This is also why trees are so fucking crazy to think about. It is impossible to pump water up a hose more than ~32 feet. Like it’s literally physically impossible to stick a pump at the top of a tall building and suck water straight up a pipe. You need a complicated series of pumps and one-way valves to pump it up in stages. Because you’re not really “sucking” the water up the pipe. You’re just lowering the pressure in the pipe, and atmospheric pressure pushes the water upwards to fill the low pressure. After 32 feet tall, the top of the hose/pipe will be a perfect vacuum, atmospheric pressure won’t be able to push liquid water upwards any farther, and the water will just begin cold-boiling in the top of the pipe as the liquid water turns into gas (steam) to fill the vacuum.

But tall trees can move water all the way to their leaves by using only passive capillary action, and suction created by water evaporating out of their leaves. The capillary action is created by tiny straw-like fibers that run all the way up the tree and are bunched together really tightly. Due to surface tension, water is able to “climb” the capillaries as the surface tension fills as much surface area as possible. Then at the top of the tree, as the water evaporates out of the leaves, it draws up fresh water to fill the void.

But that means the bottom of the tree should need to support the pressure of all of the water above it. But it doesn’t, because the surface tension holds the water stable inside of the trunk.

The electric field one is also interesting, because the cable length doesn’t actually determine how long it takes to turn on. All that matters is the distance between the power source and the device. Electricity travels at the speed of light, which means we can measure how long it should take to travel down the wire.

But let’s say you have a 1 light year long power cable, made out of a perfect conductor (so we don’t need to worry about power loss from things like wire resistance or heat). Then you set the power source right next to the device and turn it on. The logical person may say that the device would take a full year to turn on, because the cable is one light year long. Others may say that it will take two light years to turn on; Long enough for the electricity to make a full circuit down the cable and back to the power source again.

But instead, the device turns on (nearly) instantly. Because the wire isn’t actually what causes the device to turn on. The device turns on because of an EM field between itself and the power source. The wire is simply facilitating the creation of that field. The only thing that matters is the distance between the source of power and the device. That distance, divided by the speed of light, is how long the device will take to turn on. If the device was a full light year away from the power source, it would take a full year to turn on. But since the device is sitting right next to the power source, it turns on right away.

If you’re paying a school $20k per semester, they can afford to eat the cost on some paper and toner.

and our store manager threatened him and kicked him out.

As difficult as it may be in the heat of the moment, the best thing to do in this circumstance is to initially act like nothing is wrong, and then quietly alert the authorities ASAP. If you just kick them out, they’ll find someone else to do the work, but they’ll be more careful with that next person. You don’t want to scare them into the wind, because then investigators will have a much harder time.

Not weird, but funny and unexpected.

I work in live entertainment. I deal with all kinds of shows, but the vast majority of them involve clients making/sourcing content to use in their shows. For instance, something as simple as a PowerPoint presentation on a projector, or music tracks for a dance show. So I use a lot of computers that don’t belong to me.

The funniest interaction I’ve ever had involved a speaker for a Black History Month presentation. The speaker brought his laptop in, with his slides all ready to go. So we plug it into the projector and he opens it up. As soon as he logs in, we’re both greeted to some hardcore porn playing in full screen. This lady was handling a whole 12 inches like a champ.

Luckily I had the projector blacked out, so it wasn’t catastrophic. It was only the two of us who saw it. What made it so funny was the fact that the dude wasn’t even ashamed of it. He took a beat, admired what was on the screen, gave a quiet “uh huh”, nodded solemnly, and then slowly moved his mouse cursor to close the browser tab. If he had acted flustered, it would have been a funny interaction. But the fact that he wasn’t in any rush to turn it off (despite the fact that I was sitting right next to him, waiting for him to boot up that presentation,) just had me fucking rolling.

Any “retro” collection. Old video games, for instance. In many cases, the barrier to entry is sky high, because there are very few old consoles or games on the market; The collectors have bought all of them, and are never planning on selling.

Oh, it had some bugs for sure. It was rushed out the door by the publisher. But again, if given time to actually work on it, it had potential to become a new trilogy. The story was clearly trying to do something, even if it was mired by bugs.

Mass Effect Andromeda. The hate was so intense it caused the publisher to disavow the series entirely.

The hate was because people were comparing Andromeda (the start of a new trilogy) with the entirety of the first trilogy. People were upset that Andromeda wasn’t grander in scale than all three former games combined. The gameplay was fine, and it was clear that they were trying to build the story up just like they had done with the original trilogy. There were several DLC chapters planned, and it was going to grow into an entire series of its own.

It’s like people forgot that the original trilogy spent an entire game just introducing the main villain. Like you didn’t even realize who the main villain for the trilogy was until the very end of the game. But when Andromeda did something similar, people got baby-mad about it.

My favorite BG3 item is the bent wand of fireball. It allows you to cast Fireball, but only at melee range.

I once gave a player a ring that did something similar. It was a cursed ring of jumping. The player was able to jump 16 feet into the air, and/or 30 feet in distance… The curse was that the player was only able to jump 16 feet high/30 feet long.

Just need to hop over a small 5 foot wide pitfall trap? You’re taking a flying leap and slamming into the wall that is 10 feet behind it. Want to hop over a table during a tavern brawl? You’re slamming into the 12 foot ceiling of the tavern, hard enough for everyone to stop fighting and stare for a split second before resuming the brawl.

If you use it often, sure. If you don’t smoke and just occasionally need to light fires, get a butane conversion. It’s a replacement for the wick, which pops into the Zippo shell. It doesn’t evaporate over time since it’s sealed.

Yeah, Ryobi had a bad reputation for a long time, because they’re old (dark blue) tools were hot garbage. But when they were bought out by TTI (and they changed the color to the bright green) all the tools started getting made on the same production line as Milwaukee (also owned by TTI). The QA is a little looser on the Ryobi stuff, but it’s all sourced from the same place as the (much more expensive) Milwaukee tools that many people swear by. If I remember correctly, TTI also owns Ridgid.

It’s basically the Lexus/Toyota thing, where they’re both owned and manufactured by the same parent company, but the Lexus brand is much more expensive just because it’s marketed as luxury. You can get a Toyota for half the price of a Lexus, and find the same quality as a Lexus. And for the insanely cheap price and wide range of available tools, it’s hard to go wrong with Ryobi. The Ryobi may not stand up to the same level of abuse as other (more expensive) brands. But the average person isn’t a construction worker using and abusing their tools for 9 hours a day. The average person just needs to occasionally drill a hole in the wall, or cut the occasional piece of lumber. And for that, the Ryobi is the way to go. Hell, even if you’re a hobbyist in the garage, Ryobi will likely be fine for what you need.

Just avoid their larger power tools, like the vacuums and lawn mowers. From what I know, those have a range of issues that haven’t been worked out yet.

Also, it means you can easily repair/modify the hardware for whatever reason you might come up with.

The ironic part is that you’d need a second soldering iron to do that.

If you’re a musician or audio tech trying to get started, the Shure SM58 and SM57 are the first two mics you should grab. 58 for vocals, and 57 for anything that doesn’t need a screen (like an instrument or guitar amp.) Both have the exact same mic capsule, but the 58 has a larger filter that will make it a little warmer and less prone to popping on plosives.

Are there fancier mics out there that sound better, or are made for specific purposes? Yeah. But there’s diminishing returns on audio quality, you can’t use them for as many things, and more sensitive mics are also more fragile. For $100 each, you can get some mics that will be passed down to your grandchildren. If you’re trying to cover the widest possible range of uses, the 58 and 57 are your go-to mics.

Whenever you think of a stereotypical 🎤 microphone, you’re 100% thinking of a Shure SM58.

I use an Altoids tin for my first aid kid, for similar reasons. The damned things are basically indestructible as long as you’re not going out of your way to crush them. The one in my pocket right now is probably 5 or 6 years old. I prefer the smaller form factor, because I typically only pack for a few blisters or scrapes; Anything larger would be referred to the full first aid kit in my car.

The Kobo and Kindle are functionally identical in terms of hardware, except for a few things that are specific to Amazon. But Amazon has been increasingly hostile towards Calibre in recent years. It used to be supported almost natively, but it seems like each update from Amazon locks down something that used to be accessible, or breaks existing functionality.

For instance, you used to be able to edit collections directly in Calibre, but Amazon broke that because they want everyone to use their collections (which are only included on books purchased directly from amazon) instead. So for instance, if you uploaded the entire Harry Potter series, you used to be able to tag all of them with the series and they’d be added to a collection together. You can’t do that anymore, and have to add them manually one by one on the Kindle’s laggy touchscreen.

They have also started breaking included cover art, because the Kindle automatically polls Amazon to download art instead. And when it doesn’t find any, (because the book isn’t from Amazon,) it wipes the included art instead of just falling back to it. Luckily this has a fairly simple fix (just unplug your kindle, let it index and break the cover art, then plug it back in so Calibre can push the cover art back to the Kindle,) but that means you need to actually take the extra time to do that every time you upload something new.

The Send To Kindle email functionality has recently been broken to where every .epub file you email just gets sent to Documents instead of Books or Newsstand. So if you have Calibre set up to grab news every Sunday, or to send new books to your Kindle, they won’t actually land in the News or Books sections like they’re supposed to. The only way to fix that is to plug it in and upload them via USB. Additionally, they have the same issue with broken cover art. So you need to plug your Kindle in to update the cover art, even when emailing your books. Which kind of defeats the purpose of emailing them, because you’d most likely do that if you don’t want to plug your device in every time.

The kindle’s indexer also has some weird issues, where certain books will just crash it and new books will stop appearing entirely. And there’s no way to see which book is the issue. So if you uploaded a bunch of books to your kindle, you’ll have to play guess-and-check to see which one is the issue. This may not be exclusive to the Kindle, but I haven’t experienced the same issue on the Kobo.

Amazon is increasingly hostile with Calibre, especially within the past year or two. Things like intentionally destroying included book covers/thumbnails for books uploaded by Calibre, intentionally breaking Collection editing via Calibre so you have to do it on the Kindle directly, and not allowing users to download their Amazon-purchased books into Calibre.

Worth noting that the one exception for every e-reader is the screen. E-ink screens are very sensitive to pressure, and can be damaged internally even if the surface is totally fine. It’s not something that any one model will do better or worse, because it’s simply due to the way e-ink screens work. Fixing the issue would require inventing new e-ink tech.

Get a folio cover, with a hard/stiff fold. This will more evenly spread any pressure out across the entire screen, ensuring that no damage happens to the underlying e-ink. Nothing worse than pulling your e-reader out of your bag and discovering that it was resting up against something pointy while you walked around, and is now damaged.

That being said, the Kobo’s waterproofing is no joke. I take mine when I go camping, because I’m not worried about it getting wet at all. I could read in the middle of a monsoon, and it would be totally fine.

Yeah, I love everything about my Kindle except for the fact that it’s tied to Amazon. Calibre goes a long way in bridging the gap, (I have a fairly large personal library that isn’t tied to Amazon), but it’s no replacement for native support. If you plan on using Calibre, you should seriously consider a Kobo.

I’ve heard of similar things. Boss wants to see who is the least busy, so they do something like open an employee gym. Then anyone who uses it is fired, because “if you have time to use the gym, you’re not working hard enough.”