tingilinde

on the benefits of improv

Have fun and improve communication skills

a tip of the hat to Sukie

 

proper calking

Greg posted a very useful piece on calking.

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Caulk seals and spans. Providing the surface is carefully cleaned¹, and an appropriate chemistry identified, sealing is often trouble-free. But "spanning" is another issue entirely if the spanned gap moves with time and temperature.

How far can you stretch caulking before failing? Well, a bead of fresh silicone caulk might stretch (and recover) by 300%, and latex by nearly 100%. That's in the lab. In the real world, performance is actually closer to 50% and 20%. Why? Well, caulking ages and dries out and may shrink. It stiffens in the cold and softens in the heat. It's exposed to cleaning solutions, sunlight, water and scratches. When stretched, those scratches explode into cracks, in the same way the nick on the top of a ketchup packet concentrates forces so you can easily rip open the foil.

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sandy hook

The memorial.

Guns are a national sickness in the US.

 

 

angertainment

The GOP has become a one illusion pony. Wouldn't it be wonderful if it failed on a massive scale?

 

speech that incites violence

Susan Benesch studies hateful speech - what it does and how to deal with it.  David points to a recent piece by her.

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We have found that dangerous speech is uncannily similar from case to case, across cultures and languages: it often features particular rhetorical devices like dehumanization, claiming that others pose a threat to vulnerable people (especially women and children), and questioning the loyalty of group members who dissent. American far-right discourse is full of all this: see for example QAnon and anti-LGBTQ activists’ allegations about child abuse and pedophilia, and the harsh repudiation of Republicans who question former President Donald Trump. American history is also full of such language and images, demonizing Black people for example, especially Black men. This kind of communication calls for violence clearly enough so that the intended audience understands, and indirectly enough so that the speaker can later deny responsibility for attacks. Trump is an expert at it, as are many of his admirers.

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working at spacex

What it's like for a woman.

I know a woman who worked at Tesla for a year and a half and found worse.  Musk sees little value in men and less in women.

a tip of the hat to David

 

 

 

the economic downside of getting covid

What happens to your income if you get long covid?  Of course it varies depending on a lot, but some statistics..  

Not a good thing for the economy.

 

om on ftx

Follow the money when looking at a criminal scam

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It might not seem so obvious, but if you follow the breadcrumbs trail — I did — this is a classic Ponzi scheme, where instead of mailed letters of the yore and the tattle of taxi drivers, FTX found suckers at network scale using YouTubers and Tom Brady. The icing on the cake came from media outlets such as Forbes and Fortune, the latter calling Sam Bankman-Fried the next Warren Buffett. Simply put, FTX is a textbook case of a massively successful content-based marketing strategy in the age of social networks.

“In general, the press goes along with the crowd,” said Andrew Odlzyko, a University of Minnesota professor who has written extensively about manias and bubbles. “Part of it is that journalists are part of the crowd and get caught up in the mass delusion. And part of it is ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ that is accentuated by the need to attract readers, which forces folks to emphasize the spectacular.”

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are we prisoners of geography

Greg notes an interesting piece. Just how much has the world changed and how fast is it changing?

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Russia’s war in Ukraine has involved many surprises. The largest, however, is that it happened at all. Last year, Russia was at peace and enmeshed in a complex global economy. Would it really sever trade ties – and threaten nuclear war – just to expand its already vast territory? Despite the many warnings, including from Vladimir Putin himself, the invasion still came as a shock.

But it wasn’t a shock to the journalist Tim Marshall. On the first page of his 2015 blockbuster book, Prisoners of Geography, Marshall invited readers to contemplate Russia’s topography. A ring of mountains and ice surrounds it. Its border with China is protected by mountain ranges, and it is separated from Iran and Turkey by the Caucusus. Between Russia and western Europe stand the Balkans, Carpathians and Alps, which form another wall. Or, they nearly do. To the north of those mountains, a flat corridor – the Great European Plain – connects Russia to its well-armed western neighbours via Ukraine and Poland. On it, you can ride a bicycle from Paris to Moscow.

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who said it?

Test your quote recognition skills:  

Elon Musk or Montgomery Burns

 

a tip of the hat to John