Terrapinjoe

I just installed a polarizing lens filter on my 150-600mm telephoto lens last week. This week, I was photographing birds by boat when my camera strap slipped off my shoulder and fell to the deck, lens first. I tried the camera out, and it seemed to be shooting fine, despite the cracks.

I just got home and took off the filter and the lens is fine! My relief is palpable. If you have been putting off adding a filter to your expensive lenses, I really recommend it.

I was an environmental consultant until my company got bought by a private equity fund. I want to start a new business of environmental consultants that is employee-owned. Are there any frameworks I can use to start this?

Hilarious look at a novice birder doing a big year. The camera shots and music make it a masterpiece.

Because I like data, here are my federal tax rates from 2015-2023. Taxable income and federal tax amounts are not shown due to privacy, but are shown in relative values on the graph.

The 2017 Trump law ended up being a tax hike for us, because we had previously itemized deductions that were either eliminated or reduced in 2018. The COVID child tax credits in 2020 temporarily lowered our taxes to their lowest point, but went up to their highest the next year. The Biden/Harris child care tax expansion in 2021 lowered our taxes back down to what they were before the 2017 tax law.

The building was damaged during the 2020 hurricane season and was the tallest building in the city.

This guy’s channel is excellent content about national parks and public lands. He’s typically very reserved and thoughtful about including any politics in his content, but you can tell in this video that he’s just so overwhelmed by the proposals in Project 2025 that he just can’t contain it. It’s a great watch and maybe a way to sway more outdoor-focused conservatives away from supporting an administration that is planning on selling our lands for the benefit of the few.

I'm in the US and I'm going back to college after 15 years in the work force. I'd like to try to test out of some basic classes I have a lot of experience in, but no college credits. How does this work? Who runs this program, an accredited testing board or individual colleges? If you test out of a class, would that count as 3 (or equivalent) credit hours of college credit for other purposes such as professional licensure? Are there issues with acceptance by colleges of these types of tests? Thanks!

It was majority employee-owned before the acquisition but is now majority owned by private equity firm. The main change I'm noticing is that everyone is being pressured to work uncompensated overtime (we're all on salary here) and requests for training/professional development have been all but eliminated. They also initially hired a bunch of new employees with no specific work in mind and expected us to find the new people work to do then got rid of a lot of people about 1 year afterwards.

Has anyone else rode out a private equity buyout? It's not terrible, but it is extra stress on top of an already stressful job. Is it a good idea to get out now? I've heard they typically sell after around 5 years of "optimization". What happens then?

I thought this was a very centrist view of "greedflation" from SYSK. It's great to see this recognition of this problem become more mainstream.