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TheVat

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Everything posted by TheVat

  1. MMT, eh? (I looked at the transcript synopsis, not in a place to watch a video atm ) Will try to absorb this, but in a context where it can make sense with respect to the enormous debt of the US and the perils of default (or US spending most of its tax revenues on debt maintenance). Might be separate thread worthy, later. @Ken Fabian might well be having a similar experience.
  2. May I suggest Hail to the Chief playing over and over as the soundtrack? You know, to keep the tone respectful.
  3. Thanks, yes 4-cutter and 4 flutes seems to be best. I have another project upcoming which will likely need a power chisel for demolition so maybe will just get a rotary hammer - will be overkill for drilling (10 joules per impact), but that's what's recommended for demolition with a chisel bit. None of it has rebar, but there are some granitic aggregates which seem to call for the 4-cutter.
  4. I was (I borrow one). It works fine on most modern concrete. But this stuff I mentioned dates to around 1905-1920. I've actually thought of consulting a geologist who lives a few blocks up the street, near a tech school campus. Stuff is like granite. Admittedly the SDS drill I borrow is kind of cheap, so an upgrade might also help. (the neighbor who loans it out is kind of amusing - he bought the drill, used it once, and now is saying, "please borrow this! It will never get used unless people borrow it." )
  5. TBH I thought the first premise such a nonstarter I quit reading the OP. Excuse me while I go climb my Escher staircase and feed the dragon.
  6. What? How come we can't do that over here? We have to issue bonds and run up the national debt. Or raise taxes.
  7. Yes. Look like for drill press chucks. What I've always wondered is if there is actually a masonry bit that will handle repeated use on early 20th century concrete. They clearly used a different formula, that stuff is like neutronium trying to get a hole in it (say, anchoring a new wall to an old foundation). I've thrown away several ruined bits, dealing with that stuff. And I'm talking carbide. I think some of that old concrete requires diamond bits. So, serious $$$.
  8. I did and it was pretty funny. I nearly split my pantaloons. ;) Nice, and now I know Prokofiev wrote klezmer - wouldn't have suspected. Now I'm wondering what American bluegrass and traditional music would have sounded like if all those fiddles had been violas...hmm, maybe such questions shouldn't be asked.
  9. TheVat replied to iNow's topic in Politics
    That is brilliant. Content downsizing is also horrific. You think the brand has kept their price steady, while they sneakily keep reducing the net weight an ounce at a time. Chip (crisp) mfrs are the worst. (a possible joke in this post is someone trying to decide what mfrs stands for...)
  10. From what I understand, it is wombats who are more Platonic in their outputs. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-wombats-make-cube-shaped-poos-180970847/ The Australian marsupial pushes out little piles of cube-shaped poos, and naturalists and biologists have wondered for years how the round sinuous plumbing found in most animals could produce an end product that looks like it came from a brick factory.
  11. Me too. I think the self-loathing relates more to the feeling that it got less repertoire from composers and less glamorous parts. I'm told it was sometimes also seen as a consolation prize for musicians who couldn't gain mastery of the violin. It is a lovely sound, and I imagine a lot of the oniony jokes are mostly in jest, and maybe self-deprecation. The writer is advancing the opinion that overuse of a slang or diminutive form of a word can debase proper usage. We all pushed back and pointed out how the word cello had long ago become accepted, and the usage should be seen as a normal part of the evolution of language. The same with pianoforte becoming piano a couple centuries ago.
  12. I don't know what Canada would do, and I'm starting to wonder about their umpires. Really weird definition of a ground rule double, last night. It did favor the visiting American team, which was certainly polite.
  13. Yup. Akin to the use of pf for piano, even though it hasn't been called a pianoforte for centuries. The innovation was that, unlike the predecessor keyboard instruments, it had dynamic range, hence pf meaning "softloud." So, yes, we're now calling it a "soft" even when someone's banging away in a honkytonk. I have a full-sized Ivers and Pond upright which weighs over 500 pounds and can make the house shake when a heavy bassline is played. When just goofing off on the keys, it becomes a pianofarte. Old viola joke (usually told by violists themselves): What's the difference between a viola and an onion? No one cries when they chop up a viola.
  14. In the words of Mance Rayder, I do not bend the knee. The elbow, now that a different matter...;)
  15. I could, on the same solipsistic basis, say all existence began in the mid-1950s. Both our claims have equal empirical support, i.e. worthless. I feel like you brought this up before, either here or at another website, under another nom de plume. And you didn't answer to problems of logic or evidence there, either. Like, for starters, why must there necessarily be a first cause, or logos? Philosophers have been pointing out its logic problems for millennia. Quantum physics has rendered it an antique concept.
  16. Agree, and I mos def was referring to O&G in the States. And I know the shift to NG as a bridge has been a major carbon stepdown. My major complaint, as always, is with governments...and their unwillingness to sign and honor international protocols - the treaties which should be getting all global industry on the same page. But that's a bit OT, so will leave that for now.
  17. I had that same problem! I've wondered if the republic would fragment several ways, with a west coast which joins up with BC, and a Northeast with Quebec and Toronto, wherever that is. If BC is taking hipster refugees, please know that I am hip, Daddio, not like these squares down here in Dullsville. I love hanging with all the cool hepcats, if you can dig it, man.
  18. Ok. Will check that out. Though wasn't there this same patter about the need for interim projects while moving towards wind/solar...25 years ago? Seems like we've all had a generation to get off fossil fuel and that steady adaptation hasn't happened because the big energy companies really didn't embrace renewables - it's drilling and pumping that keeps shareholders comfy.
  19. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Piddle I note that the stream which passes near the village of Shitterton flows into the River Piddle. Anyway, original Marxism doesn't seem much like a religion, even if its Leninist or Maoist offshoots did take on some quasi-religious features. Really seems more a philosophy of class struggle and societal modes of production.
  20. Carbon capture and burial still smells scammy to me. Expensive, and that money is better spent on green energy installations. Pellets are a scam, causing deforestation up and down the Eastern US. "Strip miner" operations are jumping on the pellet bandwagon and using various loopholes to dodge replanting that would match the harvesting.
  21. Well it's certainly been useless in physics! ๐Ÿคจ
  22. So math wouldn't be useful in, say, physics then? Mapping, description, measurements, those sorts of endeavors where math tools are used? No?
  23. I would imagine that, to British eyes, shitton would look more like the name of a town..."It's an hour by train from Reading to Shitton." ๐Ÿ˜„
  24. I think calculus resolved Zeno. IIRC the concept of limits and infinite series in calculus provides a way to resolve such paradoxes by showing that an infinite number of steps can be completed in a finite amount of time.
  25. Slang, mainly American, usually written as "shit ton," meaning "very large amount." In the US, those of slightly more dainty speech will say "crap ton" instead.

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