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But, that's completely different! Dr Seuss depicted black people as apes, which is just free speech and sort of true. Except that they vote just like Americans do (but we're fixing that). Those smut books depict LGBTQ people as humans, and that's just communism, or woke-ism, or pervert-ism. /sarcasm (just in case anyone doesn't get it). Once again I am reminded that these days Republicanism=rank hypocrisy.

Newt Gingrich is largely responsible for everything that is wrong about Congress and the Republican Party IMO. Even if he didn't start some of the pathology, he gave it a huge shot of steroids. He is a perfect example of the class of politicians who will pursue any course of action, no matter how destructive to the country, to secure his own power, again in my opinion. Trump would probably not have happened if Gingrich hadn't already degraded what used to be the Republican party so thoroughly. He orchestrated the Clinton impeachment, built around Clinton's (exceedingly ill-advised) affair with Lewinsky at the same time he was shagging his own mistress, which illustrates the degree of shameless hypocrisy he is effortlessly capable of. I would not waste piss on him if he was on fire. He is, to my mind, evil incarnate. If I had more time I'd tell you what I really think of him!

Ok, that makes this make more sense. Seen on FB: M&M Mars has relented. They're now going to produce a "Tucker Carlson" M&M. White, bitter and sold in pack of only that one because they will melt down when placed near multi colored M&Ms.

It's understandable that people are impatient with the slow pace of "justice". Certainly I feel that way. However the biggest disaster would be a rushed prosecution that results in acquittals. That would allow the crooks to claim that the whole investigation was a politically motivated witch hunt, with some validity in the eyes of many people who are not already rabid Trump groupies. Of course they would also permanently escape having to account for their crimes. Biden was elected to bring back a sense of normalcy to government, and "normal" should mean that the Justice Department operates independently from the White House and only prosecutes based on evidence (sufficient to have a high chance of securing a conviction) not political expediency. I do not know from personal experience how hard it is to put together a really strong case, but I imagine it is very complicated especially in a situation where you are investigating crimes involving many politically powerful people who can muddy the waters, or use credible threats of retaliation if/when Republicans regain control of Congress. For those reasons I am not ready to toss Garland just yet.

Newt Gingrich is now suggesting January 6th Committee members may be jailed should Republicans win the mid-terms. Just let that sink in for a minute....

If you ever get a chance study the history of the Apollo program. It was one massive compromise. Weight was the enemy; too heavy and the vehicle would never get to the moon. Too light and the rocket would collapse due to the tremendous thrust trying to compress the empty tanks between the first stage engines and the fully fueled second stage. They found a compromise that worked. There was no way with existing technology to get the entire vehicle to the Moon and back; the required rocket didn't exist (and still doesn't.) So they compromised. The heavy re-entry vehicle stayed in lunar orbit, and the very light LEM descended to the Moon then re-ascended. It required an extra docking step - but the compromise worked. (And arguably saved all their lives during the Apollo 13 disaster.) The right way to pressurize the oxidizer tanks of the first stage (to provide both pressure and structural integrity) was via endogenous pressurization; using the heat of the engine to boil off some of the LOX and use it to provide that pressure. But time was critical, so they compromised by using compressed helium, an inert gas, to provide that pressure. That required helium tanks which took up space and added weight and complexity. But the compromise worked. These (and many others) made it possible to get humans to the Moon with a remarkably low fatality rate for a program that pushed the limits of existing technology that hard. You can call that project "mediocre" if you like, but most would disagree. Compromise is what makes projects like that possible. Good thing you weren't working on it, I guess.

Your raving against "wokeism" is so utterly meaningless that it is impossible to argue against. That is why you like the term so much. Instead of debating individual ideas which you could never defend you get to wrap up all your fears and hatreds into a bundle and give it a name. It is so vague that it is nothing more than a shadow.

I’ve been lucky enough to work in quite a few different countries and right now I’m sitting in a pub in Turkey, headed back to DFW tomorrow after spending a week with a CM here who’s building a product I’m developing at work. Being over here reminded me a lot of my time in South America, as in both cases I was working with some amazingly smart and talented people, and I was cognizant of the fact that they’re at least every bit as capable as I am and in many cases much more so, but we’re accustomed to very different standards of living purely due to me having the dumb luck of being born in Canada. I don’t feel guilty for what I have as I’ve worked hard for every bit of it, but I’m sure as fuck not cocky about it either

Agreed with all the above. However, consider how many country homes have vehicles up on blocks in the back yard. A used 20 year old F-150 on blocks in the back yard becomes your storage, and it never moves. AND it's pretty much free since, heck, they were going to store it there anyway. Most car companies are estimating that batteries will retain 70% of their storage capacity after 10 years. Let's say it's down to 40% after 20. In a Lightning that's 52 kilowatt-hours. A typical US home uses 24 kilowatt-hours a day - so that's 2 days of storage.

People have a long history of repackaging repugnant policies to make them more palatable, and even to fool the unwary into supporting those policies. Slavery was repackaged as "states rights". It's a lot easier to convince people that states should be free to enact policies they decide is in the best interests of their citizens, than it is to convince them to support slavery. So you create a couple of degrees of separation; now you're not talking about buying and selling people, you're talking about states being free from Washington bullying. Similarly, in the 1960s the California Realtor's Association found their practice of adding racial covenants to property deeds under attack from civil rights advocates (see this article for example). Realtors found that they could drive up property values by adding restrictions to deeds to make white-only developments and whole neighborhoods. It got to the point that in many communities there were literally no homes that non-whites were allowed to buy. This was supported by the courts; in one case the California Supreme Court ruled that a black family could not be blocked from buying a property, but they could not live on the property due to the covenants. When the Federal government moved to block racial covenants, the realtor's association responded by repackaging the issue as "freedom to do as you wished with your own property". Now they could talk about freedom and property rights, and leave segregation out of the conversation altogether. They pushed an amendment to the California constitution to protect the "right" to enforce racial covenants, which passed with over 60% of the vote pretty much because it was sold as a personal freedom issue not one of legally enforced segregation. Although the California amendment was later voided as in violation of Federal law, the many all-white communities established under the system remain almost entirely white to this day. The lesson was learned well by Regan as Governor, and persists strongly today in Republican Party tactics to fight efforts to combat Covid, poverty, voting rights, or anything else they decide to adopt as a wedge issue. Now we see censorship and efforts to "whitewash" (a perfect word to describe the effort) history repackaged as an effort to protect children from feeling badly about how various racial groups have been treated. Never mind that doing that robs students of any hope of being able to understand why the country has many of the problems that it has. If you can't talk about slavery or Jim Crow or the California Realtor's Association, how do you explain the vast differences in average wealth between white and black (or hispanic) families, or incarceration rates, or any of the other structural issues that fall along racial lines? All you are left with is that non-whites have less wealth, or are more likely to be incarcerated, because they are lazy, or stupid. I see evidence that the same repackaging is happening for religious issues. In the Supreme Court both Thomas and Alito have written about same sex marriage and abortion as being offensive to people with strongly held religious (IOW fundamentalist Christian) beliefs. They seem to be setting up a new constitutional right: the right to never be offended by other people "living in sin". "Freedom of religion", I fear, will soon be twisted to mean that no-one can do anything that might offend someone else's religious scruples. You don't have to pass laws that say everyone has to believe in fundamentalist Christianity, if you can pass laws that say that everyone has to behave just like fundamentalist Christians.

All but one of these links are broken for me. Anyone have some updated ones? :) My contribution that I found randomly: https://britishskydiving.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/British-Skydiving-CF-Coaching-Manual-1.pdf

Forget any fid that involves a threaded cavity at the end of a rod, metal or plastic. This requires hot knifing or melting the end so the hard melted line ingages in the threads. Then you have to try to screw this into the end of the fid. And not leave any hard parts out side to snag. Much better alternative (LEARNED AT PIA SYMPOSIUM) app 18" of 0.030 or 0.035" piano wire, available at any model hobby shop, a 6" piece of 3/4" or 1" dowel, duct tape, drill. Drill small hole through dowel in middle, i.e. 1/8". Bend piano wire in half. Stick the two ends through the dowel leaving about 6" of the double wire. Bend the two ends in opposite directions. Wrap dowel with duct tape to hold wire. Now, insert end of piano wire "needle" into braided line from beyond the far end of the finger trap. Gather line onto "needle" until you get to the entry point and exit the piano wire out through the braided line. Insert the standing end of the line to be inserted a little ways (1/2") through the loop at the bend in the piano wire. Pull line through, actually pushing the line off the wire (to keep tension off the finger trap) as you pull it through. Pull line out of wire, cut to final length if not alread done (at an acute angle to minimize strength loss, milk back into the outside line, and tack or sew if required. I have literally spent an hour trying to do one finger trap with the old metal fids. (Not having a good day) I can do the same thing in 20 secs with this. This is the single most valuable rigging tip I've ever learned, from Rags at the PIA symposium. I'm old for my age. Terry Urban D-8631 FAA DPRE