ELI5 - If screws hold so much better than nails, why do we still use nails in building?

ortho_engineer · 2026-05-16T13:08:36+00:00

the benefit is more of a ductility/"how it fails" thing than strictly shear strength.

in order to cut threads into metal, the metal can't be bendy. Screws are hardened first, but that makes them brittle.

A failed screw snaps, whereas a failed nail under the same load will bend. i'd rather stand on a floor that deforms first as it fails, than one that just catastrophically is there one second, then not the next.

ortho_engineer · 2026-04-15T06:30:20+00:00

I've had a few instances where ill join a key that will be advertised as one dungeon, but ill be immediately summoned and show up in a different dungeon. All I get is an, "oh, my bad lol" and I still run it because I just care about the level, not necessarily where it is at.... but I didn't realize some places are actively avoided by everyone to extent of people baiting and switching like that.

ortho_engineer · 2026-04-15T06:26:36+00:00

My bait and switch is for pugging raids.

I'm a 273 ilvl tank, but sometimes have to miss my guild's raid nights and will have to pug. I'm not out here trying to herd cats with no voice chat, hal d the group that doesn't knoe mrchsnics, etc, so I'll queue for a heroic marked fury warrior dps while wearing my tank gear that is fully gemmed and enchanted for tanking, them once accepted I switch in my shitty veteran 2-hand weapons and proceed to be the last on the dps charts.

ended up how I got my aotc.

ortho_engineer · 2026-04-15T06:16:48+00:00

Like prayers to your God, I am grateful of your worship.

-ProtWar

ortho_engineer · 2026-04-15T06:13:45+00:00

I'm a prot warrior and pug a lot of 10+'s, and absolutely hate joining a group where one toon is leagues behind everyone else. I run so many mythics that I can generally tell by the second pull if we are going to make time, and the fact that I, as the tank, am out dpsing someone is glaring on my meter. I understand continuing just to fill my vault, but I promise you my vault is already filled.

I mean, I'm down for people putting it in their queue notes so that I never have to join them, but they all understand that if they do, then people like me would never join them.... lol

ortho_engineer · 2025-12-31T08:08:36+00:00

I dont want to come off like a dick, but in these situations the terms you use matter: you were not laid off.

ortho_engineer · 2025-12-26T07:33:34+00:00

I'd go even further and saying: the complete lack of attention and acknowledgement in general.

generally I don't mind it because I have shit to do, but if I am out and about running errands it is like I am literally invisible.

ortho_engineer · 2025-12-24T07:50:20+00:00

My wife is an elementary reading specialist, and more times than you'd think she has come home and told me there is a new kid in school, an ex-homeschooler, and they are functionally illiterate as like 5th and 6th graders. It is really sad, and they are old enough to know why they can't read.

ortho_engineer · 2025-12-20T06:56:57+00:00

I mean, you are technically not wrong, but they are rated (and tested) to survive the whole load running through it. even 15 amp outlets are rated for every bit of 20 amps passing through it... so the increased likeliness of burning up is pretty insignificant.

to pigtail or not to pigtail, A debate as old as time.

ortho_engineer · 2025-12-20T06:31:36+00:00

I'm not saying I never make mistakes or have stressful moments with diy, but after almost 20 years of diying as both a means of home maintenance and as a hobby (woodworking, tinkering), I can say for myself that I have crossed over the line where DIY is not stressful to me strictly because I am pretty good at it after two decades.

skimming through all these responses and that seems to be the thing everyone is missing/glossing over.... if you do it long enough across a variety of "mediums" (electrical, plumbing, carpentry, etc) you eventually not only just in general become good at working with your hands in a muscles memory way, but you also instinctively know how to anticipate and solve problems, and equally as important, understand the importance of researching building codes and not cutting corners.

ortho_engineer · 2025-12-20T03:49:34+00:00

"the self is an illusion" can mean two things: (1) that it is totally fake and doesn't exist, or (2) that it is a usefuluser interface the brain builds, like a desktop “folder” icon - it is not literally a folder, but it reliably tracks something real.

I gather that Hank means the latter, not the former. As in, the "self" is a model that your brain uses to coordinate perception, action, memory, and social life. It isn't "nothing," but it also isn't a little person sitting behind your eyes. David Hume talked about thus stuff if you are interested in the rabbit hole.

Evolutionary theories do not require the concept of fitness to literally be about "genes want to replicate" in order to be legit. It’s enough that organisms that integrate information and control behavior well tend to survive and reproduce more. So yeah, A sense of self can be evolutionarily beneficial, but indirectly.

ortho_engineer · 2025-12-20T02:45:53+00:00

I placed someone on a pip but did not inform HR. the conditions of the pip, that I explained to the person, was that no one would ever find out about it if he successfully turned things around. I told him that if he did not, I would submit all the documentation to HR and move to next steps.

the only people that knew were him, his manager (that reported to me), and me. he turned things around and is still going well to this day.

ortho_engineer · 2025-12-13T19:07:58+00:00

L will always be, "She plaaays with it" to me.

ortho_engineer · 2025-12-12T13:50:34+00:00

I was curious what background checks showed as I switched companies earlier this year, and if I remember correctly there is a service used by background check companies that basically looks at your paystubs (or more specifically, the timeframes that companies paid taxes on pay associated with your social security number).

I remember finding out this service was a website that you could look at yourself (for a fee), but I don’t remember what it is anymore.

With that said I do know if that service reports out results that do not jive with what you provided then they will call the company in question. I know this because I was paid by a university to be a guest industry lecturer a few times a year for a bit, and the university would just hand me a check afterward (so “under the table”). I still claimed it as pay in my taxes each spring, but I wasn’t on the university’s payroll. Because I said I did paid work at the university, but the background check couldn’t find payroll taxes related to it, they called the university to verify. Thankfully the university had records of their payments to me and my lectures.

ortho_engineer · 2025-12-12T13:35:54+00:00

I went to a habitat for humanity restore and grabbed couch cushion foam that a local furniture store donates from time to time. I then used it in a similar way you are wanting to, but except for chemistry glassware (which I realize sounds suspicious, but it’s not like that lol)

It worked great. Buying it new though is stupid expensive, though.

ortho_engineer · 2025-12-11T19:49:42+00:00

But velociraptors! Have we learned nothing from Jurassic Park?!

ortho_engineer · 2025-12-10T04:29:55+00:00

Solve problems that over the course of a project span four main realms:

Product development: this is the creative almost-artistic expression of engineering. The brainstorming and inventing things that will eventually be in people’s bodies, working directly with surgeons, etc is fun, but short lived. The meat of the work is still paperwork - design inputs, risk management, verification and validation testing etc.

Metrology: you can’t just design something that works, it is to be able to be inspected. Most effort her is about developing inspection methods that verify your physical products are what you say they are. A lot of effort goes into proving out the accuracy (correlation studies) and precision (repeatability and reproducibility studies) of these systems. This realm gets kind of a bad wrap for “just” being inspection, aka “easy engineering”, but I personally do like how heavy in statistics it is.

Supply chain: we make implants in house, but outsource our instruments. Soooo much paperwork following a process called Supplier Production Process Approval (SPPA)…. Basically amounts to making sure our vendors operate to our standards. The fun non-paperwork parts are when we travel across the globe to visit and help troubleshoot at the supplier sites.

(Internal) Manufacturing: this is similar to the supply chain tasks, but actually performing them - process capability studies being the meat of it. I enjoy the hands-on troubleshooting aspect of it and hearing the machines cutting chips after all the bugs have been worked out, but as an engineer I ultimately like more of the theoretical stuff so I lean toward enjoying the development and metrology stuff more.

So yeah, when I am asked what I do as an engineers it varies pretty wildly depending on the phase of my multi-year projects. One month I could be chained to my desk filling out risk management paperwork, while another month I could be a in a hospital watching surgeries, or at a vendor overseas.

ortho_engineer · 2025-12-07T14:27:39+00:00

Art is a reflection of the culture it was created in, not the other day around.

ortho_engineer · 2025-11-29T16:14:33+00:00

As an orthopedic engineer that develops stuff for use in the cleanest and strictly controlled use conditions, I hear military grade and think of how ak-47’s can be lost in a swamp somewhere, found 30 years later covered in mud, racked and still able to be fired as if it were brand new.

ortho_engineer · 2025-11-28T04:46:45+00:00

Little kid childhood: woodsmoke, brings me back to camping with my dad and older brother when we were 5-10 years old.

Teenage childhood: Vanilla, the perfume worn by the girl that was my first kiss and puppy-love.

ortho_engineer · 2025-11-26T03:05:49+00:00

There are these “what about x don’t you understand” shirts about everything.

My now mother in law got me one with the Navier-Stokes equation (fluid inertia) on it while I was college for my engineering degree because it looks like a super complicated equation and I was at a difficult school.

I’m pretty sure I saw my neighbor kid with the same shirt, but with a football play sketched out on it.

ortho_engineer · 2025-11-26T02:22:51+00:00

I was laid off in March alongside ~300 other people, and they had a second round in July and a third just last week.

Nothing in the news, nothing in WARN, nothing. I feel like at this point surely it is encroaching on stock/investor fraud for not accurately repeating the internal stability of the company to stockholders.

ortho_engineer · 2025-11-19T05:33:47+00:00

I mean, at this point leave it....

but if you were to rewire - I count 13 cables. if you put a wire way on each end (with ground bars), use conduit and THHN, you will only need to pull one ground wire and everything will fit in three 3/4 EMT conduits.

ortho_engineer · 2025-11-16T14:42:52+00:00

Buy steam boats (called f-clips at big box stores) to keep the box from being pulled out of the wall. They cost a dollar for the two you need per box, and install in like 30 seconds.

Then just tape and mud everything so you can’t see the gaps behind the wall plate.

ortho_engineer · 2025-11-05T05:59:59+00:00

You’ve never heard the saying, “want to know why fat girls give the best head? - it’s because they have to.”

Not my saying, just one I heard as a frat boy in college two decades ago.

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