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Joined 7 months ago
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Cake day: October 7th, 2025

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  • The atrophy scares the hell out of me.

    Years ago, I would often have long conversations with my dad about how manual skill sets in the trades (my training) and in engineering in the field (which was his bailiwick) were being lost to the pivot towards college degrees for every student, including the ones that preferred to work with their hands.

    Three decades on, I witnessed the full turn when construction firms had to - and still have to - mass import workers from Central and South America (legally and illegally) just to get things built. NGL, there are some scary good builders that have been brought in, and those people work insanely hard.

    Yes, it’s slowly pivoting back as more boys and men opt for the trades and become journeymen and apprentices, but to get the skillsets needed to get to a master’s level, you’re looking at at least 20k hours. Wer’re still a decade out - at best - before we get enough kids through the system and into steady work that they can step up and strike out on their own and make crazy bank. Skilled craftsmen and women can earn 100 bucks an hour - easily - in the right markets, and the rich folks will be glad to pay.

    Goddamn, it’s gonna be scary until that sorts itself out in another decade or so (and that does pin itself on the hope the financially feckless idiot in the White House doesn’t torpedo the economy…)













  • I love borzois.

    When I was a teenager, a family friend had a whippet. He was the fastest thing in the neighborhood and was a bit of an asshole, in that he’d strafe other dogs and nip at them as he flew by. He wasn’t neutered so had an alpha male attitude on all the time.

    We’re at a picnic area having a barbecue and in enters the acquaintance from hell, (who was a pot dealer on the side, coming by to join the festivities and make a deal with the grownups) and his two borzois - Zero and Arrow. (Zero was an absolute snuggle-bug and the chillest dog ever…)

    Welp, the whippet (named Whippet) started in on the borzois and they were having none of it. They ran circles around him and actually put his nose in the dirt as they ran him down twice. The only thing Whippet had as an advantage was turning radius at speed. You never saw a dog so instantly humbled and he spent the rest of the afternoon under the picnic table.

    We all got a good laugh out of it… Whippet really was an asshole…