Spyke

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Who were some of your childhood heroes that turned out to be horrible people?

I reserve 'cunt' and 'dumb bitch' as especially strong, disrespectful expletives to call a woman.

When I say "Fuck that dumb bitch TERF cunt JK Rowling" it carries the hurt and ire of a broken childhood love of Harry Potter. The series itself was incredibly important to me and provided a world I could escape to when the real world was overwhelming. The hate and bigotry that cunt has shown breaks my heart and sullies too many childhood memories to describe.

I was deeply inspired to pursue engineering after watching the first Falcon 9 boosters land themselves. I was enamored by the idea of using my little blip in humanity's timeline to assist our expansion to another planet. I wanted to contribute to something important, something that turned many brilliant minds towards an achievement that would eventually benefit the entirety of mankind.

I even hopped on the Tesla train; I recognized the existential threat that carbon emissions bore as well as the damaging, restrictive nature of building a society that scorns public transportation and promotes individual car ownership.

I didn't worship Elon so much as admired the causes he was advancing. That admiration withered over the years but my dream of contributing to the colonization of Mars helped me push through the ten years it took to earn my four year engineering degree. As details of his derangement came out, as he acquired twitter and more overtly spread his billionaire propaganda, that dream started to fade. The fascist salutes at Trump's inauguration crushed those dreams and ground them into a dust too fine to even attempt a rebuild.

My jaded ass still wants to benefit humanity so I've set my eyes on climate science, even as the country I was born in denies the havoc and damage our relentless consumption has wrought. Not just denial, but outright derision and contempt for the future of our world. Thus I hope to take my dreams elsewhere, hoping to find a culture with a clearer view of the consequences we must face and the changes we must make to preserve our planet.

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what’s your best “nitric acid acts upon trousers” moment?

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Cleaning up for months

Sounds like my first internship. Huge, multi-million dollar test loop for compressor validation. Shortly after I left one day a 1/4 inch tube fitting on top of the compressor, part of the oil system, sheared off during a test. While I dont remember the oil pressure I do remember the video a coworker took of the incident.

Oil geysering all the way to the 40ft high ceiling. For 45 minutes.

I get back the next day and the whole test loop is covered in oil. Footprint-wise think two semi trailers next to each other. Oil on the floor, oil in the (water only) trench drains which they had dammed quickly, oil on thousands of feet of piping.

Let me reiterate; I was the intern. Aka, my job description now included "waste oil remediation." It took a week-ish for your boots to stop sticking as you walked and far longer than that to clean the piping.

To top things off this happened in winter and the oil viscosity reflected the cold conditions. Thus as spring and summer rolled in and the temperature increased the pipes started...dripping. Honestly this was years ago and I suspect they're still wiping oil up here and there.

world

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Bolivians Declare a General Strike Against Their President

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Americans dont even know what a general strike is much less how to organize one.

My public school education glossed over unions and I've met incredibly few people who are a member and even fewer who support them.

No, I didn't mistype. I have met union members who don't support unionization and just complain about the dues they pay. I don't blame them (yes I do) so much as feel pissed off for them even if they wouldn't understand why.