If I remember correctly, the spherical design was mainly created to resemble a baseball. Since most US citizens knew how to throw a baseball at the time it would mean they didn't have to train soldiers as much

My grandfather quit smoking by switching the habit to lollipops. He always used to say it was a good replacement for the oral fixation and fidgeting

Most if not all power used is generated almost instantly as needed. So when you look at solar (which is a great renewable) you run into the fact that it only generates power while the sun is out, and a specific amount of power.

This causes the problem of, how do you generate power at night and what do you do on rainy days or if a cloud covers the panels. You can substitute this with other renewable energy sources: wind, hydro, and nuclear, but wind has similar issues as solar and hydro and nuclear have huge upfront costs and take years to build.

So this is where coal and natural gas come in. Coal has the downside of being really bad for the environment but can start up within 10ish minutes of being needed. Gas is better for emissions (not great), but takes more time to startup.

A lot of companies use a mix of things along with buying and selling power with other companies (similar to a stock market). There are thoughts of trying to store power or looking at small scale nuclear plants.

Solar chart through the day:

Power use throughout the day:

Source: I work for a large power company

I thought their whole mindset was repairability and upgradeability. This is just an all in one board with a case. With a starting price of $1,000 even comparable Mac mini's are $300 less if you want performance or just get a console if you want to play games.

Would have loved if their desktop would have just rehoused the 13 or 16 motherboards with upgraded cooling potential and even maybe thunderbolt to GPU adapters

Here's the Etsy link for them: https://www.etsy.com/shop/FlareForTheDramatic

I've been trying Stoat for the past few days with friends. It's really promising and feels a lot like discord. Haven't had any complaints or issues with the windows app. And once it's set up calls and servers are pretty easy to get set up. Their android app is pretty buggy though currently, it is advertised as in beta so hopefully that'll be fixed in the future. We don't screenshare so I haven't looked into it but I've heard it doesn't support it

I tried sign language on a whim in college and ended up loving it! It's really unique and fun to use. It ended up being my secondary focus on my degree. Also, Deaf people are always super happy whenever there is someone to speak with, even if you stumble through it they are always patient and try to help

Ya! And there is a lot of research and investment into them. The problem is they lose capacity over time from being powered and drained (think phone batteries and other lithium batteries).

From what I know hydro batteries are actually really big with power companies. Basically pumping a bunch of water uphill when you have excess power, then using the reservoir like a hydro plant when you need power. They are really inefficient, but work surprisingly well at storing a lot of power

My general understanding of why you bulk and cut is because muscles take a lot of calories (carbs and protein) to grow and sustain growth. So in your bulk cycle you focus your workouts on pure muscle and strength growth and eat a lot which causes you to both have sustainable muscle growth as well as gain fat from the excess of calories you eat. Then in your cutting cycle you try to lose the weight you gained but when you are on a calorie deficit you also lose muscle mass. So, you focus your diet to hold as much muscle as you can while also focusing your exercises on high cardio. Again this is just my general understanding of why you do it I may have gotten some things wrong

Mine took 8hrs before I finally got it

I'm impressed! FYI you're missing "The Royal Scions"

Sadly its a thing that's becoming more and more common. Ive had multiple friends in different companies that have to go back in office. Luckily there are still some companies like the one I'm in that realize that people don't want to have to go back in office

Not nearly as much as I would like, luckily my partner knows it too though. So we are able to have some side conversations with it!

I studied it for about 4 years doing a mix of learning and being a teaching assistant for the intro classes, but realistically I was conversational after 2 classes or about a year.

Some tips if you want to learn. I learned American Sign so your mileage may vary for others:

-Find out what sign language is primarily used in your country ASL (American Sign Language) in the US, BSL (British Sign Language) in England, I think some parts of Canada use FSL (French Sign Language) but I cant remember. Universal Sign exists, but is never used so dont learn that.

-Use your dominant hand for all single handed signs

-Learn the alphabet, there are not signs for every word that exists. Often times words are spelled out (fingerspelled) instead of having signs. So by learning your alphabet you can always default to spelling things out if you dont know the sign.

-Facial expressions are super important. They feel really weird at first and often times are what beginners struggle with the most, but they are used to show tone in the conversation and without them you are missing a large building block of the language.

-I found the best way to practice was to sign to myself instead of talking to myself. It helped me remember the main signs that I would use in conversation and helped me practice my finger spelling.

If anyone has any questions, feel free to reach out. Im still very passionate about the language and culture.

Had a similar issue in college where I wasn't social enough to form connections in class. I found clubs and work were where I formed my friendships. Places where I was put in a group for extended periods of time. Also, learning that if you're the one who wants to form the friendship you will most likely need to be the one who initiates conversation and activities for some time

If you're interested in programming see if there are local beginner hack-a-thons where you can be in a group to complete a project with people that have a similar level of experience.