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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 12th, 2023

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  • Donate money to your local food banks, homeless shelters, or any other non-profit that has a good reputation for assisting those in need.

    If someone approaches you asking for money, absolutely under no circumstances should you give it to them. Be sure to say that you do not carry cash to give them. Then if you are feeling that you need to give to them, then offer a meal or buy groceries using a credit card. You’ll find that most of them will decline.

    They are using YOUR GUILT to get their next drug fix most of the time. That guilt is artificial and the result of manipulation techniques they are employing against you. It is rather contemptible to be perfectly frank.



  • It is a cinematic triumph. Peter Cushing himself called it his greatest role! Well, he might have said that.

    Fun fact that I actually just learned today. The cast made from Mr Cushing’s face for his scene in Top Secret was used by the SFX wizards working on Rogue One to digitally recreate the actor for the movie.

    Imagine that, a casting for a prosthetic made over 40 years ago was used to recreate the image of Peter Cushing so that he could appear as Grand Moff Tarkin again.

    Have to admit, that rather stunned me when I read it.



  • For some reason, when Cibola Burns came out, Jefferson Mays was unavailable, so another person narrated it. I think it was Erik Davies, but cannot remember, the book has since been redone by Jefferson.

    I stopped and returned the book when the narrator pronounced “cumin” as something a teenager does into a Kleenex. Which, to be fair, is actually an appropriate pronunciation of the word, per Webster’s dictionary, I’ve never heard anyone else pronounce it that way before. There were A LOT of other issues with the guy’s narration. His cadence, voicing, along with pronunciation was absolutely atrocious. By far the worst narrator I have personally encountered.

    Jefferson Mays needs to have someone go through and coach him on pronunciation. Otherwise, his cadence, pacing, voicing are all pretty good. Certainly not an S tier narrator, but pretty solid and he gives “The Expanse” books the tone that they need.


  • Large ships that ply the stars at super luminal speeds. These ships are equipped with massive energy weapons capable of pulverizing planets. Powered by systems that use anti-matter, or ultra exotic inter-dimensional matter.

    Yet, for some reason the ship is constrained on energy and is unable to keep all the lights on, or the crew has to conform to “energy conservation protocols” (ST TOS), or there isn’t enough power available to keep the ship at a habitable temperature (BSG).

    Life support would not even be a rounding error on the power output of some of the systems described in Sci fi.


  • Not just circuit breakers, but why are high powered circuits being used in the habitable parts of the ship?

    Even modern cars no longer run high amperage circuits to the driver’s controls. Back in the old days, you turn on the lights, the light switch carried a full 12v and a lot of current to control relays. Today, the light switch and turn signal stalk use a signal circuit to tell a body control module what to do.

    The bridge of a Star Trek ship should have control panels running on the future equivalent of 5 volt signal circuits that tells a distant and well shielded control module to switch the ultra high powered circuits.

    That leads me to the one thing that has always bothered me about Star Trek and its transporters and replicators. E=MC^2… When a replicator creates food or an object, it would take at least the same amount of energy to make, as it would if the same amount of mass were destroyed in a nuclear reaction. That DOES mean in areas where those devices are installed there ARE ultra high powered circuits (EPS conduits) in the wall. So high powered that they have the equivalent of multiple nuclear explosions flowing through them every second… YIKES.



  • Hobbyist cook here that owns one of the best duel fuel ranges (gas top, electric oven) on the US market. A Wolf DF304 and yes, I’m damn proud of it. It is by far the best cooking range I have ever used. Unlike its predecessor, a Dacor RSD30, it has stood up to very heavy use over the years.

    I love to cook with gas. I have cooked on resistive electric and they are terrible.

    With that said (induction supporters, it’s time for you to just wait a bit, I know you’re just cracking your knuckles to put me on blast).

    My next range, or cooktop will be induction. A friend of mine has an induction cooktop that is comparable to Wolf. It actually is pretty nice… For the most part. My issue with induction really is not how it cooks, but rather the weird noises that will sometimes come from either the cookware, or the cooktop itself. It’s a high end induction as well (Viking I think). So I’m not talking about some cheap stove from a box store.

    But as far as how well it cooks, I really do like induction. It does all the things that gas does well; instant temperature control, gets really low for simmering, gets really hot for searing or other high heat cooking. I also like the fact that induction doesn’t produce any carcinogenic combustion byproducts. I’ve always had a high flow vent above any gas range I have owned. My wife used to have the bad habit of not turning on the fan when she uses the stovetop. Yeah, that doesn’t happen now.

    The bad news is… It’s a Wolf which is designed to last 20 years in a professional kitchen. While mine sees heavy use for a home kitchen, that’s peanuts in comparison. A Wolf will literally last a lifetime in a home. It would really pain me to junk this thing prematurely. If we stay where we are, the kitchen will need to be remodeled in the next 5 to 6 years. At that point my stove will be 15 years old, so we might just replace it.




  • Ooof… That looks EXpensive and not just for the CRJ. The larger plane (it looks like an A350, but not sure) is going to need its wing structure and wing box all thoroughly inspected. Outside of the engines, those are the two most expensive structures on an airplane. Not saying that it is going to be a write off for either plane, but it is a possibility. I’m curious if the bending moment of that impact was outside what the larger plane’s wing box was designed for. That force had to be huge, given the length of the wings on the large plane.

    I look forward to seeing the analysis from some of the better aviation Youtubers on this one.