Hell I still sometimes find those old “lyrics” videos. Remember those? They all had that bluish teal background? Some of them survive to this day.

I think I’ve done a reasonable job improving my dovetail jig.

That 12 inch Porter Cable model; it has some problems with repeatability. The reference marks are quite wide and positioned in a way to give a lot of parallax error. There was no real way to quantify how far you’ve moved the template in and out, which meant it’s basically guaranteed to come out of alignment. So I took a knife to it. Scribed the alignment line around all the tines and put graduation marks on the brass thumb wheels. It’s a lot easier to be deliberate in adjusting this thing now.

It still needs a few other things here and there, and I need to put those alignment marks on other templates. But it’s a start.

So, if you’re working 22 hour days for $450 a month, you’re not really in a position to decide what equipment gets installed on the boat. There’s a lot of things that are technically possible but not done because it doesn’t serve company greed.

I’ve increasingly noticed this. It’s irritating.

I took two years of French in high school, I can say ai as a avons avez ont. Because that’s most of the french I actually spoke aloud in that class. Two years I “studied” this language, I’m not sure I’d be able to safely spend a week in France, I’d be hit by a train because I didn’t understand the warning sign.

That’s not how they taught me English. In second language classes, they’ll try to teach you rules like adjective order; like how we always say a wonderful big red balloon. If you said a red wonderful big balloon you sound broken. ESL students will be taught that their first semester, a native English speaker will follow that rule perfectly without consciously knowing it exists for 30 years until it is pointed out by that linguist tiktok guy.

This is one place where I think modern schools categorically fail, is teaching languages. They teach languages in ways that are easy to create multiple choice tests for because those are easy to grade. In reality, you don’t teach an Anglophone French by speaking English to him, you teach French in French. It can be practical to have a common language to fall back on but you learn a language by speaking it.

Now, “Ancient Egypt” refers to a knee bucklingly long span of time; There were pharaohs who employed archaeologists to study the Giza pyramids, because by the time anyone named Ramses was around, the pyramids of Khufu and Khafre were already thousands of years old. If you were to end up as a Connecticut Yankee in King Djoser’s Court, some 5500 years ago, none of the languages English evolved from have emerged yet. You’re going to be operating at the level of holding up a basket with a quizzical look on your face until your host says “nb.” Then you’ll try to say it back, and so forth. Your vocabulary will build and eventually you’ll be talking just like one of them.

Land in Ptolemaic times and you can do the same exact thing but in Greek or Latin.

Who else is talking to them?

I’ve driven a pickup truck for 20 years and never once had anything stolen out of it. “Safest big city” as a phrase strikes me similarly to “most comfortable chest wound.”

Mouse. Singular. Cat.

I forget why, but Picard and Riker are away, Data is in command with Worf as his first officer. Data wants to be analytical and consider all options, Worf wants to fire all phasers and die in glorious battle. Data comes to a decision and gives orders, and Worf says “Finally!”

Data asks to see him in the ready room, and then dresses him down for talking back to him in front of the crew. They hash out what they expect the role of second in command is supposed to be, and with the military shit out of the way, Data then acknowledges that this dressing down may have damaged their friendship, and Worf replies that no, he was out of line so it was his fault, that he acknowledges that he was out of line and if we can overlook this incident he’d like to continue being friends.

Stated problems, voiced objections, addrressed objections, no personal slights, no raised voices, actual accountability expected and accepted…manliest conversation ever filmed.

I will FEED HIM.

My father once told me of an old IBM machine, I think it was the System 3 model 15D or one of its contemporaries, or maybe the original System 38. It had some amount of memory, like 32k of memory (I’m going to get these numbers wrong), and to upgrade it you could spend many thousands of dollars to have IBM come install a control board to upgrade it to 64k. The memory was already physically in the box; they manufactured and delivered it to the customer, and sold the memory control board as an exorbitant cost option, when it was the RAM (it might have even been core storage) that was the expensive part to make.

To a lesser degree, I’ve been hearing about cars that install cost options on all models, but they don’t hook them up on the lower tiers. Like apparently all Lotus Exiges have power mirrors, they’ve all got motors in them, but they don’t give you the switch unless you pay for it. You can go to a Ford dealership, buy the right switch and just pop it in and it’ll work. I suppose it can make some sense to reduce part counts, but it’s getting to the point where it’s "we installed the option in the car, it’s hooked up, it’s perfectly functional, we’ve already put in the expense, and we’ll allow the software to turn it on if you pay for it.

Let me clarify this part of my thinking: That line has moved a lot since the lifetime of Thomas Chippendale.

When you think about what it would take to build an ornately carved mahogany highboy with a high gloss varnish in 1750 versus today, including logging, transporting exotic wood around the planet, the actual woodworking…hell, just compare applying a shellac french polish versus spray lacquer today.

I could run a fairly decent woodworking racket given 10 cubic meters a year. Does that include branches and such?

Ten cubic meters of free wood a year. Huh. That’s an oak or two.

When it comes to rich people, pretty much yes it is.

Wait a minute! What tools? You’re supposed to be doing theory! You’re a field psycho-ornithologist, aren’t you?

Yeah, see: when you’re looking at these highly ornate antiques, it’s not the wealth of the craftsman on display; it’s the wealth of his customer.

Are you yourself a craftsman?

I have been rendered incapable of seeing beauty in ostentatious displays of wealth.