Ah, I forgot we were talking about vintage furniture. Bad paint sucks but people have got to get over this obsession with looking at wood. Color is fun and not every piece of wood is imbued with sacred beauty.

I need a link. I must see this natural great looking wood for myself, though I know it to be pine and spruce from a pallet

Argh I’ve got a 2017 with the dumb battery that also needs the proprietary SSD replaced. I was going to replace them but it’s so time consuming so I bought new, and now I feel bad and it’s just sitting in the corner un-fixed.

Some guy is writing the names “Esau” “Amalek”, “Isaac” etc in sharpie all over the neighborhood; I’m sure this is about Palestine but I can’t put together if they’re trying to say “we must destroy the children of Amalek” or “this is a religious war that cannot be explained or solved by political processes” or “Israel is fighting a war on the premise of Jewish supremacy as shown by all this biblical nonsense”.

I wasn’t really curious about the explanation until they wrote “Esau” on my door. I don’t know if they chose my door because I have a Palestine sign in the window or because my door has a gloss enamel surface that’s very attractive as a sharpie substrate (it was very easy to clean off at least). Am I being threatened?

https://theintercept.com/2024/03/23/intercepted-doctor-gaza-interview/

But [Palestinian medical workers], they are working on a daily basis on the most horrific, explosive trauma that you’ve ever seen. They’re doing sometimes 14, 15 amputations, mostly on children, per day, and they’ve been doing it for six months now.

You’re right, it’s important that unions have elections; that’s how we finally got a militant UAW.

I believe “we’re not so different” did a podcast series on the parallels, I think it’s paywall though. Great podcast!

My uncle was a naval officer, so I got to go on tiger cruise once. They did a display of the CIWS which resulted in half the deck being covered in mildly radioactive shell casings which were then swept into the sea. Fun stuff. At the time I remember thinking yikes, seems like you wouldn’t want to risk your crew’s safety by littering shells all over the deck for people to trip over, but knowing it’s the last line of defense it makes a bit more sense. It’s an emergency and you’ve got to spit all the depleted uranium at the incoming missile, who cares if one guy slips on a shell casing and gets a concussion.

For technical boots (hiking, alpine, whatever) follow manufacturers instructions. There are compatibility issues between cement and leather care products that can make it impossible to repair if you’ve used certain products.

For traditionally constructed boots, I use a leather lotion or leather conditioner every so often, and generally don’t use wax polish. That’s partially because I’m not looking for a mirror shine, and partially because I have found that too much wax polish allows the leather to dry and crack, especially at the creases behind the toe box.

There’s a lot of information on the internet about how different tanning processes need to be treated differently and that’s true, but mostly unhelpful as it’s difficult to find out what exactly the leather in your shoes was tanned and finished with. If you value your sanity, don’t think too much about it.

Start small, just practice making a sour face when they say dumb shit. As you get comfortable reacting, work up to more explicit criticism. This will also help ease them into it since they’re used to not being challenged by you.

In my experience, being able to say who it hurts and how is better than just saying something is offensive.

#Tradle #542 5/6 🟩🟩🟩⬜⬜ 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟨 🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 https://oec.world/en/tradle