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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • Red House by Sarah Messer

    In her critically acclaimed, ingenious memoir, Sarah Messer explores America’s fascination with history, family, and Great Houses. Her Massachusetts childhood home had sheltered the Hatch family for 325 years when her parents bought it in 1965. The will of the house’s original owner, Walter Hatch—which stipulated Red House was to be passed down, “never to be sold or mortgaged from my children and grandchildren forever”—still hung in the living room. In Red House, Messer explores the strange and enriching consequences of growing up with another family’s birthright. Answering the riddle of when shelter becomes first a home and then an identity, Messer has created a classic exploration of heritage, community, and the role architecture plays in our national identity.

    I recently found this book at a book store in Vermont while on a road trip and I’ve absolutely fallen in love with it.




  • Boundaries. Establish them and defend them with every ounce of your being. If you don’t, most employers will grind you in to the dirt and send you out to pasture when you eventually crack under the pressure. Better to establish healthy boundaries up front. Not only will you find yourself more frequently surrounded by people you like and share mutual respect with, you will be happier and land fewer “shit” jobs because employers looking for people to send to the meat grinder will see that they can’t grind you down and you’ll be filtered from the hiring pool before you ever have to suffer at their hands.





  • I’ll answer with a simple test. Do the following first on your phone and then on a piece of paper:

    Design a thing, something physical; a box, a house, a chair, whatever. In addition to the diagram, this note must include a description of the item, the bill of materials, the dimensions and, if applicable, assembly instructions that you could confidently hand to someone else and have them follow. Ideally, you should include the dimensions of the object directly on the sketch itself.

    Now give this to someone and see how accurately they can reproduce the item while you go off and make a phone call.




  • The majority of the content I consume comes from YouTube these days. Here are a couple of my favorite channels:

    • Usagi Electric - old computers and vacuum tubes
    • Diesel Creek - big equipment restoration and salvage
    • Robot Cantina - silly car projects
    • Look Mum, No Computer - analog synth madness
    • RCTestFlight - RC cars, drones, etc.
    • Project Air - experimental RC stuff
    • BPS.Space - Amateur Rocketry
    • Tasting History - Food history
    • Tokyo Lens - exploring and discovery in Tokyo
    • Integza - mad science stuff
    • Jeff Geerling - Raspberry Pis etc.
    • Nile Red - backyard chemistry
    • Studson Studio - making models from garbage
    • Mr. Chickadee - super chill, traditional woodworking

    I have away more niche channels too for bicycles, retro computing and model building. Just too many to list here unless someone’s interested. I can make a list for a particular niche.



  • I don’t even know where to start with this one…

    There’s the “car wash and bistro”… yeah, they’re definitely serving more than just food in there

    There’s the “carnival sweets and treats” that’s got no street sign or sign of any kind, for that matter, tucked in next to a coin laundry. It’s just some lady making funnel cakes, deep fried Oreos and other “carnival food”. As an added bonus, they have free arcade machines out front for you to play while you wait… yeah, I’m sure they bought those with all the money they’re raking in from fried dough…

    I’ve got more but these are the two top fronts in my area for sure.




  • This post is obviously trolling, but if they’re not then OP you’re an addict and your GF is right to leave you. She’s better off finding someone who isn’t going to smoke themselves to death and saddle her with crippling medical debt when you inevitably get cancer and die a slow and horrible death, drowning in all the tar you coated your lungs with.


  • Wow I never connected this with anxiety/depression but that makes a lot of sense now that I hear it.

    I didn’t go to the dentist and didn’t brush my teeth but for maybe the occasional time or for a spurt of a week or two here and there for about the last 15 years, starting in college. I always thought I was special because my teeth didn’t seem to know the difference and my mouth “felt” better. It wasn’t until about a year ago when I had a moler snap in half while eating dinner that I realized I might have an issue. I went to the dentist to have that replaced and was told I needed to make a change or this would keep happening.

    I’ve now managed to get myself back on the habit of brushing at least once a day, usually before bed. My mouth hated it at first but after the first month or so it was so much better. I can’t believe I let myself go like I did…


  • Get a couple of buckets of water and place them around your yard. Drop a “Misquote Dunks” tablet in each bucket. Follow the package instructions for refreshing the dunks every so often.

    Mosquito dunks work by “poisoning” what looks to the mosquito like an ideal spot to lay eggs; a pale of still water. But the mosquito dunk bacteria kills the mosquito larvae before they hatch.

    It’s a more “long term” solution as it doesn’t actively take care of the current mosquito population but it prevents them from breeding.

    There is also a type of fish called the misquitofish that you can put in a small pond, such as a wash basin or feeding trough. They feed on the mosquito larvae and are fairly self sufficient. I know people who use them to control mosquito populations in their gardens and they rarely have to do any kind of maintenance.