‘They’ do want it to happen. Ordinary USians are gettng uppity and need to be taken down a peg.

The global elite don’t really need anything specific from the US anymore. For a brief moment, the world needed our higher education system, which is why anyone under 60 who went to grad school had lots of non-US folks in their cohorts. Those folks have gone back home in large part so there are plenty of skilled experts in critical fields internationally.

The US has no remaining unique resources, be they skilled people or natural resources. So we need to be dealt with since many of us still hold on to quaint notions like ‘freedom’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘living wage’.

It means you only do weed and shrooms

At worst they will get a talking to

These advertisement-delivery systems at the pumps piss me off. They blare loudly.

Here’s a question for the techie crowd.

I used to be able to press the physical buttons on either side of these screens and get the ads to mute. It was a two-button combo I discovered using a systematic method as a way to control my irritation at the excessive volume. It was either that or stick a pencil in the speaker.

This worked at gas stations in several states for months. The mute feature was surely written in as a sanity saver for the developers and technicians. It stopped working a few weeks ago, so I guess the pushed out a patch.

Not much of a question I guess, except what gives? Does anyone have insight into these systems for realsies?

Right. It seems analogous to regenerative braking in a gas/electric hybrid car. The momentum is turned back into electricity to reclaim potential energy. Some of the energy was already spent in RO stage and this process gets some of it back.

Anyone who has ever worked in a kitchen or as a server knows that they are wall-to-wall queer-friendly. If Cracker Barrel has trouble now keeping things staffed (they will), this is why.

Kitchen people are often woke af because they have had to be to survive.

Yeah, I am as ‘out’ as I can be and still have mega-bitch tendencies in spite of my best efforts. Pile a lifetime of self-deception and the platform of a Senator on top of that?

A Megazord of bitches, that’s what you get.

Ugg you are so backwards on this. It is clear you see the mechanism behind how the media enforces the status quo, which is working just fine for a sliver of our population. But your proposed solution is what? Capitulation? Acceptance of second class citizenship?

Nah. Me personally, I am going to remind every Christian I know exactly how they fail to act in a Christian manner.

I am an atheist, but I am also a Red Letter Christian. I have read and thought deeply about the words Jesus actually spoke, there are versions of the bible where his words are printed in red ink.

There is plenty of dissent within most churches on these issues. It does the cause of justice no harm to remind Christians, im a pointed way if necessary, that they are failing to even attempt to live by Jesus’s direct teachings.

(sigh) cool story

The great flood that left no evidence behind and all large animals were rescued by a guy who built a boat? The one that also left behind no genetic evidence of such a catastrophic population bottleneck? That great flood?

Fun fact: you do not need permission to re-word your own texts if you realize upon re-reading it that one sounds like a snarky bitch.

3D printing can be cost effective for small production runs too. There are large format printers both FDM and SLA with print quality, large bed size and speed more than sufficient.

Injection molding is only cheap when print runs are huge. In a rapidly developing space like drone warfare, a lot of plastic parts get changed frequently enough that injection molding becomes cost prohibitive, due to small production runs between design changes.

Take the example of a propeller vs a custom bracket to hold a new type of clip for ammo.

Propellers can be standardized according to motor, frame geometry, and power source parameters, so they can be mass produced with injection molding by the ton.

A bracket needed to test out a new configuration may only be made in runs of a few hundred before some other update changes things again.

All this is to say that drone warfare is logistically an insanely complex supply chain to manage.

3D printing will have a role in drones that see combat until the day the designs are completely perfect and never need to be changed again. Then the economy of scales can overcome the high setup costs of building an injection mold.

And the Pentagon will stockpile them by the billions to give SkyNet something to work with later. yay.

Yes, regarding the mesh. I was wondering if a flexible mesh might be better. Toynbee tiles seem to become illegible mostly because individual pieces shift over time and make them look more of a jumble, this becomes more pronounced as the individual pieces become smaller. I was thinking more fiberglass, too, but even burlap would be fine probably.

A good flexible adhesive on the back of the pieces then pressed firmly into the fiberglass/cloth and weighted until set up.

One thing to consider is that the asphalt crack filler needs to be pressed into and around the pieces, serving a role similar to grout in tile. So the order of operations would be important. That’s more of an assembly issue, I guess.

There are numerous open source tile mosaic softwares out there that will generate the tiling, including the needed gaps for ‘grout’.

And Armstrong Flooring makes VCT in a huge array of colors. A source for vinyl tile of specific colors

Super fun, I am going to talk with my local folks and find a good location for a small test of these ideas. Such fun, thanks for engaging

Yeah, it’s intriguing.

I have given it some thought and they could be made even more durable by using vinyl flooring adhesive to adhere the mosaic pieces to a backing of wire mesh.

The usual method uses only asphalt crack filler, which is still necessary, but it also requires one to assemble the design backwards. Adhering to metal mesh first would allow one to assemble it front the viewer’s perspective and reduce shifting of the pieces over time for more durability.

Not to mention that a basic CNC machine could cut the vinyl very precisely and in elaborate shapes. One could really take the quality and durability of the designs up a notch or two using the old noggin and modern Maker tools.

So now I am going to have to think of a place locally to do this….

Has anyone heard of Toynbee Tiles? These are interesting by themselves but the relevant point is how they are made.

You make a mosaic out of vinyl flooring chunks on a backing of paper and roofing tar as mastic.

You place them paper side up on asphalt pavement in hot weather. As cars drive over them, the paper and tar wear off revealing the vinyl mosaic.

Just a thought that a group of people could quickly make a rainbow crosswalk that can’t be painted over.

Toynbee Tiles

Ahh, so he went to the Henry Kissinger School of Becoming the Very Thing that Damged You Initially.

There is a whole suite of special Hells for that type.

On days when a spring cleaning or packing and organizing frenzy is needed, the Katamari Damacy sound track is perfect. Nice continuity of themes, but varying tempos and energy help make a sustainable work session.

Stop growing alfalfa in the goddamn desert, maybe? Stacys and Chads letting the tap run while they brush each other’s teeth is not the problem here.

Thank Glob. Let me be an ‘individual contributor’ while those who don’t know better yet run interference with corporate.

Vindictive man child-rapist running US.