potatofarmer45

What people don't realize is that extra-judicial "persuasion" is also commonly applied for strategic business interests. I recall a discussion with a someone at an electronics company a while ago where they described recent breaches and leaks of IP to Chinese state companies by unwitting employees pressured by these extra-judicial police.

Small powerboats. The biggest market for recreational boats is the 3.5 to 5m trailer boats. What people don't realise is while the market appears to be saturated with generic boat manufacturers, almost every boat buyer wants some kind of customisation that is often trivially cheap and quick to do with the right equipment.

The key skillset required is the ability to weld (for aluminium boats) and a garage set up to hold up boats while they're being assembled or customized.

Every time any Chinese diplomat opens their mouth, something incendiary comes out these days. There will be books written in the future and these times will be used an example on how to lose friends fast. The absolute reverse of soft power.

This 95% has as much credibility as Kim Jong Il's 36 round golf score.

This has consumed my morning. I've been humming out all of random tunes of my childhood from folk music to pop that I never knew the name of. It works.

This survey almost certainly wrong. 9 out of 10 people when given a leading question will probably say they think buying the latest smartphone is a waste of money, but the whole point of marketing shows that's not the case.

Average upgrade cycle is 24-36 months now. 75-85% of that is a "current" model. The caveat here is that "latest" device and flagship devices are not the same thing. For example, the latest oneplus can be either the flagship 8T or the new mid-range Nord.

Fountains pens are an experience and a statement. It's fussy in that it takes much longer to dry than most ball point pens, and it has a clear preference for pricy paper. In return, it makes a mundane part of life (writing notes etc) much more fun and personal. My signature ink is the Iroshizuku Asa-Gao. It's a punchy blue ink that comes in a gorgeously slick bottle. Every time I see the bright blue ink on paper, it makes me happy.

One of my favorite aspects of Diablo was the randomly generated levels. Imagine a space strategy game, where your "civ" is randomly generated giving you a random tech tree, with random ships of random attributes.

That would so much more depth and replay-ability and make it much much harder to over optimize.

I found a free espresso machine on craigslist (Gaggia Classic). It was old, rusty and "wasn't working". Spent time researching the model, took it apart and de-rusted and cleaned every part. Now it makes delicious coffee. Totally worth it

Cricket is a rare game where the condition of the tools used to play the game (the ball) is allowed to alter over the duration of the game. This differs from almost all other sports such as baseball, where new balls are used after every hit or less, and in tennis, where new balls are used after a set number of games.

Imagine how different baseball would be if they only used 1 ball per side for the entire game. Within a few innings, the ball will have much more variance and unpredictability.