I have been investigating the fine art of dishing out a wooden chair seat for comfort today, and made discoveries that can be readily condensed into a, imho miraculously easy formula. So here goes:

Your "sitz" bones or ischial tuberosities are prominences of the pelvis that are the hard spots when you sit. They are pretty consistently located in adult humans as it turns out, though you'll have a hard time finding dimensional data if you go looking! I measured approximate spacing among a slightly inebriated and jovial crowd who endured the indignity with humor and made a rough prototype seat to check my theory. Drill two 2-inch diameter holes spaced five inches apart at center (3-inches of material remaining between the holes). For a finished seat, one would shape the edges, but don't even bother for this experiment - just drill the holes in a piece of lumber and sit down on it. shift around for comfort and when your ischial tuberosities align with the holes you will say aaah!

I will be making two holes in a rectangular stool seat at this spacing, centered about three inches from the "back" edge of the stool, and sanding smooth and dishing out the seat a little. I'll try to remember to post a finished picture, but I found this preliminary result too great and dramatic to wait.

Some individuals might be grateful for a third hole at the centerline and about two inches closer to the back edge - where a tailbone-afflicted person does not need hard support and an average person will not miss it. I have not tested this third hole yet, maybe others will report...

Table top is four 50-pound bags of ready-mix grout concrete (no stone, just sand), 3m of 1m wide 1x2inch fence mesh.

Chairs were solid white upholstery. We bought them in a second-hand store and painted with diluted acrylic (to hide old stains). Waiting 30 days before I apply sealer to the concrete.

has anyone here ever experimented with an "electromagnetic" pump? If the pumped liquid is conductive and the piping is enclosed in a coil (think solenoid), and a current is passed across the fluid near the coil, then the magnetic field made by the coil should attract the fluid passing the transverse current (causing it to flow). As fluid flows toward the coil, new fluid starts passing current and so on.

Electromagnetic pumps are used in metal processing for continuous casting, but those are fancy and expensive devices. Could I pump seawater by wrapping a coil around a garden hose and pop-riveting a couple of electrical contacts into the hose on opposite sides next to the coil? I think regular "fresh" water would not be sufficiently conductive, but whatdoIknow? My longer term plan is to try pumping molten salt, but I want to learn on cooler stuff first.

I'm all ears!

Some years ago, I was doing a little volunteer work with Climate Foundation, and I loved their long-term vision. It was based on these facts: 1) giant kelp is fast-growing brown algae that thrives in cold, nutrient-rich water. It is among the fastest-growing plants in the world 2) kelp thrives when there is abundant sunlight - clear water is much better for kelp than turbid water 3) cold, nutrient-rich seawater is present in oceans worldwide, but in the tropics, for example, it is present only below a depth of about 300 meters 4) kelp needs an anchor-point - it attaches and grows long fronds - it does not grow free-floating.

So the CF vision was to eventually build large kelp farm support arrays at a depth of 30 meters - suspended from buoys at the surface. Cold water would be drawn up from deeper ocean to create a suitable habitat for the kelp at the surface. But ships could still pass right over the platforms, if they could avoid the support buoys. These floating arrays would have the potential to support a vast new fishery in the tropics where pelagic fish are relative scarce in natural conditions. The fast growing kelp would absorb a large amount of carbon dioxide, and kelp fronds that sink in the deep ocean carry their carbon to the abyss where it is fixed for practical purposes for centuries, at least. Finally, vast kelp forests could support a range of industries; tourism certainly, but also a variety of chemical and food products that can be derived directly from kelp or with some added processing.

I've been interested in physics since I was a kid, and read many books on the topic. The thought experiments of Einstein that led to his theories of relativity were some of the earliest topics I encountered. If you have not read of that, do so . . . I will wait.

So we come to the EPR paradox. The new field of quantum mechanics in the 1920s presented this conundrum - that particles could have entangled properties but that those properties would not become determined until a measurement event, at least according to Bohr. But upon one measurement, both particles states would be determined even if they were separated, and this determination would be instantaneous - faster than light.

The EPR paradox received further attention in the 1950s and led to the Bell's Inequalities - describing the paradox in some detail. Bell proposed solutions to the paradox which are each a bitter pill in their own way. Some have received greater press, but there is nothing yet known to choose among them. Two that are most conspicuous are 1) a multiverse - all the outcomes exist in separate parallel universes, and 2) hard determinism - the paradox arises from quantum mechanics being predictive, but spacetime is complete and only one outcome actually exists - always has and always will.

The more I have thought on these options, the less possibility I can grasp for matters spiritual. The multiverse scenario seems ridiculously uneconomical to my admittedly-Calvinist upbringing, but if all outcomes exist, what judgement can there be for how a person lives (i.e. we live in ALL the ways we can). The hard determinism scenario is crystalline. We do not actually have any free will whatsoever - not even the free will to take advantage of being completely inculpable for our actions.

I think there may be a more mystical way of thinking of hard determinism though - a koan, if you will. We are agents of causality within a complete four-dimensional spacetime. We bring the crystalline structure of the universe into existence by virtue of our own existence in some way.

I subscribed to !news at . . . well it probably does not matter. I receive the news the moderators are posting there, but also every single boosted comment anyone makes on the news stories as separate inane postings on my mastodon feed(!) That can't be the way to run a railroad! Can comment reposting be disabled by moderators or can it be suppressed by users? Because othewise, the news feed subscription is a poison pill to my fediverse-based feed.

This has been a gratifying addition to the estate. When the garden works, sometimes it REALLY works. Of course neighbors get some overflow, but their gardens tend to be working too. Nothing would go to waste if we did not harvest, of course, but all kinds of dried stuff is nice to have: tomatoes, herbs, banana slices, mango slices, kale leaves - those are our top uses.

This is a simple design inspired by inheriting two suitable glass panes. It is a simple box with 1x6 plank sides (to make total "depth" of 11 inches (28cm). The "bottom" is a thin sheet of galvanized steel. Interior is painted flat black and it gets quite warm in there - I should measure some time.

I used https://browse.feddit.de/ to discover a community of interest and they provided this link to subscribe: !electronics@discuss.tchncs.de but when I paste it in the search field for joining a community, nothing happens, or sometimes there is a "not found" message. A growing pain I suppose. I will keep trying . . .