A few weeks ago our shower started to occasionally drain slowly. As it got worse, I thought I'd have to get out the snake or call a plumber. Then the other day I thought 'why not just try the plunger?'

30 seconds of plunging, and I suddenly felt the blockage break loose, and the 8cm of standing water drained immediately.

Gotta love simple fixes that work.

OK, I am obviously not talking about Hawksbill tortoiseshell - so illegal it almost hurts to LOOK at a pick. So we have created a thousand analogues, including things like synthetic plastics (delrin, ultex, etc.) and polymerized natural proteins (galalith et al).

But there are green turtles which are entirely unthreatened, and have comparable shells. There are horns from a dozen animals which are made of keratin. There are HORSE HOOVES that get routinely trimmed. Why are these not being used to replace actual tortoiseshell, despite being chemically closest to it?

The fencer who disqualified the US épée team from competing in the 2024 Olympics was sanction in August 2025 due to "multiple violations of USA Fencing's code of conduct and athletic code of conduct." He will be eligible to apply for reinstatement in August 2030.

Just in the last few months, it seems like everyone who is doing content creation on youtube (etc.) is holding a tiny mic up, in the frame of the camera.

I get that mics are needed, but a good desk mic or a headset or whatever else you might imagine is just as good acoustically, and far less distracting. And they were all in use up until a few months ago.

Is this just a fashion trend?

I realized I don't often see spools on bikes when I'm out, and am wondering if people take them off when not using them.

The front of the cutlery drawer pulled off the drawer frame some months ago. Finally got around to reattaching it, better than the cheap constrution it originally was.

Obviously they won't be identical, and year, etc. will make a difference too. I'm just curious if they're fairly close or very different.

Anyone with experience?

The Bay was drawn to the $12.5 million offer because it "substantially" exceeded the value the charter had been given during a 2022 insurance appraisal, said Adam Zalev, co-founder of Bay financial advisor Reflect Advisors, in a court filing made Wednesday.

My friend and I were talking about power requirements in loudspeaker design and the fact that almost all of the power is required to drive the woofers and move lots of air.

Then he asked "do basses exert more energy talking or singing than sopranos?"

Or put another way, does a lower frequency voice need more power (energy) to achieve the same volume as a high voice?

Google Contacts, like most of their products, keeps changing and getting worse. Somewhere along the way it deleted all of the street address information from my contacts!

Ideally looking for a tool that checks these boxes:

• Open-source
• Android, Web, and (if necessary) Linux and Windows clients
• Stores contact info locally (i.e. self-hosted)
• Stores contact info securely (encrypted)
• Can store in a cloud location (e.g. Sync, Dropbox)

It seems like a tall order, but KeePass has managed to do that with their password vault, so why not contact info?

Any success stories out there?

Well, kinda.

Have two computers - my main one which has a failing internal drive (doesn't contain crucial stuff) and an old Linux machine which...has a failing internal drive.

Took them both out of their corners and blew the dust out - so much dust! Reseated the cables, moved some things around, and plugged 'em back in.

The main computer has the same problem as before, so I'm recovering as much data as I can before swapping out the dead drive.

The Linux computer won't even power on now. Gonna have to look at that this weekend.

EDIT: The Linux machine is back. Turns out the power plug I used for the internal drive is...questionable. Grabbed a different one and it came up fine. Well, fine to the point of recovery at least.