LOL. A few weeks ago I came across an interesting coffee break discussion at work. Turns out, we have two women who are almost car mechanics. They can do all sorts of car maintenance most men would just outsource to a professional. They’re also good at knitting and mending worn out clothes. These women are actually far more competent than men would expect.

If you’re interested in something, jsut go for it. Don’t let anyone tell you that you shouldn’t start tinkering with your car because that’s not a girly thing to do. If you love what you do, spend time on it, you’ll eventually get good at it—no matter how much it may violate archaic ideals.

Sounds great. I can’t wait for the price of gold to crash. There are so many applications that would benefit from having a cheap chemically inert metal. Also, the electrical conductivity is pretty amazing, so I don’t think the demand for gold is going down any time soon.

As it stands, gold is way too expensive, and we’ve had to come up with all sorts of exotic alternatives to it. The obvious choice has been sitting in front of our noses all this time, but price has prevented us from actually using it very much.

https://sheaffer.com/ seems to be American.

Oh, thank you so much! ♡

I wish I had a list like this a few years ago. Anyway, here are a few I would like to add to the list.

• https://www.diplomat-pen.com/en/ (Germany)
• https://www.jacquesherbin.com/en/ (France)
• https://www.kaweco-pen.com/ (Germany)
• https://www.visconti.it/en/ (Italy)

Then there’s also

• https://www.fabercastell.com/collections/fountain-pen

But it seems to be a bit complicated. It started as a German company, but then it went American at some point, and I don’t know what’s going on with them nowadays.

Don’t the food labels go into any more detail than that?

I’m beginning to think this must be one of those EU things. I couldn’t find a single yogurt like that in my local supermarket.

I took a look at the two most famous colas and two fake colas, and the only sweeteners I was able to find were aspartame, acesulfame K, and sucralose. No sign of erythritol. I wonder if I’ve ever even seen a beverage with that stuff in it. However, I have seen bags of it sold in supermarkets, so apparently it isn’t restricted in that sense.

The authors caution that their study was a laboratory study, conducted on cells, and larger studies in people are needed.

Ok, nice to know, moving on.

Many years ago, I wanted to buy a fountain pen. I found lots of pen stores in USA, but since shipping and tariffs have been outrageous as long as I can remember, those stores were completely out of the question. Around that time, UK was still in the EU, so I ended up ordering my pen from one of those pen stores.

A few years later, brexit happened, but I still wanted another fountain pen, so I ended up browsing some EU stores instead. Having an updated list would be nice though.

Currently, my pen collection is as large as I need it to be, so buying more isn’t on the top of my mind. However, other fountain pen enthusiasts might benefit from an EU based fountain pen store list.

BTW Epoxy is a temporary fix at best. I would use it only in an emergency. For example, let’s say you’re on a ship sailing across a vast ocean, and your compressor begins leaking. I would fix it with epoxy, and get it replaced at the next port.

In a normal backyard shed situation though, you can just skip straight to the point where you scrap the old one, and buy something better.

That would definitely be a step in the right direction. Clearly better than just eye-balling it.

When it comes to industrial-grade pressure vessels (which are genuinely terrifying BTW), the first step is to inspect the damage. In a backyard setting, most people don’t have access to ultrasonic testing, radiographic imaging, or any of the other fancy tools professionals use—so yeah, that might be the end of the project right there.

The danger doesn’t magically disappear, but at least the tank probably won’t obliterate your entire house if it fails. Probably. No guarantees though, but you can safely expect to see a hole in a wall and any people standing in the line of fire.

Once you’ve figured out how bad the damage is, you’re left with two options: repair or scrap. If you don’t know whether there are other weak spots lurking in the tank, you’re basically playing Russian roulette—with shrapnel. Not my favorite variety, but you do you.

If you’ve somehow made it this far and still think repair is the way to go, here’s what that might look like:

You could weld a reinforcing plate over the damaged area. Ideally, you’d also do a proper stress test afterward to make sure it’s not just a ticking time bomb with a fresh coat of misguided confidence.

And if (or when) the tank fails and someone gets decapitated, it’s good to have documentation ready—so it’s clear who gets to explain things to the judge. That means keeping track of who did the repair, how it was done, what materials were used, and where they came from etc. Bonus points if the paperwork is legible.

Look on the bright side. If some creep is trying to hit on you, just say you’re a diagnosed psychopath. If that doesn’t do the trick, you know you need to reach out for your pepper spray. That short line should speed up the process significantly.

Yeah, the y-axis is unlabeled, but at least the title still tells you what it is: traffic. Doesn’t even have any numbers, so there’s no need to ask about the unit either.

This is more like the graphs made at the marketing department where km becomes KM, because it looks cooler. Same goes of MG, because why not. Is that milligrams or megagrams? Don’t worry about it. I mean, it’s just numbers, so who cares anyway. It’s not like anyone tries to calculate something with them. It’s well known in the marketing department that no human on earth is able do things like that.

Oh wow. Those people at Quora are something special.

Oh, but now OP will be motivated to test all the lights browsers.

Back when I did that, Midori was a clear winner in terms of usability. If you want to make the browser even lighter, you’ll start bumping into some pretty significant compromises. If you don’t use modern websites, you can actually get away with something like Netsurf or even Lynx.

Oh ok. Tanks for the clarification.

Anyway, that’s still about mach 23, so a lot more than the planned speed.

The plan is for the hydrogen-powered aircraft to take off like an airplane and then reach an orbit around the earth like a rocket.

Just for reference, the escape speed is 11.186 km/s or approximately mach 33.

The hypersonic aircraft equipped with such a propulsion system could make ESA’s vision of developing a horizontal take-off spacecraft a reality.

Interesting, but I see this as only as a step in that direction, not the final product that actually stays in orbit. If it can reach whatever altitude you call space, it certainly won’t stay there on its own. With speed like that, it’s just going to drop like a plane.

Disney: hold my beer

Among other things, the code requires companies to provide and regularly update documentation about their AI tools and services; bans developers from training AI on pirated content; and comply with content owners’ requests to not use their works in their data sets.

If Meta can’t agree with basic decency like that, I take it as clear evidence that Meta needs more regulation. I get the feeling that we’re watching a replay of the tobacco-asbestos-oil story again. Strict regulation seems to be the only way to control these corporations.