Punch card stock makes amazing paper airplanes, both individually and laminated into larger stock.

You and me both! 😆 We continued to live together and were besties for another four years, and she would never talk about anything relationship-related, even as her next three relationships imploded.

Oh, right! I forgot about all of the LIDAR-equipped planes in maritime communities! Those are way more economical to fly than any sUAS. /s in case that wasn’t obvious.

In case you, or anyone else, were vaguely interested in learning:

-kelp extent mapping needs to be done in repeatable fashion, specifically at low tide; we can put up an sUAS any time

-the communities most in need of monitoring absolutely cannot afford to send planes up monthly

-many of the kelp beds in the PacNW are in restricted airspace; it is much easier to get an FAA clearance to perform low-altitude surveys using sUAS

-that restricted airspace I mentioned? Some of these kelp beds are on approach paths for the airspace. Even if a plane were the preferred choice for surveying, the planes are unable to fly in the pattern we need

-(drifting a touch off your point of LIDAR-equipped planes) satellite imagery with the required resolution is prohibitively expensive

-most construction projects wouldn’t use a plane for tasks such as volumetric or area analysis

Consumer drones are quickly becoming the preferred, economical means for kelp health analysis, especially for communities that can’t afford planes or purchasing satellite imagery.

This “lonely adult” uses drones for aerial mapping and survey. This Summer’s huge project is a workflow I developed to map the extent of PacNW bull kelp forests in order to provide year-over-year health metrics. Using sUAS for this is way more automated, economical, repeatable, and granular than using airplanes and satellites, therefore within reach of those communities monitoring kelp health.

DJI hits the sweet spot of capabilities, compatibility, and cost. Skydio (go USA!) has abandoned the consumer/enthusiast market that built their business. And even before they turned their back on the consumer market, Skydio couldn’t come close to DJI’s hardware. Additionally, Skydio, in true capitalist fashion, locked capabilities away behind software licenses, capabilities that are already built into the drone.

It’s important for countries to have domestic drone manufacturing in the current conditions. But the USA’s actions here smack of protecting companies that just can’t hang.

I had a partner for eight years. We met when we were both 31. She was my first monogamous relationship theretofore because I decided to give monogamy a try. She was utterly, screamingly boring in bed. There was nothing else notably wrong with the relationship, except for her unwillingness to communicate on anything beyond household, workaday topics. No oral (give or receive), no anal, not into foreplay, and she would just lay there. But no conflicts either. There was the advantage of she was always willing and ready to go without any foreplay or lube. She got off and claimed she was absolutely sexually satisfied. Sex wasn’t even fun in the context of Free Use, which is a kink I enjoy. I tried to engage her in all kinds of Gottman Method relationship work, but she bluntly and explicitly refused.

At one point early in our relationship, she moved and clamped her vagina in a way that was quite enjoyable. “Honey, that was great! Please do that more.” And for the rest of our relationship, any such complement was a sure-fire way to make sure it would never happen again. After eight years of nearly daily, invariably terrible sex, I stopped approaching her sex for three weeks. She never said a thing. On day 22, I broke up with her, and she was absolutely gobsmacked, claimed that I was throwing away eight years of great history. She hadn’t even noticed that there had been no sex for three weeks.

I hate them because the last four times I ate there, I had diarrhea for days, all different locations. The last time I ate there, it all came out 12 minutes later. So yeah, four for four is enough to establish that their “food” is just toxic.

I was looking for someone to reference Brooks’ Law (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brooks%27s_law). Thank you for fighting the good fight.

For anyone who hasn’t read The Mythical Man-Month, it is a timeless, compelling, relevant book on software engineering and project management. It is also accessible to non-technical audiences with lessons that apply across much of modern workforces.

Stainless steel that gets coated is no longer stainless steel. Stainless steel requires exposure to sufficient oxygen in order to maintain the protective oxide layer.

These are rudder bolts from the same gudgeon on my sailboat. The black stuff is anoxic corrosion.

One of my ex-GFs was fond of saying “Men are good for three things: heavy lifting, outdoor cooking, and sex.” Welp, two out of three ain’t bad.

In most jurisdictions, a note could be put on the driving record. If a pattern on aggressive driving were to be established, a prosecutorial or civil suit effort would have an easier time of litigating against that driver.

In my case, yes, there was paint damage from my bike, which would be evidence.

Edit to add: this was a bit before camera phones.

Fear indeed. I went to college in a very… provincial small city. Riding my bicycle around, I was regularly harassed by insecure assholes in pickup trucks, and run off the road twice. The one time I managed to get a license plate, the police claimed that without witnesses, they couldn’t do anything. ACAB.

I added my 1911 to the strap of my messenger bag, at the top of my left shoulder, where the stainless frame would be plainly visible. I was suddenly given plenty of space on the road and even got occasional compliments when waiting at stoplights. It’s disgusting that I would be a target for bullying without my pistol, but suddenly I was an okay guy with my penis extension where douchebag drivers could see it.

So yeah, I’m living proof that non-military open carry is only for scaredy cats.

It’s interesting how most invasive species seem to be not good eating for humans.

Fully agreed! However, invasive lionfish buck this trend in tasty, tasty fashion. I daresay it’s the best tasting fish, bar none. I liken it to albacore sashimi with Kerrygold butter put together, but even better.

A lot of people in the comments are lamenting their physical pains. I feel ya, y’all.

TL;DR: yoga, Pilates, McKenzie Method physical therapy.

Some background first, then a low- to zero-price solutions. My partner and I are both 52 years old. She had Stage-IVb cancer two years ago, the treatment for which left her with ongoing issues. I abused the hell out of my body starting in my early teens:

• dirt biking (crashes)
• mountain biking (crashes)
• road bicycling (been hit by cars seven times, MCL tears, cervical disc herniation)
• software engineering (sedentary, ergonomically shit offices, postural issues, cervical radiculopathy, sciatica, RSIs)
• open ocean sailor (yeah, all of it is just brutal)

Despite all of that, we are both regularly clocking PBs. She’s a competitive rower, triathlete, and mountain biker, and I’m a long distance cyclist. AND we are 90 to 99% pain-free, depending if we did our maintenance work.

Doing yoga, Pilates, and McKenzie Method physical therapy (MMPT) keeps you going at full tilt. You can start for free with yoga and Pilates, just find a zero-equipment YT channel that appeals to you. We’re partial to “Yoga with Adrienne” and “Move with Nicole.” Start slow and easy.

For the MMPT, “Bob and Brad” on YT are MMPTs. Robin McKenzie’s books are worth owning, or just check them out from the library. Memorize the exercises, and don’t stop doing them just because the pain dropped below threshold(!!!). I…uh… might have direct experience there. :D

Use or lose it, take care of the hardware and software, and all that. With a little care and maintenance, you can rock the hell out of your body for a very long time. I didn’t believe it until the first time I met a 70 year old downhill mountain biking champion. His age class starts at 55, so he was beating professional racers 15 years younger than he. He was the one who taught me about yoga, Pilates, and MMPT being the key.

If any of this blather helps even one of you just a little, it was worth the insomnia, typing-on-phone hell. :D

The Blue Dot Effect (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aap8731) demonstrates that when stimuli, especially negative stimuli, become rare, human brains broaden the accepted criteria for those stimuli.

Why do some social problems seem so intractable? In a series of experiments, we show that people often respond to decreases in the prevalence of a stimulus by expanding their concept of it. When blue dots became rare, participants began to see purple dots as blue; when threatening faces became rare, participants began to see neutral faces as threatening; and when unethical requests became rare, participants began to see innocuous requests as unethical. This “prevalence-induced concept change” occurred even when participants were forewarned about it and even when they were instructed and paid to resist it. Social problems may seem intractable in part because reductions in their prevalence lead people to see more of them.

Yes, someone please come free us! I am being held hostage by Windows and Autodesk Inventor.

Instructions unclear. Used boulder. No more sound comes out.

<Hasselblad has entered the chat>

Sure thing! No clocks in the mall.

Maybe they were in the mall? 😆 (that thread was immediately previous in my feed)

When you scratch at the surface a little, the course of Capitalism always bends towards rent-seeking behaviors. It’s enraging how not only are we trapped in this running-to-stand-still circus, but that every single aspect of our lives is getting monetized such that it’s nearly impossible to just not play the game.