Back in the 2005-2010 time-frame, an older couple who attended the same church we attend sat in the pews in front of the one we usually occupied.
I got to know the old man. He used to work in Jackson, Michigan as a designer of power-plants. Not being the kind of person who turns down free-advice, especially from a seasoned professional, I asked his opinion on a woodstove I was thinking of fabricating (i.e. welding).
Never ask somebody their opinion if you don't want to hear what they have to say.
He sadly shook his head and informed me "That isn't going to work" and then he explained the error(s) in my thinking.
Different parts of the stove heat up at different rates. For example, visualize a square in two-dimension with a heat-source in the middle of the square. The middles of the straight segments will get significantly hotter than the corners of the squares due to more direct exposure to the heat and the corner's greater exposure to the cooler, outside air. Now visualize the square as a cube and add in the top getting much hotter than the sides but with the same cooler edges/corners.
What happens when unstoppable force encounters immovable objects? Astronomical forces and very, very high stresses. The stove promised to tear itself apart.
"Much better" he informed me "to build a frame of angle-iron and then hang the side panels and top using a net-hole and a slots lined up in the direction of expansion/contraction. Or, you can use clips to hold the flat panels in place."
"Remember, the exhaust pipe is pulling a partial vacuum and all leaks will be INTO the stove, not out of it, so it doesn't have to be totally air-tight."
So how am I handling the stress given our chaotic times?
I am compartmentalizing. I am keeping parts of my life separate. I am loosening ties with some people...some because they cause me stress...others out of kindness because I see that I cause them stress and pain. It has been a great help in keeping an even keel.
This whole "Diversity is our Strength" trope demonstrates a misunderstanding of basic physics, just like my preliminary stove design did. Without the old-timer's insights, had I fabricated the stove only to have it break after a short time, I would have undoubtedly added more stiffeners and gussets and more weld-beads...only to have it break even sooner.
Something is going to break and I can only hope that the toxic gasses and vapors get sucked away from me.
Sterilizing your Internet footprint
Key to being able to effectively compartmentalize different portions of your life, you might find it necessary to "sterilize" your internet footprint.
If you have been careful all along, it won't be that hard. But if you haven't always been careful, or if you got unlucky, there are some things you can still do to clean up the mess.
For the sake of this post I will define "A sterile Internet footprint" as the first three pages of a Google search on your name will not generate any controversial images or other content.
The way to "fix" that problem is to generate benign content which Google automatically stacks on top of older content. The best way I know to do that is to comment on obituaries of people you knew. Keep the comments favorable and you get a benign entry and (usually) a photo of the deceased stacked on top of your current content.
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| Candid photograph of Eaton Rapids Joe |
You can also go to the park and take selfies with random dogs and backgrounds and post them on Facebook tagged with your name. Extra bonus points if you smudge up the smartphone lens and are shaking the phone when you snap the image. Or you can backlight with the sun shining on the lens. If you get good enough, you can take images of strangers that are so horrible that they are unrecognizable and post those tagged with your name.
Apologies to TB who just posted about how hard it is to avoid political content creeping into seemingly mundane topics.
No, tis true.. I've noticed as well, that you can't even talk about the weather w/o it veering into 'government conspiracies' (queue hurricane conversations).
ReplyDeleteFrankly I think that is a sign of the circumstances we're facing. Pressure's starting to leak from the sides, you can see the steam escaping the vessel. It's prudent to ponder what comes next and prepare accordingly. You wouldn't want to be standing next to the steam cooker when it lets loose, would you?
Internet profile.
ReplyDeleteFrom day one, used an alias.......................................
"Diversity is our Strength" is a basic concept of biology. Mono- culture whether lawns or forests are artificial, prone to disease and large expenditures of energy in one form or another.
ReplyDeleteThe diversity crown are really preaching their way or the highway. They have no tolerance of anything they have not endorsed. A true monoculture of tyranny.
I used to have a LinkOot page with some of my work history. When young ladies started net casting for harassment lawsuits, I scrubbed it. I still have a name there, but all the work history is gone. Same thing on the FB. I deleted almost everything and quit logging in about ten years ago. And like MW above, alias.
ReplyDeleteGood info on the stove concept. I like the parallel. One of the things that makes the most popular rifle quite accurate is the dissimilar metal expansion at the barrel nut. The hotter, the tighter. You can design for things if you know the properties. Humans have stress and cracks that don't show normally and change day to day. The pressure cooker we are in will cause things to happen that will be hard to design around. I wish our "betters" were less meddlesome.
ERJ, what a shockingly timely post.
ReplyDeleteIf I think about it, I have instinctively been doing what you suggest: compartmentalizing. I never thought about it that way, but I really have been winding down a great deal of my social media participation (great ideas on cleaning up the overall profile; if I look for my nom de plume it is not terrible and if I look for my "real" name, I am saddened to discover I am not the only one with those letters). It is even reaching the point that I am self selecting activities to focus on.
There was a science fiction story - likely more than one, probably - where the sign of true wealthy was not money but privacy.
Five years ago I lived in the forest from early spring to mid autumn, renovating a former Wehrmacht barracks hut as a holiday hut.
ReplyDeleteSome kind soul had naughtily dumped a load of rubble along the access trail. I salvaged a couple of barrows of all the salvageable red clay bricks and built a rocket stove, using local clay and sand as mortar to cement the bricks together, and line the firebox and the tapered flue to accelerate the draught.
With a seasoned pine log about 6" in diameter and 2' in length, split into 1" x 1' lengths, I could cook a skillet of breakfast, and boil enough water for a jug of coffee or tea, and have enough left over for shaving, a cat bath, and washing up, all in half an hour. The leftover ash was fine grey powder, and zero smoke; it was efficient!
If the project had continued into winter I had planned on building a more elaborate device, a heating platform of brick with the flue gas flowing under it before going up a chimney, and a double tarp roof stuffed with straw over walls of haybale daubed with clay, and my trusty hammock slung in the middle. Taj Mahal Deluxe camping!