Phil Landmeier @shuttersparks@qoto.org

@rbreich Yes, "dynamic pricing" is a buzzword I learned about a year-ago. It means price-gouging.

@Spud_Coolzip @kilroy_was_here Exactly. Back in the 1950s that construction technique was called "a plumber's delight". Hahaha.

@originlbookgirl @lovelylovely Exactly. Old geezer here. Was a Republican in my younger days. Yes, it's exactly as you describe. Back and forth, back and forth, Republicans trash the economy and run up the national debt. People realize it's bad, bring in democrats who repair the damage, but before they can get anything positive done they vote in Republicans again. Wash, rinse, repeat.

@kilroy_was_here Agreed. You encounter diminishing returns and going bigger doesn't buy you what you may think.

Engineer here and I've been around, in, and seen installations that had to be absolutely lightning-proof and were engineered to be so. It's way beyond anything you or I could afford to do.

8 or 10 AWG is fine. If you want more you should switch up to braid and/or copper tubing, not waste your money on solid copper. Connections should be welded. They make thermite weld kits for making serious grounding connections. The cost for all that quickly gets out of hand for regular folks.

For ham radio grounding for lightning (high frequency, fast rise time) and for RF grounding for radio I recommend copper tubing. 1-inch solid copper is a pure waste of money when 1-inch tubing will do the same job.

@Hey_Beth Yes, but overall, it looked like they were caught completely flat-footed -- skunked.

@karlauerbach Hah! Well, I do. I grew up in a family that strongly supported unions. So, as you should expect, I was anti-union when I was young. In the 1970s I turned down a job offer from CBS to become a video engineer when I learned it was a union job. Their chief engineer at the time recommended me. But by the mid 1980s my education improved and I reversed my position.

@ai6yr Hmm. I'll be the judge of that. ;-)

Hmm. Went looking where I could buy the proper Unionwear-made Harris/Walz baseball cap. Can't. Sold out everywhere I looked including the Unionwear web site. There are Chinese knockoffs available but that's not what I want. Hmm.

@EugeneMcParland I don't doubt that for a minute. Putin knows he'll be dead before the bill for this adventure comes due.

@Hey_Beth Yup. Biden is a master at politics. I marvel because I could not have thought this plan up. I'm not a master of politics. But I get it now and I can't stop laughing.

I mean, damn, isn't there ANYONE among Republican strategists that saw this coming???

@randahl Well, economics plays a part. Possibly the major part. Russia's economy is about the size of Spain's. No offense to Spain, I love Spain and Spaniards. But um, Russia pretends to be a world power only because they have nukes and we in the West play along because we know it's useful to have a big bad enemy.

Russia is a paper tiger. If you press them seriously, they collapse. Without a network of satellite nations (colonies) to support them, they're nothing. They can't even feed themselves. It's been like this for hundreds of years and nothing has changed because a thousand years ago the Rus chose to settle on a pretty much useless plot of land. They only survive by raiding and plundering nations around them.

Why do we put up with it? I really don't know.

@mikaelfer Wonderful. My dad taught me this 60 years ago. (He was a blacksmith by trade, trained in Germany in the 1910s. We built a forge. This is serious fun (in my opinion). Shaping steel, tempering, welding. It's a powerful feeling because you realize that you can make anything if you put your mind to it. Oh, did I mention it's also fun.

Have fun!

@Free_Press Yes, well, some people just need to be beaten until their attitude improves. But I'm a liberal and much too nice to do such a thing.