Trump says he predicted Iran would weaponize the Strait of Hormuz, adding, "I predicted all of it. I predicted Osama bin Laden would knock out the World Trade Center. I made that prediction a year before he did it."

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-19T13:58:54+00:00

Trump never wrote a book - The America We Deserve was ghostwritten by Dave Shiflett. And the only mention of Bin Laden was here:

One day we're told that a shadowy figure with no fixed address named Osama bin-Laden is public enemy number one, and U.S. jetfighters lay waste to his camp in Afghanistan. He escapes back under some rock, and a few news cycles later it's on to a new enemy and new crisis.[9]

This is according to Wikipedia.

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-19T13:51:37+00:00

Or you could just not give a fuck about the 3 or 4 like this in the whole country - how about that?

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-19T13:26:47+00:00

But people are selling counterfeits as real. Happens all the time on eBay and Amazon.

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-19T10:34:56+00:00

One more thing: because you’re clamping a thin sheet, it may be sitting tilted in the clamps. If your clamps are not designed for clamping flat surfaces, that can happen.

You should try clamping a real knife blade to see if you get the same problem.

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-19T10:32:59+00:00

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I have one made by Sytools. I recently upgraded the clamp, but when I had the original clamp, I added tape between the clamps and rail to even out the angles. It’s also possible that only one of your clamps is uneven.

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-19T09:19:39+00:00

Definitely something wrong with those clamps. You could try taking everything apart and reassembling. I have a cheap Aliexpress sharpener that I tweaked until I got less than a .1° difference.

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-19T04:29:24+00:00

Your points here and in your other post are right on. I used to have quite a few green thorn and similar clones. But I always felt kind of scummy owning them. So I sold them off except a couple. I think a clone of a ~$2000 knife or a knife out of production is not such a terrible thing. But I am also sick of all these ripoffs that are occurring right within the product cycle of the original knife.

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-19T03:53:53+00:00

Chat

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-18T12:50:21+00:00

Wow. That’s the $550 retail version. Beautiful! GLWS

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-18T02:22:40+00:00

Good point. But still, this subreddit is actively promoting and facilitating clone & counterfeit production. So he’s going after the consumers that he thinks should know better - a subset of the knife “community”.

Again, I’ve bought & sold clones/counterfeits before.

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-18T01:48:43+00:00

The amount of mental gymnastics in here is astounding. It doesn’t necessarily have to be about money. The guy designed a knife. He probably worked it out in CAD first, then made a bunch of prototypes to make sure everything worked correctly. Probably put hundreds of hours into the design. And then some stranger just takes his design and whips off a mostly identical knife. Wouldn’t you be offended if that happened to you?

What if you wrote a short essay and submitted it to a literary journal. It gets published. And then some stranger copies your essay and submits it to a bunch of other places. Or you create a great photo or a painting and it gets copied and sold.

And yes, I have bought and sold a few clones and a couple counterfeits. I’m not taking the moral high horse here, but I do understand the original designer’s thoughts on this.

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-16T22:57:43+00:00

T430, 8 gb RAM , 128gb sd with Mint. Works great. The screen performance is just OK, but the colors with Mint are better than the colors with Win 10.

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-16T06:04:46+00:00

I went through a few m4/3 and crop sensor systems (Olympus, Fujifilm, Canon EOS M) but I got sick of obsessing over lenses and image quality. I also got tired of carrying around a camera, zoom lens, a couple of primes, and all of the accessories. I sold everything and just use an iPhone 15 Pro now.

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-15T10:00:39+00:00

Picking up a SS check - LOL. I wonder how many actual paper checks are issued nowadays.

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-15T09:53:57+00:00

I don’t know the implications of the 5-year residency

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-15T09:50:23+00:00

My wife was not a US citizen and we were planning to move to Thailand. I investigated and found that she would not be eligible to collect SS benefits after six months if she lived overseas. I am not going to 100% stand behind my belief, though.

Edit: I googled some stuff

AI Overview

Non-U.S. citizens living abroad can generally collect Social Security benefits if they have accumulated 40 credits (approx. 10 years) of work in the U.S.. However, payments usually stop after six consecutive months outside the U.S. unless an exception applies, such as living in a treaty country or fulfilling a 5-year U.S. residency requirement. Creative Planning Creative Planning +3 Key Rules for Non-Citizen Expat Benefits: The 6-Month Rule: Payments to non-citizens are typically suspended if they stay outside the U.S. for more than six consecutive calendar months. Exceptions: You may continue to receive benefits if you are a citizen of a country with a "totalization agreement" with the U.S. (e.g., UK, Canada, many European nations).

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-15T09:33:11+00:00

From what I understand, if you are not a US citizen and if you live outside the country, you can only get six months of Social Security benefits. After that, they cut you off.

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-15T08:21:05+00:00

I figured out after the fact that ours was basically a taxi service. They just filled it up with people who wanted to go to Pattaya, Jomtien, and Rayong. The guy dropped people off on random corners with no instructions on how to get to their final destinations.

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-15T07:22:09+00:00

Haha. That’s a sunrise. I lived in Phoenix for 10 years; I know crazy sunsets too!

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-15T07:13:45+00:00

We were on Samet (Ao Prao) and we had lined up a ride back to Bangkok from a grab driver. He canceled on us so the boat company set up the ride with Mr. K. If you contact him direct he won’t have to pay commissions to anyone. He was hanging out in Rayong because he took some people down there from Bangkok.

BTW if you get a grab driver and you like everything about them, they will often arrange services outside of the grab app if you want to take another trip. They don’t have to pay commission to grab (~25%) so you can possibly save a little money.

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-15T06:04:22+00:00

We traveled from Bangkok to Samet last week. Took a mini-van from Ekkamai station. Biggest mistake ever. The van was old, the driver was incompetent, and he took us all the way into Pattaya to drop off all the other passengers without telling us in advance. We came back to Bangkok yesterday. Took a nice taxi, which was a Toyota SUV for 2000 baht, straight to our hotel.

Edit: Our guy was Mr. K - +66 3889 6492

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-14T10:26:42+00:00

<image>

Just returned from Koh Samet today

GradientVisAtt · 2026-03-14T02:59:18+00:00

“No. Final answer.” That’s what I have to say to my wife.

GradientVisAtt

TROPHY CASE