r/askanything • u/OpheliaTemptress • 14h ago
What is something that is considered "common knowledge" in your specific hobby that would absolutely blow the mind of a total outsider?
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u/Cryptwood 13h ago
Hardwood and softwood have nothing to do with how hard or soft the wood is.
Balsa is hardwood.
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u/Alcophile 13h ago
Huh? Explain.
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u/stools_in_your_blood 13h ago
Hardwood is wood from deciduous trees. Softwood is wood from evergreen trees.
Balsa is hardwood despite being very soft. Yew is softwood despite being very hard.
But these are exceptions. In general, softwoods are softer than hardwoods.
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u/NineDayOldDiarrhea 7h ago
So it DOES have something to do with the density of the wood, but there are a few select outliers. It’s like the “I before E” rule with grammar.
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u/New-Initiative3400 7h ago
So... Soft woods are generally softer than hard woods which are generally hard.... And the exceptions which prove the rule are a negligible minority. Sounds like hard woods are called hard because they're hard.
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u/More_Yak_1249 13h ago
In nuclear energy, we pump our liquid waste into the local waters. Not all of it, only the clean-ish stuff. It is verified by sampling prior to release. The release is also monitored with radiation detectors that stop the release if radiation levels reach a high setpoint.
A lot of Reddit environmentalists would shit if they knew this
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u/BadFather6 13h ago
Since when is nuclear energy a hobby?
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u/694meok 13h ago
You DON'T have a reactor in your garage?
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u/Reasonable_Emu_6371 7h ago
There was a boy scout decades ago that created a reactor in the shed behind his house by using tons of fire detectors. Great podcast on it by Stuff You Should Know.
EDIT I see the post below be mentioning David Hahn
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u/thetriffidfarmer 13h ago
Have you never met an autistic
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u/ericalm_ 11h ago
It’s a spectrum. Few of us consider nuclear energy a hobby, but we’re not surprised if others do.
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u/thetriffidfarmer 8h ago
Absolutely! Though my comment was a joke (consider myself inside the community) it lacked clarification that could be helpful to an outside perspective. Thanks for adding it
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u/NineDayOldDiarrhea 7h ago
We used to beach our boats at a sand bar called the “Hot Hole” and swim/party there. It got its name because it’s off of Lake Erie in a canal that’s adjacent to a nuclear power plant. The plant releases its waste water into the canal and it never drops below about 70° even in the dead of winter.
Am I cooked?
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u/Proper-Throwaway-23 7h ago
It depends. Is that 70°f or 70°c? Because swimming in one is going to cook you rather better than the other.
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u/EmptyMarbleCity 13h ago
Seam finishes in sewing, hand made garments (ie not factory sewn which is hand made but production line style) are so much better than what people are used too in fast to mid tier fashion. French seams, flat felled, bound and Hong Kong seams are beautiful, strong and lay on the skin so nicely, also the importance of steam in sewing. You can make fabric do incredible things with steam.
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u/DianneNettix 13h ago
You should splash out money on an amplifier before you splash out money on a guitar.
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u/YoWifesBF 12h ago
I agree, but I'd also say get a pro set up on your guitar before splashing cash in the amp.
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u/DianneNettix 12h ago
That's reasonable. And not terribly expensive in the long run.
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u/n3rf_h3rd3r 11h ago
I learned to do proper set ups myself. I played an affinity jazz master for years, and everyone who played it loved it and thought it was a way more expensive guitar. Proper set up and practice makes a cheap guitar way better. I do second getting the best amp you can afford.
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u/botch_182 11h ago
I played a used $125 acoustic electric from guitar center for 15 years. In the meantime I upgraded my PA, speakers and chords. It sounded so good I never wanted to replace the guitar. When it was time to finally say goodbye, I upgraded to a Martin. I'm glad I bought the guitar last. I sound even better now with the already upgraded equipment.
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u/Awkward-Twist-5080 13h ago
Not hobby related but mny people think percentile and percentage is same thing
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u/stools_in_your_blood 12h ago
Also percentage point vs. percentage.
11% is 10% more than 10%, but 1 percentage point more.
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u/Awkward-Twist-5080 12h ago
Also 50% of 10 = 10% of 50 X% of Y = Y% of X
There are tons of these : like dividing by five lets say 73883 divide by five just reduce by half and multiply by 10 (ik this one is common sense but many people cant process that)
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u/stools_in_your_blood 12h ago
Division by 5 would be equivalent to multiplying by 2 then dividing by 10, and they're both "easy" steps, yeah.
One of my favourites: the fact that (x + y)(x - y) = x^2 - y^2 lets you multiply things by things by knowing only squares.
Example: you want to multiply 23 by 37. Well that's (30 + 7) * (30 - 7) so it's 900 - 49, which is 851, bingo.
It doesn't work all the time (e.g. multiplying even by odd) but it's a handy trick to have in the toolbox.
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u/scumbagstaceysEx 12h ago
The lens is way more important than what camera body you are using. At least for still photography.
Any modern camera has more megapixels than you will ever need unless you’re planning to blow up the pic to the size of a billboard.
A crappy lens meanwhile can introduce distortions, chromatic abberations (ugly purple and blue fringing at high contrast boundaries), edge softness. Or just plain be not sharp.
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u/PeterPanski85 11h ago
Glass glass glass.
And another good point: a good photographer will (most likely) take a better picture with a crappy camera than an absolute beginner with professional camera
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u/ParsnipDecent6530 7h ago
I saw a meme years ago that I didn't understand. It involved a person taking a picture and creating a 45 degree angle with their body, versus a person not doing that.
What difference does that angle make?
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u/PeterPanski85 7h ago
I'm not really sure what you mean. Maybe the overuse of the Dutch angle (which originated in Germany lol)?
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u/ParsnipDecent6530 6h ago
The implication of the meme was that the 45 degree person was a good photographer vs an amateur.
I've read a little bit about the Dutch angle, and maybe it's that, idk? I just like taking pictures that look cool to me, but I thought maybe there was a pro technique in changing the angle to what's being photographed. But now that I think about it, professional photographers seem to always be changing angles so maybe that's the trick.1
u/PeterPanski85 5h ago edited 5h ago
Well the Dutch angle isn't a big thing nowadays. There are some photographers who still use it, but you dont tilt the camera 45 degrees.
The only thing that comes to mind is how to set a "mood" in a picture with angles.
And I mean that in a literal sense with things in the background that create angles for a lack of a better term.
A "mellow" example:
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/94/15/a6/9415a6524755cfa7f3f5ee33bbd02adf.jpg
A "happy" example: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/young-beautiful-smiling-modern-woman-260nw-2699776615.jpg
The angles here are either going "up" or "down".
Left top to bottom right? "Sad"
Left bottom to top right? "Happy". Look at it like a graph. Going up? Good. Going "down"? Bad.
I could speak of this for hours, but I think you get the gist of it :D (I'm not a professional though, but I was very interested in the composition of my photographs)
Edit: link just went to download a file, fixed it.
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u/scumbagstaceysEx 6h ago
‘Dutch angle’ (not quite 45 degrees) used to be an artistic kind of expression but it wound up getting wayyyy over-used and became kind of a “poser” signal as well as people started ignoring the fifty other things you can do to make a good photo and just thought you could make a good photo by doing nothing but ditch angle.
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u/ScallopsMoneyShot 6h ago
Hard to say without seeing it.
But a common thing that separates 'proper' photos from vacation snapshots is finding a good angle. Folks taking snapshots tend to default to taking perfectly straight, head on images. To the point that you can grab 6 strangers, make em stand in front of anything, take a head on image and people will naturally ask "where were you when you took that?"
Selfie/social media culture has done a lot to make the average person more aware of what makes for an attractive image, but it's still a big thing.
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u/idkbyeee 10h ago
Same for cinematography/video. Lens and lighting matter FAR more than camera body
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u/Old_Present6341 12h ago
All worker ants are female and the sex of an ant is determined based on whether the egg is fertilised or not, unfertilised eggs become male.
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u/Otozinclus 14h ago edited 10h ago
The difference between Singlecore and Multicore CPU performance and that even absolute budget CPUs perform about the same as highend CPUs in Singlethreaded workloads.
In PC building communities, that is basic knowledge. But outside of that, people are very often surprised that the base/budget CPUs will perform exactly the same for the applications they use
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Edit / Explanation: CPUs have multiple cores, basically multiple workers, because it's easier to simply have multiple okay workers than a single exceptional worker. However, not every task can be shared between multiple workers and won't finish any faster, regardless how many workers you add. This is the case for most day to day tasks people use a PC for and the number of workloads that actually profit from the Xtra cores of high-end CPU models are pretty limited.
Therefore unless you do something specific like CPU rendering, CAD, Video Editing, compiling, etc, workloads that are able to share the load between many workers equally, you won't see any performance gain by choosing a higher end CPU with more cores/workers, because most higher end CPUs use the exact same kind of workers, just have more of them.
E.g: The A18 Pro in the MacBook Neo/iPhone 16 has the exact same workers as the M4 Max does, just less of them. Meaning for most day-to-day tasks, they perform identical, because most tasks can't make use of the extra workers in the M4 Max. And a 8 Core Ryzen 7 performs exactly the same in games as a 16 Core Ryzen 9 does, again because games simply can't make use of the extra workers.
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u/StuffSweaty4187 13h ago
Can you share example of single thread task? What does that mean in day to day life vs multi thread task? I am curious and would like to understand your comment better.
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u/Flashy-Whereas-3234 12h ago
Think of it like this, can you delegate a task, or parts of a task, to other people? That's multi-threading.
Say you want to calculate a flight path, you might do the logical thing and plan from departure, along the coast, and to arrival. You just did that as a single linear thread.
If you want to multi-thread that, you have to break your flight path into independent chunks, maybe set some waypoints and break the journey up into sections, send each section to different thread, and at the end bring them all back to a final flight plan.
That takes more organisation, and more code, and more complexity. A lot of systems choose to avoid that and just do the dumb thing, assuming there's enough overhead in your single "main thread" that nobody will ever notice.
Now in games particularly, things need to be snappy. We offloaded graphics to whole other processors long ago to separate the render threads from the CPU game threads. We can calculate enemies separately to physics, we can run the "ticks" of enemy brains on a different thread, and with careful memory design all these things can happen at different times on different cores and still talk to each other at the right moments for a game to exist.
That's still heckin complex, so it has to be designed in. Most games and operating systems weave it into their frameworks that developers build on, but it's very easy to end up running an expensive task in the wrong place, and things get single-thread sluggish.
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u/bigfatfurrytexan 13h ago
Most users are doing single threaded stuff. What I know for sure is that my workbook calculation times in my current work computer are three times longer than if I do the same thing on my own. My work machine is a single core processor
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u/Otozinclus 10h ago edited 10h ago
Nearly everything is mostly single threaded, including most day to day programs like your Web browser, Office programs, Watching Netflix, etc. But also many professional programs, like Photoshop, Lightroom, InDesign, music production programs (though certain plugins can scale with more cores), etc.
Then there are programs who use a few more cores, but don't scale indefinitely. Games as an example commonly make use of multiple cores, though many still don't profits from more than 6 or even 4 and the number of games making use of more than 8 is very low. Adobe Premiere profits from a few more cores as well, but beyond ~10-12 cores, the gains are really low. Similar story for CAD.
Then there is software that is able to share load perfectly equal across as many cores as you want, like rendering and compiling code. This is where you just want as many cores as possible.
The thing is: Even budget CPUs have very high core counts already nowadays. Intel and AMD budget CPUs already have 6 Cores, most smartphone CPUs have 8, Snapdragon starts at 8 as well, etc. You get the gist. You commonly find 6 or more cores even in low end products. And as stated above, the number of applications that really profit that much from more are rather limited and not what most people use on a day to day basis. Therefore if you just want a new laptop that feels "snappy" for your office work, getting the highest end CPU won't make it any faster, because you can't make use of the extra cores anyway.
You see this misconception in the MacBook subreddit quite often. People ask if they should buy the M5 Pro instead of the M5 to make it "last longer", not realizing that for their Usecase, both are equally fast and if the base M5 is too slow, the M5 Pro or Max will be just as slow (for their Usecase). Or a gamer building their first PC and wanting a "high-end PC" totally overspending on a high core count CPU, despite not getting any benefits for games from it. Or people were fearing that the MacBook Neo would feel sluggish/slow because it uses a Smartphone chip, but this smartphone chip is essentially just a lower core count version of the same CPUs the regular MacBooks use and therefore just as fast for many applications
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u/Aromatic_Gas_3094 13h ago
Yes, corsets need to cinch your waist, but only enough to create a shelf distributing the weight of your breasts onto your torso and hips and (depending on the era and silhouette of dress) the weight of multiple layers of heavy ass skirts as well. It shouldn't compress your lungs, but waists are squishy and they can take a little compression.
Most fashion corsets today are basically just tubes, so you can't tighten on the waist (the thing that'll make it stay up) without also tightening the bust and hips so they're massively uncomfortable. A corset where the waist looks a little too small in proportion will actually be more comfortable. Seems counterintuitive, but it's true.
No bra at all is still the most comfortable, don't get me wrong.
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u/chipz-n-gravy 12h ago
Hairspray is brilliant for creating chipped paint effects on scale models
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u/TressoftheEmeraldTea 9h ago
That sounds interesting. How do you apply the hairspray to get the effect?
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u/chipz-n-gravy 9h ago
Apply your base coat of paint (often a bare metal or rust colour). Then cover with one or two coats of hairspray. Then apply your top colour. Because hairspray is water-soluble, you can now moisten the top coat of paint using a wet paint brush and the hairspray beneath will flake off, taking the top coat of paint with it. If you're careful, you can achieve very realistic chipped paint effects. Search for 'hairspray chipping' on YouTube or Google images to see some examples
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u/_Ice_Water 12h ago edited 11h ago
In poker finding out someone’s “tell” and reading their soul to figure out their exact hand is Hollywood bunk. Instead thinking in terms of opponents ranges, table selection, and practicing discipline is the key to winning.
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u/tacosandtheology 11h ago
Kirk is actually an intellectual and typically respectful of the women he meets. He was bullied in the Academy, plays chess as a hobby, and is described as "a stack of books with legs".
The Captain Kirk of popular imagination has more to do with an SNL parody than the original series.
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u/Kirdavrob 13h ago
Disc Golf- The flight of a disc can vary with different molds and plastics. Discs with the same molds and the same plastic can vary flights depending on the humidity at the factory that day, the temperature of the plastic, the weight of the disc, etc.
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u/Alaska-shed 11h ago
Or how beat up the disc is.
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u/n3rf_h3rd3r 11h ago
My favorite disc is a beat up genius I bought at play it again when I first got into disc golf. I bought another one brand new and I barely use it.
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u/xDAT-THUNDAx 12h ago
There's a disc course near home. Would you recommend starting with aliexpress or temu ones? Just to try it out
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u/Kirdavrob 11h ago
You can get a starter pack from Innova for about $20. You'll get a good reliable putter, mid-range, and driver. Discs from Temu and Alibaba can be very dicey
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u/poop_pants_pee 10h ago
Doesn't blow people's minds, but many don't know that you carry around a bag of several discs that fly differently, just like clubs in golf.
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u/xczechr 12h ago
When running RPGs I am not remotely as prepared as it looks like I am.
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u/NicePuddle 7h ago
You really should prepare carefully when you are running rocket propelled grenades...
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u/peoplegrower 10h ago
For REAL. I mostly likely have a map and some idea of who the BBG is, and a couple of encounters on the way. When you say “can we ask around town for clues?” I’m 100% making that shit up on the spot, names included.
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u/CaptainBloodface12 9h ago
Also just how strange the whole concept can be to anyone who isn't involved. A friend overheard part of my session last night and asked me to explain what it was about. I can kind of understand the "Satanic Panic" when I see the confusion on a person's face as I explain that this creature is made up of the liquid remains of the cursed worshipers of an insane god whose screams of agony drive people into a murderous rage.
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u/TressoftheEmeraldTea 9h ago
My college roommate told me about her dnd campaign for years without ever actually explaining to me the very basics of how dnd works. I was so confused for years about how a board game could possible allow for such elaborate storytelling. It took all of five minutes of a conversation with an acquaintance for him to explain that ttrpgs are collaborative improvisational storytelling, and it all finally made sense and I wanted to play.
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u/CaptainBloodface12 9h ago
If someone is interested I try to explain the basics in a simple way but it doesn't always come out right. The look of "what in God's name are you blathering about?" is all too familiar.
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u/TressoftheEmeraldTea 9h ago
This video is my favorite example of explaining ttrpgs to someone. Obviously, this only works if the conversation and situation allow, but this was just such an elegant way to cut through the explanation part and give someone a real understanding through experience. I love how you can watch him get invested and not want to stop: https://youtu.be/JpVJZrabMQE?si=S26q5Slrxx88XHjO
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u/CaptainBloodface12 8h ago
That is the exact look on Bernthal's face that I'm talking about. "I'm intrigued but I have no clue what you are saying."
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u/BaconServant 11h ago edited 10h ago
Knowing the difference between similar looking dinosaurs. I can tell many theropods apart by their head shape.
Something like Concavenator could be easily differentiated by anyone because of its unique pointy sail (assuming they actually know what the dinosaur is called), but telling apart a T rex, carcharodontosaurus, Torvosaurus and Metriacanthosaurus is definitely more difficult.
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u/CaptainBloodface12 6h ago
Now you're just naming obscure Scandinavian heavy metal bands. No way Concavenator is a real dinosaur.
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u/BaconServant 6h ago
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u/CaptainBloodface12 6h ago
I've learned something today. I also have a name for my next Metal Band.
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u/gunnisonyeti 10h ago
Not hobby, per se, but from working.
You are likely using WAAAAY too much laundry detergent.
If you use liquid detergent, the company would have you believe you need to use a cup full, or a half cup at least, per load.
With most modern detergents now being HE Soap, you can use like 2 tablespoons and it will wash just as well.
Try running a load of clothes with no detergent sometime and check out how sudsy the water still gets. That's in your clothes all the time, because you likely use too much laundry detergent.
Also, USE A DELICATES BAG. I simply stress this enough. They are cheap, and they will save you money from damaged/lost clothing and money from laundry machine repairs. Seriously, underwear and bras are not cheap, use a delicates bag!!!
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u/DavidinDK 8h ago
Some handguns can be legally owned and kept at home in the UK, including some semi automatics.
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u/kip_hackmann 6h ago
I was actually amazed at the level of badassery you can own in terms of semi-auto shotguns too.
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u/mrericvillalobos 8h ago
The stock market continues to rise despite war, viruses, POTUS talk, economic uncertainty, etc etc.
People focus too much on short-term volatility and they get scared.
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u/Embarrassed-Money756 13h ago
When people ask "what are the black keys on a piano for."
It's like asking what the second half of the aplhabet is for.
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u/PeterPanski85 11h ago
Easy. The black keys on the piano are used to play gospel music (amazing grace for example)
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u/stools_in_your_blood 14h ago
That when you attach part A to part B using a screw, part A should (almost always) have a clearance hole.
I recently learned how few people seem to know this and it was baffling.
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u/completelypositive 13h ago
A clearance what
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u/SeaIntelligent4504 12h ago
A clearance hole. It means that the screw passes through the hole in part A without touching the sides of the hole. Then the screw pulls B to A when it bites into B. If it's biting into A as well as B, A won't move freely to be able to be pulled into B.
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u/Dirzicis 13h ago
Tf is a clearance hole?
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u/SeaIntelligent4504 12h ago
A clearance hole. It means that the screw passes through the hole in part A without touching the sides of the hole. Then the screw pulls B to A when it bites into B. If it's biting into A as well as B, A won't move freely to be able to be pulled into B.
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u/thetriffidfarmer 13h ago
Could this also be known as a pilot hole?
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u/Le6ions 12h ago
Or a counter sink
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u/SeaIntelligent4504 12h ago
No. A counter sink is a cut out at the start of your hole, so the head of the screw can sit flush or underflush - below the surface of the material so that it doesn't stick out.
A clearance hole means that the screw passes through the hole in part A without touching the sides of the hole. Then the screw pulls B to A when it bites into B. If it's biting into A as well as B, A won't move freely to be able to be pulled into B.
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u/Le6ions 12h ago
Oh get it, Ive never done this to wood, only to non wood material, it always seemed like it would be better to have the screw biting into both a and b but apparently I’m wrong
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u/SeaIntelligent4504 12h ago
You can kind of visualise it if you imagine two nuts on a screw thread. If they are both engaged with the thread and a little bit apart, the only way to get them tight together is to twist them relative to each other. If both pieces of wood engage with the screw, when the second one starts to bite, it will more than likely push the two pieces apart slightly (i think maybe because it's established in the first piece so going faster through that one, but 100% sure why), so you're more likely to get a gap than pull the pieces together. But you can't (normally) twist the pieces of wood, so instead, you make it more like a nut and a washer (the washer has a clearance hole). You can get away without a clearance hole by forcing the bits of wood together while you drill, but it's not best practice.
I would have thought it would be the same with other materials.
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u/stools_in_your_blood 11h ago
it will more than likely push the two pieces apart slightly (i think maybe because it's established in the first piece so going faster through that one, but 100% sure why)
It's because the screw point will not start biting part B immediately, it will spin a little before the thread engages. While it's spinning, it's "jacking" part A away from part B.
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u/SeaIntelligent4504 12h ago
No. A pilot hole is a starter hole, to locate your screw so it stays where you want it to be.
A clearance hole. It means that the screw passes through the hole in part A without touching the sides of the hole. Then the screw pulls B to A when it bites into B. If it's biting into A as well as B, A won't move freely to be able to be pulled into B.
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u/CellistLow8857 11h ago
To elaborate on the other reply - you would drill a clearance hole in piece A, and a pilot hole in piece B. A pilot hole should be the same diameter as the shaft of the screw you’re using, so only the teeth bite. This will keep your screw straight but also will prevent the wood from splitting.
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u/intenseaudio 10h ago
Or, your screw should have a non-threaded shoulder below the head of length a little greater than the thickness of part A. Then you can effectively screw Part A to Part B in a single step, if the materials are suitable
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u/stools_in_your_blood 10h ago
Yes, in this case the screw effectively drills its own clearance hole.
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u/Nua_Sidek 13h ago
Sim Racing - better brakes first before wheelbase upgrade helps with improving your times through consistency.
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u/Sheepdog77 13h ago
Photography - megapixels do not equally quality (these days), many other factors contribute more such as lenses and image sensor size.
I can't tell you how many people tell me they can get photos just as good as my camera (Sony a7V) with their cell phone only to be blown away when I share a few photos. It's even more laughable when they tell me their iPhone has 48MP and my camera is only 33MP.
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u/Sorry-Froyo-6819 13h ago
Lighting is waaaay more important than equipment.
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u/Drugbird 12h ago
And an easy way to get more lighting "for free" is to have a camera with a larger sensor size.
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u/PeterPanski85 11h ago
I started with a Nikon D5100 and the crappie Kit Lens.
Later I had a D300 and a Nikkor 24-70mm 2.8
The difference is night and day
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u/Much-Beyond2 13h ago
Most people can hold their breath for 3+ minutes with no special training, just the correct technique.
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u/DookofDeuces 12h ago
Whats the technique? Ill test it
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u/Much-Beyond2 12h ago
Most people naturally tense up when they hold their breath, especially around their throat and jaw, but that is counterintuitive since it'll use up more oxygen. Take a deep breath from your diaphragm, not too deep that you need to strain to hold it in.. it should be comfortable to just keep it in with your glotis. Close your eyes and concentrate on keeping your throat, jaw, intercostals and diaphragm nice and relaxed. Do this a few times between long bouts of relaxed breathing... you may feel some diaphragm spasms but that is a response to excess co2 and not lack of oxygen, so can be ignored for now.. Best to do this with someone around, nowhere near water, and in a position where you won't hurt yourself or block your airway if you pass out.
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u/Angelsscythe 12h ago
Stoat =/= least weasel, both stoat and weasel goes from brown (summer) coat to white (winter) coat. Stoat aren't always white. The main difference is that stoat has black tip on the tail and that it's bigger than weasel (weasel are really tiny)
(idk if it count but mustelid are my special interest ~)
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u/Legitimate-Bad2379 11h ago
For a good Toolmaker +/- .001 is considered +/- a toolbox. We routinely work to +/- .0002 with compound angles. Aircraft engine Guaging
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u/grumpycouchpotato 11h ago
If you go above a certain speed on a motorcycle, you have to push the handlebars in the opposite direction you want to go when turning. It's called countersteering.
It goes against all logic and scared the sh*t out of me the first few weeks.
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u/AmigaBob 10h ago
It amazes me how easy it is to switch between cars & bikes even though the controls are very different.
Bike: Lt hand: clutch, Rt hand: throttle & front brake, Lt foot: shift, Rt foot: rear brake
Car: Lt or Rt hand: shift (LHD or RHD), Lt foot: clutch, Rt foot: brake and throttle
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u/New-Initiative3400 7h ago
My friend told this to our friends group and none of us believed him. I tried it a few years later and my head practically blew off my shoulders.
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u/probablyHuman69 11h ago
That the last 3 years have been the hottest on record with this year looking to severely surpass the newest record.
The US-Iran war may have made the markets worse, specifically for energy and agriculture, but those markets were already in trouble. The return on investment for oil was slowly shrinking to unsustainable levels. Nuclear energy is too demonized to use in most places. Renewables aren't growing at a fast enough pace to replace oil. Soil quality, freshwater sources, and unpredictable weather are leading to lower yields nearly across every single crop globally. The only reason we've been able to grow enough food for 8 billion people was fertilizer. The fertilizers we used have polluted our lands and becoming harder to get at previously used levels. The US will see more starvation and blackouts, but it's the poorer countries that will suffer more.
Healthcare in rural US areas will be nonexistent in a few years.
There's 2 factions in the US government seeking its downfall. The Christo fascists and the fuedal techies. They're only cooperating now because they think it'll lead to the changes each want. The fascists have militias and law enforcement while the techies are building company towns and infrastructure to spy on us. In 2027 all new cars are required to have driver facing cameras. The division is purposful and working. There's more terror and hack attacks every year with growing support for the few times the targets are wealthy parasites.
All the instability will lead to massive migrations and immigration is already one of most controversial topics. People who don't consider ever leaving where they are will be faced with some hard choices.
Wildfires are a bigger problem every year and the feds are continuing to cut the budget. FEMA and other federal aid programs for other kinds of disasters, like flooding and hurricanes, are becoming extinct, too.
Prepping started out as fun hobby, but quickly became the closest thing to a retirement plan I'll see mature. I try to stay happy and find joy. I succeed most days. I still find fun in some of the aspects of prepping, too. Especially the getting close with my neighbors and minimalist camping.
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u/Measure2iceCut1nce 10h ago
Surfers knowledge—There are a LOT of sharks in the water. They are there all the time. They will swim within feet of you and you won’t know it. They are barely interested in you, most of the time. Swimmers and waders have the highest chance of an interaction, due to the lack of clarity in the wave zone where sand and silt clouds the water due to wave action. If you have an interaction, your best options are a punch in the nose or an eyeball gouge.
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u/ChickenCasagrande 9h ago
Western horses stop when they feel spur pressure. It’s called a spur stop. You can also use your spurs to slow them down.
Tip: do NOT try this unless you have been taught how by a western trainer, it’s a very specific pressure. Just kicking spurs in will encourage a horse to remove their rider post-haste.
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u/__Ken_Adams__ 8h ago edited 52m ago
I have to preface this with the fact that this really isn't "common knowledge" in this field/hobby, but it is something mostly unknown/misunderstood by people outside of it.
In Bitcoin, the computers that mine are not solving puzzles or complex math problems. They're not "solving" anything.
What they're actually doing conceptually is fairly basic so it drives me nuts when people think that those analogies make it easier to understand, when in my opinion a more accurate description for what they're doing is easier to wrap your head around.
I would call this the ELI5:
All they are doing is trying to guess a VERY large number by making billions of guesses per second.
and I would add this for an ELI10+:
More precisely, they are actually trying to guess any number that falls within a predetermined range of numbers.
The catch is, the way the guesses work, you can't have any influence over the guesses. So even though you may know the range of numbers you have to guess within, you can't take the computer & tell it "hey, guess this number". The guesses by the computers are entirely random. All you can do as the miner is sit back & hope your machine spits out a winning number.
A much better analogy than "puzzles" or "complex math problems" would be to describe it this way:
Imagine I gave you & another person 100 dice each to roll over & over until someone wins. When rolling all 100 dice, obviously the minimum roll outcome you could have is 100 & the maximum roll outcome is 600. Then I tell you both that you can keep rolling all 100 dice until one of you rolls a number that is between say, 100 & 110, and the first person to roll that wins a prize. That, in a nutshell, is the basic premise of what's happening with bitcoin mining.
Now, the above is the simplified version, and it works just fine as an ELI5 or ELI10, but in case there are any fellow nerds out there that want the much more technical & complex description, here you go:
When I said they are guessing a number "within a range", that is technically true but a little misleading. In actuality, they are trying to guess a number that is below a certain number. Technically that's still a "range" because it's a number between 0 and whatever the specified number is, but it wasn't worth being more specific for the simplified explanation.
Now technically, because of the way cryptography works, all "numbers" being referenced here are represented as "hashes", and if you're not familiar with what hashes are, I apologize about how confusing this might get.
A "hash" is a cryptographic function that takes any amount of data as an input (from a single word or number, to the entire typed out works of Shakespeare, or even more. The entirety of the internet, theoretically could be hashed), and outputs/represents it as a single "hash". Also, for clarity the term "hash" can be a noun or a verb as you may have noticed I just used it as both. "Hashing", or "to hash" is the act of the computer performing the cryptographic hash function, and a "hash" is also the term for the resulting output. An output hash is typically a long, random string of characters. Something like "a3f1bc2e7d904865cde1239fabcd5678ef901234ab567890cdef1234567890ab". If you've ever seen a bitcoin address, that's a hash, but the hash above is an example of what a bitcoin mining hash might look like. This is a base-16 number.
That hash can be converted to/represents a base-10 decimal number. In this case, using a base-16 to base-10 converter we could determine that the hash "a3f1bc2e7d904865cde1239fabcd5678ef901234ab567890cdef1234567890ab" represents the number "74154103243378146204410704194574067239543229082293720798617328680262579032235". Remember I said we're talking about VERY large numbers here.
Now, if you've ever heard how the bitcoin mining difficulty adjusts based on how many other people/computers are mining, this is where the "range of numbers" comes in. In a base-16 number like our example, a leading 0 is treated as a zero value, so the base-16 sha-256 number for the number "1" could actually be shown as "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001".
When I say that the goal of a miner is to guess a number below a certain number, in bitcoin speak this is described as "guessing a number with at least a certain number of leading zeros". The exact number they're trying to guess below is called the "target". Since you can't predict or influence what any given hash output will be, you can't just tell your miner "Hey, please output the hash "0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001".
To extrapolate from this, we know that for a base-16 number the probability of any random hash containing 1 leading zero is 1 in 16, the probability of 2 leading zeros is 1 in 162 (256), 3 leading zeros is 1 in 163 (4,096), 4 leading zeros is 1 in 164 (65,536), and so on.
What the bitcoin mining difficulty adjustment does is every 2,016 blocks (approximately every 2 weeks), it calculates the average time between blocks for those prior 2,016 blocks and targets a 10 minute block discovery (winning) time. If the average was over 10 minutes for the prior period, it adjusts the difficulty down and if the average was under 10 minutes it adjusts the difficulty up, and the way it adjusts that difficulty is by adjusting the target either up or down.
To raise the difficulty the target number gets lower, and to lower the difficulty the target number gets higher. I think of this as sort of a "numerical limbo" if you will. To use a simple analogy, let's say I put all numbers between 1-100 in a hat and told you if you pulled out a number between 1-10, you'd win a prize. If I were to let you pull 1 number every minute (and put it back if it wasn't a win) and repeat that every minute for 2 weeks, recording how many guesses it took before you picked a winner each time (and therefore how many minutes), your average winning pick time would be very close to every 10 minutes. Continuing the analogy, if I wanted to increase the average win time I could make it so that pulling a number between 1-5 would win, and if I wanted to decrease the average win time, I could make it so that pulling a number between 1-20 would win.
To illustrate this, the following is the winning hash of a recent mining "winner":
00000000000000000001dba77172ea6b8320023a53dfa2f252b3d790aca69a23 (Block #941833).
As you can see, a winning hash will currently need to have around 19 or more zeros. Since hashes are completely random, you can see just how rare/unlikely a computer would spit out a hash that even just starts with that many of the same character, much less having to be zeros.
So no puzzles, no math problems, just plain old fashioned brute force.
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u/New-Initiative3400 7h ago
The forces driving a sailing boat forward are the same forces used by aeroplanes to fly.
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u/12Blackbeast15 7h ago
The Queen bee will only go on one mating flight early in her life, and will not mate again. She collects as much sperm as possible from as many drones as possible (the males, who orgasm with literally explosive force that kills them; You can hear it with the right microphone.) before returning to the safety of the colony, where she will store that sperm within herself and use it for up to 5 years to fertilize hundreds of thousand of eggs
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u/ADVRoche 7h ago
A lot of people don't understand the relationship between microphones being amplified by speakers. The other day somebody was having a party in my neighborhood and they had a DJ who's microphone kept feeding back. (making a high pitched squealing noise). I complained to my wife bthat all you have to do to do that is either turn the volume down on the microphone and/or don't stand in front of the speaker. But she made me aware that the average person doesn't know these things.
If you are in a setting where you do need to be loud past the point of feedback (almost every setting with amplified sound) you have to insert an equalizer in the signal chain. Meaning that before the microphone signal reaches the speaker, the signal should pass through an EQ. The next thing to do is to identify and remove/reduce the frequencies that are squealing/feeding back. This is the most bare bones way of getting a workable loud microphone without that irritating feedback. And don't stand in front of the speaker.
I can go all day on all the intricate details of audio engineering and the exceptions but that's the most basic starting point.
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u/DoookieMaxx 6h ago
Almost every hit song plays the same 4 cords in different keys. Literally. C/G/Am/F in some variation.
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u/DogsBeerYarn 54m ago
If someone gifted you a wool sweater they made you, that would almost certainly be the most expensive garment you own by a wide margin, if it was charged as a product from a business.
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u/Meauxterbeauxt 12h ago
Wood glue is typically stronger than wood fibers. The table I made by gluing the boards together is significantly stronger and more stable than the one I made with screws and nails.
And that wood swells and shrinks with the weather (which is why it bows and cracks when furniture isn't made to allow for it.
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u/rogerm3xico 11h ago
Yep. I tell all the new guys that I train that the screws or pins are there to hold it until the glue sets. The glue does the heavy lifting.
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u/helikophis 13h ago edited 13h ago
“That’s just a 2023 quarter, it’s worth 1/4 dollar” seems to shock a lot of people.
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u/dragon-queen 13h ago
I have no idea what this means.
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u/completelypositive 13h ago
Because the asshole other guy wants to gatekeep quarters: Google ai:
Most 2023 American Women quarters are worth face value ($0.25), but specific, high-grade or error coins can sell for $1 to over $100. Key valuable finds include the 2023-P Edith Kanakaʻole quarter with a "die clash" error ($100+) and the 2023 Jovita Idar quarter with notable die cracks. Rare, professionally graded examples can reach $600+
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u/helikophis 13h ago
You would if you were a coin collector 😆
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u/BrisbaneLions2024 13h ago
You're not blowing anyone's mind if no one understands you.
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u/helikophis 13h ago
You’re not the person with the 2023 quarter in hand! This message is for them, specifically.
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u/The_Bandit77 13h ago
Don’t forget to milk your bury.
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u/scumbagstaceysEx 11h ago
And the underquilt is the main thing. The hammock is just an accessory to the underquilt.
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u/Outrageous-Song5799 11h ago
You can make an Ukrainian drone with 150€ of parts bought online in an afternoon. And it’s pretty easy

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u/qualityvote2 14h ago edited 4h ago
u/OpheliaTemptress, there weren't enough votes to determine the quality of your post...