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The trillion/year I believe was in reference to military expenditures.

my personal method when out and about is "ask a stranger," with using my hand computer as a backup. i delight in answering these questions as well, so i'm inclined to believe people generally don't mind.

Neal Stephenson has done world building involving megacorporations that devolve into semi-feudal colonies. His style is goofier than Gibson's gritty realism but worth reading.

Protip: if you find a crap product that's being shilled for in the reviews, you can talk your way into getting paid decently for your silence. I know someone who was paid several hundred dollars to not leave a bad review for a something that cost under $50. One scathing review that exposes their scheme might lost them tens, maybe a hundred multiples of their unit profit margin.

I went surfing with a friend a couple years ago. I made an error while donning the wetsuit and ended up irretrievably wedging my head into the sleeve. Had to have my friend unwedge me.

Paddling takes a LOT of effort, and you do a lot of it. Catching a wave is about timing, and balance, in that order. I managed to do it exactly once in the couple hours we were out. I'd do it again. :)

autorotation requires control of blade pitch.

my cursory research seems to indicate that it's pretty reasonable to start a local wireless ISP, with a lower bound wrt minimum number of clients to make the venture worth it being 50 or so according to someone.

I came across an old copy of this when I was in grade school. Early aughts. Finding those books may well have put me on the path to where I am now (embedded hardware eng)

If you've been holding onto a LOT, it's possible to spend the entire length of the experience processing everything you've lived up to that point. I've seen it in first-time MDMA experiences, notably a friend in his late 20s who'd only recently 'come out of his shell' so to speak.

I think even in that case, his experience was probably wildly useful, despite bearing little to no resemblance to the happy empathic presentation that's commonly associated with MDMA.

My answer is 'yeah, probably.' But ideally this hypothetical couple should ask someone experienced who knows them better.

MrLeap did a great job explaining this. If I were to add anything, it would be to echo the recommendation to take a class if you're really starting from nothing. Two things are really important starting out: someone who can demonstrate good technique and rapidly evaluate and give feedback on your work, and seat time. It's like learning to write, once you know what you want the result to look like, it's mostly time in the seat to build consistency and muscle memory. If you have the time, I've heard good things about community college courses. Here in Oakland, Ca, there's an industrial arts space, The Crucible, that offers condensed courses, useful if you're short on time.

I had the great fortune of working adjacent to a machine shop. I learned TIG on a work machine. A co-worker spent 15 minutes showing me setup and some example welds, then it was mostly seat time from there, with lots of YouTube and a couple of "hey, how's my weld look?" sessions.

Actually fabricating stuff can be an issue when you don't have machine shop at your disposal. Luckily, some metal shops have a CNC laser or plasma, so if you design something in CAD, you can shop out sheet metal bits and avoid the hassle. There are places that will laser cut and notch steel or alu tube so that you can sort of just hand-bend and lego your workpiece together.

One tool that's not obvious, but becomes indispensable especially to a homegamer is a portable bandsaw. Get a decent corded one-- it makes cutting tube stock etc accurate and fast. You can fabricate a stand for it and turn it into a static bandsaw as well.

it's a reference to Eisenhower's famous 1953 speech

it's all fun and games until someone figures out they can make cigarette butts and turn them in for money

fabrication, welding, juggling, playing music, working on and riding motorcycles, doing acid in the woods.

it takes some doing but it's well worth the effort to move your leisure time away from device-focused activities. the sense of life balance gained is palpable.

Not to mention that there are often different bins for different color glass (have seen them in public areas, not sure if this happens for residential as well). And iirc you may get yelled at for doing it wrong

is this actually a legit synthesis? as a non-chemist it has the air of plausibility, author names and quips aside.