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I have friends in Belarus. Lukashenko is a clown and would get maybe 3-5% popular support in a vote. Word round the campfire is - and these are total rumors and should be taken as such - he hired a western company to help stage the election, and when they advised him to make the election close to make it appear more legitimate, he flew into a rage and said "I need 95% of the vote, all the people love me!" and proceeded to ignore their advice. Then came the protests, which he repressed pretty brutally. So his hold on power in Belarus is fairly tenuous I would say, though backed up by military and police and whatever other tools your usual tinpot dictators have, for now. Russia's endgame in this is clear - the removal of Ukraine's government and an installation of a puppet government to make a buffer state between Nato and Russia - but they were all based on wrong assumptions. Putin thought Ukraine would fold in a few days, it hasn't. He thought its citizens would support him and welcome his troops as liberators, they haven't. He thought his military would be prepared for this war, they aren't. And he thought western sanctions would be light and ineffective, and they weren't. Lastly, he clearly thought china would support him in all this, but china so far seems to be neutral and minding its own interests. So now he is trapped in a nightmare scenario where the best outcome is a pyrrhic victory followed by an afghanistan-style occupation which is likely to be bloody and ineffective, or military failure overseas and economic disaster at home. None of this makes life in Ukraine any better and Putin's crimes more forgivable. Also, don't make the mistake of assuming he's crazy, he's not. He's what he's always been - a russian imperialist who only thinks about russia vs the west, who doesn't care one iota for international law and doesn't give a damn about the wants of sovereign states on his borders, and who is used to taking high-risk gambles to achieve what he wants. These gambles have generally worked out so far, but this time he miscalculated, badly, and it will cost him, and it will cost Ukraine more.

Lily and I decided that while it was no longer my birthday, cake was still required. So we made our favorite, Key Lime Cake.

Not that anyone was following this saga, but this is exactly what I ended up doing. Thankfully I was able to find someone selling a nearly new Dura-Ace crankset with integrated 4iii dual-sided power meter for half price and my shop charged me like $30 to install the whole thing. I think I'll be able to recoup a couple hundred from reselling the old Stages PM. Now if the weather would just allow for me to get the bike back out on the road.

https://twitter.com/lapatina_/status/1500149589151784969?s=20&t=83B5L8kR0KMEuJ2ZJWz3EA

I’m going to abuse my powers as admin and sell some coffee: I have 40 lbs of coffee available to purchase. It’s a medium roast rwandan coffee that I taste blueberries in. It’s the first coffee I thought was worth selling under my brand. From the bean wholesaler: Rwanda Natural - Huye Mountain Sweet, black grape, blueberry, boysenberry, chocolate Huye Mountain Coffee is a private washing station established in 2011 to provide farmers in the region with access to international markets and buyers of specialty coffees. Around 1,330 producers deliver their freshly picked coffee cherries to 26 collecting stations around the Huyecommunity, where a truck visits daily to collect the farmers' coffee during harvest season. This unique coffee comes from the Huye Mountain in the Huye District, in Southern Rwanda and grown above 1,900 meters. The natural process employed at Huye Mountain involves meticulous cherry selection and hand sorting prior to drying. Drying is done on raised African beds for between 14 and 28 days, depending on the weather, and the coffee is turned regularly. Country of Origin Rwanda Harvest Season 2021/22 Coffee Grade RWA CA NAT SPL SD Bag Type Grain Pro / Ecotact Plant Species Arabica Processing Natural/Dry Processed Variety Red Bourbon Region Huye District Farm Name Various smallholders Growing Altitude >1600m Climate Tropical savannah Soil Loam[/quote] It’s $40 for 2 lbs, shipped via USPS. I’ll roast and ship in the next week or so. Paypal to: [email protected]

Decided that despite crushing myself on Zwift for an hour this morning that 65 and sunny (it was supposed to rain) was too nice to pass up. So did another 17 miles on the road. Ass sufficiently kicked.

Today’s bandsaw box. Before and after a mineral spirits wipe down. Cannot come up with a proper knob that does not impact the continuous grain. Any ideas? I am working on a detachable rare earth magnet solution now but it is kind of clunky having to keep a Wenge knob/magnet lying around.

Watch Adam restore a plane for 25 minutes? Sure.. But I really appreciated the philosophy chat at the end.

Fixed it for you.

Well shit.

A fascinating and (as best as my smooth brain can ascertain) unbiased look at Russia's failures in Ukraine.

Do we have the technology to remotely poison Putin's dick? That way the next time he has it up Trumps ass, we can kill two birds with one stone.

Protest in Paris. NSFW warning: contains titty.

your first link definitely works. But i have an extremely old version of this Precise Universal Hand Tapper, Assures Straight Perpendicular Tapped Holes - 265-110 - Penn Tool Co., Inc and this is definitely works, hard to use in volume applications Precise Mini E-Z Hand Tapper, Assures Straight Perpendicular Tapped Holes - 390-252 - Penn Tool Co., Inc

RIP Iva..

My condolences Todd.

Sorry for your loss Todd.

So sorry, Todd.

Flasback to when this image went viral 4 years ago:

My condolences for your loss, Todd.

Sorry for your loss, Todd.

My condolences, Todd.

So sorry Todd - my condolences for your loss.

Sorry for your loss, Todd.

Please accept my condolences, Todd. HS

Condolences, Todd.

My condolences.

If you're going light / medium, I am in, Sir. HS

thats a great way to break a tap and ruin the heatsink. get a tapping jig.

MOT MOT MOT MOT - wait, what trade are we talking here? Regardless, I'm in and Paypal will be on the way shortly for 2lbs.

It will be a light/medium roast. I'll experiment with a few roasts to figure out how dark I want to go

Metal work I meant.... Cutting 230 mm depth aluminum panel (t=3mm) to 200 mm, to fit to tight space on my desk. Started Cutting with a small tool on the photo. I could achieve only ca. 0.5 mm depth of scratches on both sides. Then I clamped that on my wood working bench, and hit hard with a hammer. It worked. I could make straight, so-so sharp section. Some burrs can be removed with a file. I need to paint the shining edge black. It shouldn't be so visible as it's on rear side. This should fit to 200mm length heatsinks with Hifi2000 front and rear panels. Then many drilling, tapping, chamfering,.... Oh I shouldn't forget to peel anodized black coating to have whole chassis plates conductive.

Damn! “You're occupants, you're fascists! What the f**k are you doing on our land with all these guns? Take these seeds and put them in your pockets, so at least sunflowers will grow after you die.”

Savory, Then Sweet, Crumpets!

Just watched Winter of Fire (Netflix) about the Euromaidan protests. Man, if you haven't seen, or fully informed, and want a short cut to how hard Ukrainians will fight for a more free life and European alignment, check it out. https://deadline.com/2022/02/ukraine-russian-invasion-winter-on-fire-director-evgeny-afineevsky-inrterview-news-1234961181/

Funny post of FB And the best comment: "Taint that the truth"

Just wanted to offer a quick update on this...... I couldn't get the "all in one" code from @Kerry to work perfectly with my setup; it always opened up the relays to full volume on power-up, and I couldn't work out why. User fastfwd from SBAF took pity on me and wanted a distraction project, and produced some code for me that did the trick. He took an interesting approach to 'dejitter' that works beautifully, and we also added averaging of multiple pots readings and easy custom mapping of volume knob to attenuation to customise things to my setup. Here's the final code: Everything is now all installed in my Exstata. I didn't originally plan to have these boards in there, so the layout is pretty wasteful, but it keeps clean signal lines away from AC. The digital power is four lines from two Twisted Pear LCDPS fed from two toroids - WAY over the top, but I had them all just sitting in the cupboard, so why not? All in all a great end to a project first posted almost 11 years ago! [EDIT] I should add, I have no idea why this code works great, and Kerry's code was causing my boards to open up full volume on start-up. Such are the mysteries of the universe.

I got a sample of a rwandan coffee from olam yesterday and roasted it. i made a cortado this morning and then immediately ordered a 30kg bag of beans.

Some people have been asking for specs on the Aeras, so here they are... Input: XLR – Accepts balanced or single-ended (with grounded RCA to XLR cable) Input Impedance: 50K x2 Gain: 1000x Frequency Response: 1Hz – 60KHz Max P-P Voltage: 1500VAC Max RMS Voltage: 1000VAC Output: Stax Pro-Bias x1 Vacuum Tubes: 6S4A x4 Power Consumption: 100W External Dimensions: 19 cm x 34.3 cm x 14.2 cm (7.5” x 13.5” x 5.6”) – W x D x H Weight: 5.5 Kg (12 lbs) Mains AC: 115/230VAC Switchable

It was a lovely New England autumn weekend, so a walk in the woods, some focaccia, and some apple galettes.

Not sure where to put this, so it is going here. My wife is the CEO of the charity Brendoncare Foundation, which owns and runs residential care homes throughout the South of England. One of people in their care, Bob Weightman, is now the world's oldest man. He will be 112 on 29th March. He lives in his own flat, and carers pop in twice a day just to check he is OK. He has absolutely all his marbles intact. The video here is on his 111th birthday. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-51656545 Worth playing the interview. And this is a guy who was born 6 years before the start of WWI in 1908.

aMYDLGW_460sv.mp4

Sometimes my day seems to go like this- an58Y5n_460sv.mp4

Thirty years ago today, Carl Sagan showed images of the earth from 4 billion miles taken from Voyager: the "Pale blue dot" He said: "Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam."

Remember this? I re-watched it for the first time in years. I was fine until the crane. Then I was palms sweaty, mom's spaghetti.

Last night I figured something out. Kyuss, the metal band credited with spawning the poorly named genre "stoner rock" released their last album in 1995 "...And The Circus Leaves Town." The album cover art is a bit hard to make out. It's a fisheye shot of a flooded area, that is upside down and mirrored. I thought it was a weird winter scene for years, which is odd for a band from the southwest. Here it is with the proper orientation: Last night I discovered that the photo was shot in Bombay Beach, which on the Salton Sea and, to but it delicately, a complete shithole. The same spot, 5 years later. The area is the inspiration for a similarly decaying area in Grand Theft Auto V called Sandy Shores: