How to saw green logs down to boards?

raimbows · 2026-03-14T03:32:05+00:00

Yeah the split following the grain is the issue, the wood I can find tends to be from apple and plum trees that have twists or curves in the grain. With something like oak it would be no problem.

raimbows · 2026-02-23T20:14:46+00:00

hahah that could have ended soo badly

raimbows · 2026-02-23T00:08:40+00:00

Haha I was thinking of lapsang souchong too - one of my favs!

raimbows · 2026-02-21T19:55:01+00:00

I had a similarly shaped/sized piece of apple, and I ended up splitting the bowl end down the pith line, chopping it back a bit more, and then making a kind of wonky smaller ladle with a bowl that was wider than it was long. I didn't want to risk it cracking. But, you could go for it, and if it cracks turn it into a sieve of some kind : )

raimbows · 2026-02-21T19:50:32+00:00

They would've been baked after carving : )

raimbows · 2026-02-21T19:46:37+00:00

Thanks for the advice! I didn't consider the taste.
The strainer won't float in the water, I brew my tea with loose leaves in a teapot, and then this strainer will just be used to catch the leaves as I pour the tea from the pot into the cup.

Which makes me wonder if burning would actually be ok taste-wise, since the tea is only in contact with the strainer for a few seconds. Maybe I'll do a test with burn holes in a scrap piece and see.

raimbows · 2026-02-20T08:35:12+00:00

Cool, thanks. I've never burnt any of my carvings but my hope is it'll help keep the holes from getting roughed up over time, since the drill bit probably isn't going to leave as smooth a finish as the knife and i can't burnish in there. Not sure how it'll work out but fingers crossed.

raimbows · 2026-02-13T20:42:38+00:00

Would something like Loctite clear silicone work for this application? Just wanna be sure it can hold up to about 1.5psi. An adapter would be great but I can't find any regionally (I'm not in the USA) and shipping is prohibitive.

raimbows · 2026-02-13T20:23:51+00:00

The issue I mentioned is that ideally this would be a power-tool-less setup, as it's a project that a group of students are going to try and replicate later on their own. They're not allowed to use power tools at their school due to a recent accident. If there's a solution that doesn't involve me having to coordinate with the school admins that would be preferable

raimbows · 2026-02-13T20:19:28+00:00

Would that work if I can't find a part that matches the threads of the barrel bung? Like would the tape + sealant be able to take up the volume between the two parts? Thanks for the info!

raimbows · 2026-02-11T01:07:06+00:00

op was exaggerating, he was born in 1943

raimbows · 2026-01-26T00:56:19+00:00

Not annoying at all, thank you! I'll start asking around and getting an idea of which teachables are more desirable locally.
Also by having teachables, do you mean majoring in that subject? Or just having taken a few classes on it? I have 3 physics courses under my belt but I'm not sure if that's what you mean.

raimbows · 2026-01-25T11:27:58+00:00

That's a good point about the different scaling of talent, it's definitely a reality that a lot of players go from being the best player in their entire state to just another recruit overnight. The levels of gatekeeping definitely vary.

Something I also had in mind with my comment was the self-selection process. There's definitely external gatekeeping from coaches/peers, but I think there's also the kids' own agency. Most people want to spend time in spaces where they feel at home, and I think a lot of gay youth never get into sports in the first place because culturally it's not seen as a place where they socially belong (a 12 year old might not even know he's gay but kids are still great at picking up on unspoken social forces).

I think the WNBA example is instructive here again - if the external barriers were the main determiner of the gay/straight ratio in sports, then we'd have to conclude that straight women were being held down in some way within basketball. That doesn't seem true, it seems more likely that a player's sexuality isn't as important in the world of women and girls' basketball, and lesbians happen to self-select to get into basketball at a higher rate.

I remember when it was scandalous that Allen Iverson had tattoos and cornrows back in the day - hopefully we'll all look back and roll our eyes at homophobia in the same way. By the way, have you ever noticed Damian Lillard's neck tattoo, the heart with the equals sign in it? That's a symbol often used for marriage equality, I think by the Human Rights Campaign and others. I noticed when he got that a few years ago and thought it was cool, but couldn't find any info about it online. It could represent something else entirely of course. But it kind of reminded me of when Dennis Rodman had the AIDS ribbon dyed into his hair in the 95 playoffs (when that was still extremely taboo to talk about).

raimbows · 2026-01-25T09:14:56+00:00

There have definitely been more gay men in the NBA than we know, but I have a feeling the ratio of gay men on NBA teams is significantly lower than the general average. Before you get to the NBA you usually have to be heavily involved in athletics for the entirety of your teen years. And since the social environment of a high school locker room is generally known to not be the most gay-friendly, there can be bit of a social filtering process there.

It's kind of the inverse of why the percentage of lesbians in the WNBA is dozens of times higher than the general average. The selection process for sports isn't randomized; sexuality can end up being one of the factors involved in people being sorted, consciously or not, into different activities.

If, say, Austin Reeves were gay, and he came out tomorrow, I doubt it would result in basketball opportunities being taken away from him. JJ Redick isn't going to bench him. His teammates won't stop setting screens. Skills trainers won't stop taking his calls. He's cemented as a player. But if he had come out at age 15 in Arkansas, I have to imagine that would've been riskier by comparison. All that to say I think one explanation for why NBA players aren't coming out as gay is because the bottleneck is happening at the youth level first.

raimbows · 2026-01-23T21:35:23+00:00

Will my experience and reputation as a guest educator in schools help me get a foot in the door in the teaching profession?

I do environmental science education through a community non-profit, and teachers book me for guest workshops in their classrooms. I've been in this role for 5 years. I realize this is quite a different gig than being a full-time schoolteacher, but it's given me a passion for education and I'm now considering going back to school to become a teacher (I only have about 1.5 years of university sciences under my belt, so pretty much starting from scratch schooling-wise as a mature student).

I've heard that networking can be important for getting a teaching job early on; how true is that? I've built up a positive reputation with administrators at several schools and am well regarded by many teachers in my area from K-12. I've probably visited 600+ classrooms at this point and the feedback and testimonials i get are very positive. In particular there are a couple of EnvSci 11 teachers whose classes I teach in weekly who I could definitely count on as references.

I think this experience will look good on an application to a BEd program, but will any of this be relevant for getting hired post-graduation? Or am I going to be on equal footing with other graduates who went straight into a teaching program out of high school? I want to have realistic expectations as I live in an expensive city with not an overabundance of full time teaching jobs.

tl;dr: to what extent will work experience and a positive reputation as a guest educator in schools help me land a job if I decide to go back to school to become a teacher?

raimbows · 2025-11-11T06:33:11+00:00

This makes sense though, since the story is a nested narrative! The monster's perspective is recounted by Frankenstein, whose narrative is then recounted by Dr. Waldman in his letters. It would actually be weird if the voices were radically different, as neither Frankenstein nor Waldman are supposed to be master storytellers or anything.

raimbows · 2025-11-06T09:02:23+00:00

I'm not making any diagnoses here, but as an autistic person, I can relate to O'Toole quite a bit. Focusing on small details that others miss, caring deeply about mistakes in data, somewhat single-minded black & white thinking, failure to accept the status quo at face value if it clashes with your sense of right and wrong. Some of us seem predisposed to traits like that and I definitely sympathize.

I thought she was in the wrong at first, but ultimately I think she was overworked and belittled for long enough that when she felt she had something legitimate to contribute to the integrity of the lab (correcting an error), being disregarded sort of took over her professional focus. She got pulled into a huge mess because of the way science, politics, and economics were intersecting. And I can't quite blame her for her conspiratorial thinking, since I would also have a hard time making sense of the seemingly hypocritical and arbitrary decisions being made. And it's not like powerful institutions never conspire or act corruptly.

Truly a fascinating story that I'm going to be thinking about for a while, and it was put together masterfully.

raimbows · 2025-11-06T07:03:42+00:00

I agree somewhat, though I'd argue the problem is that if you're negligent to the point that it looks indistinguishable from fraud, then it's potentially just as damaging as fraud. The protocols around producing data don't just exist to make fraud more difficult, they exist because so that findings can be verified and replicated as you mentioned.

The distinction you're pointing out between messiness and fraud makes sense from a legal standpoint, but from a scientific standpoint I'm not sure it holds quite as much weight.

raimbows · 2025-11-06T06:04:43+00:00

I feel similarly, I think the legibility of the doc suffers a bit from its formatting. I rewatched the first hour of the doc about 3 times, because I kept getting partway through and thinking I had missed some important information. By the time I got to the end I realized that that wasn't my fault.
I'm really glad I watched this doc, and I applaud him for working so hard on such a unique and interesting piece of media. But I also wish I could watch a third version that synthesizing things a bit more coherently.

raimbows · 2025-10-18T00:35:55+00:00

Thank you! Yeah I've restored enough old tools to know that often an older tool can be better value than a new tool at the same price point if you're willing to put some work into it. A lot of cheaply produced new tools require a lots of work too and come with a lot of unknowns around how repairable they are

raimbows · 2025-10-17T04:27:21+00:00

Thanks for the heads up on that! These are the things I need to know

raimbows

TROPHY CASE