I’ve put a note on my microwave to mute all beeps. I’ve made it very clear to my wife, in the event of my untimely death, she is to show her next husband how to turn off the beeping after a power outage.

I’ve pulled them before with shovels and a farm jack, and it is a nightmare, dangerous too. Now we have machinery to do it, or a truck and chain, wouldn’t do it manually any more

The overhead running a legit business is unreal.

My general advice is don’t use post mix concrete, use regular stone mix and backfill immediately. The backfilled dirt will hold it in place and slow the cure, giving you hours to go back and tweak as you go. That rapid post makes no sense, there’s no urgency in the setting phase, that’s the opposite of what you want.

And remember, if you do a good job it can last 20+ years, so don’t be lazy and take a shortcut because it’s “good enough”. You’re better spending $300 on a rental machine to dig the holes than to set a post that isn’t deep enough. I’m in Canada where frost can be hell, my posts go 4’ down and usually 5 bags concrete per post, then another 3 bags down the post once it’s all assembled. Your 40’ fence I could easily put in 50 bags. Don’t base your shopping list on that, but know that if you care about longevity it takes patience and hard work, like anything else in life

My time to shine. I own a company that does fences, we specialize in custom vinyl. Obviously this varies by region, but I’ll price vinyl $95-130/ft, and $300 per gate. Depending on if I liked you, what I knew about the soil, travel time to your job, I’d probably come in around $5300, installed

It might sound insane, but my 4 man crew costs about $1100/day to keep on the road. 40’ in bad conditions is 2 days minimum, can easily spill into 3. My materials would be around $1500, so worst case I’m netting in $500 for 3 days of work, which is damn near unsustainable considering the amount of machinery I’ve got in play

Debt collectors. The businesses took the risk when they loaned money or provided some kind of service on credit.

I don’t use debt collectors any more, but I have a construction company and a few times a year people just decide not to pay for their work. If someone really truly refuses to pay I could take them to small claims court, and I have, but it’s a ton of work and lawyers won’t bother with anything under 10k. I’ve literally had a judge say “so petty” about me taking someone through small claims for a $1200 they’d been dodging for years So some jerk can stiff me for $1500 and I have basically no recourse. I’m not talking about some impoverished person who I took advantage of, these are people with nice homes who make a habit of not paying bills. I’ll work with people who are short on cash and honest.

Even though debt collectors are 0/3 in the times I’ve used them, it’s at least something to fire off a final ‘fuck you and your credit’

Who says they don’t already? I knew a guy who worked for a major government agency who’s job was to look over horrible pictures to try to figure out where they were taken.

I bet the most skilled people do work for them, not just youtube. But talking to that guy, it’s a tough job, not for everyone. Instead of a random streetview image it’s a scene of abuse, so…

I’d guess Heart Shaped Box and About a Girl, for starters

That’s what I’m talking about! That’s for digging that up. It just never passed the smell test for me, I always called bs

Ahhh damn! I was about to board a plane and didn’t bother googling it, mixed him up with the footballer

Oh no, not the mbappe Mpemba effect effect. I refuse to accept that as a real thing, there is just no way the warm water freezes faster. I’ve read dozens of articles about it, eventually finding some that confirmed for me it’s probably just measuring error or subtle differences that aren’t being noticed. But that left me thinking if I had to search so hard for the one article that confirms my gut instinct I shouldn’t lean into it too hard

Like you have two cups of identical water, eventually the warm water becomes the cold water. If I then use that previously warm water as my cold water and start the experiment over with another glass of warm water, what now? And don’t tell me water has memory.

My favorite explanation is imagine two cars on a track 100 meters long. The far end is the track is hard asphalt and cars can drive fast. The track gets rougher and muddier the closer you are to the finish line, so the first 50 meters are covered in seconds, the next 25 meters are slower, and the final 5 meters the cars are crawling. You start one car at the 100 meter line and one starts at 10 meters. If you’re observing this race from the top of a 50 storey building above the track, you’d understandably think “wow, that car that started far away was so much faster! For sure it won” even though in the last few feet it was neck-and-neck.

I’m going to guess in most parts of the world heating water is a bigger expense vs getting clean water.

You could choose to feel guilty about wasting heat energy, or just enjoy it knowing the energy had already been spent heating the water for you to enjoy. But screw fresh water! Waste away! It’ll stay in the water cycle

I’ve noticed the same, and it’s horrifying when you think about the cost of all those ads and how it’s mostly funded by people with gambling problems