no way I’ll burn that much in ten minutes.”

I learned how to do that before I took physics class, and surprised my physics teacher that I knew how to do “boat crossing a river” problems with a weird piece of cardboard. Later on, when I was teaching flight school, I taught that procedure to “It’s been 30 years since math class” boomers and “Trigonometry is next semester” teenagers. They all picked up on it without much problem, because “the wind is blowing you to the right” is a real thing they’ve felt in their own asses by now.

And here are some using my new “dial it in” method. Cut a test, measured how far off it was, adjusted the template that far and it’s done, no guess-and-check-oops-too-far.

I think I’ve done a reasonable job improving my dovetail jig.

That 12 inch Porter Cable model; it has some problems with repeatability. The reference marks are quite wide and positioned in a way to give a lot of parallax error. There was no real way to quantify how far you’ve moved the template in and out, which meant it’s basically guaranteed to come out of alignment. So I took a knife to it. Scribed the alignment line around all the tines and put graduation marks on the brass thumb wheels. It’s a lot easier to be deliberate in adjusting this thing now.

It still needs a few other things here and there, and I need to put those alignment marks on other templates. But it’s a start.

I forget why, but Picard and Riker are away, Data is in command with Worf as his first officer. Data wants to be analytical and consider all options, Worf wants to fire all phasers and die in glorious battle. Data comes to a decision and gives orders, and Worf says “Finally!”

Data asks to see him in the ready room, and then dresses him down for talking back to him in front of the crew. They hash out what they expect the role of second in command is supposed to be, and with the military shit out of the way, Data then acknowledges that this dressing down may have damaged their friendship, and Worf replies that no, he was out of line so it was his fault, that he acknowledges that he was out of line and if we can overlook this incident he’d like to continue being friends.

Stated problems, voiced objections, addrressed objections, no personal slights, no raised voices, actual accountability expected and accepted…manliest conversation ever filmed.

I will FEED HIM.

We were each given like a quarter teaspoon of grounds and a toothpick.

I was taught that Jupiter had 17 moons, Saturn has 12 and Pluto has 1. Many more have been discovered since.

Then there’s the whole “different areas on your tongue taste different flavors.” Like you only taste sweet with the tip of your tongue, the middle tastes salty, etc. I remember being given various substances by my fifth grade teacher like sugar, coffee, lemon juice, table salt etc. and we tried putting them on different areas of our tongues and we were like “…no, we taste everything everywhere.”

I distinctly remember my fifth grade teacher trying to pull that.

Not while Ticketmaster exists.

I don’t remember one in TIS-100 or Infinifactory.

There’s a pretty good Solitaire game built into the Zachtronics game Shenzhen IO.

The hospital? What is it?

“I should probably buy another box of nitrile gloves.” excellent decision.

Like many things about my cat’s past, I have no idea why she’s called Izzy. I didn’t name her and the person who did has passed away.

And don’t you forget it.

You’re god damn right we do.

The shithead in golf shorts in line ahead of you at Publix bitching out the cashier for not thanking him for letting her help him? The one who left where he’s from because he didn’t like it there and then wants here to be like where he’s from? That’s a Yankee, quite likely a halfback.

I’ve known women who won’t watch something or play a video game without a female lead or the ability to create a female character, so I assume the same has to be true for men.

I’ve seen women express confusion or even anger that the men in their lives choose to play as female characters in games, I don’t think I’ve seen the reverse.