Retirement - make the most of it

https://youtu.be/DMHMOQ_054U?si=qQWWThHHl-OsC5Eg

Phase 4 "rewire" 

-find purpose, find a mission

-service to others

-teaching (ESL, tech, repair bicycles) 

-experiment and try many things

Jumping fish

https://youtu.be/5KsV53mwhI0?si=Kg6xa_ghYi3JKj51

40:10 huge school of fish jump above the surface to avoid predator sharks. 

Turing pattern from related blurring and sharpening

https://youtu.be/7oCtDGOSgG8?si=q2T4kStsA4eSMM7s

Borrow-buy-die - how the ultra-rich pay no income taxes

https://youtu.be/8pBPZMUcsh0?si=SuZsIe8xkRyM8_m1

Rare earth elements and China's monopoly.

https://youtu.be/K6MLAkJDAYs?si=8c3B6ZMjcJ7pPkjY

8:57 "each F35 fighter jet contains half a ton of rare earth elements." 

7:55 in 1995, China bought a US rare earth metals company, including its patents and equipment, had the employees flown to China where they taught the production methods to their employees there, in effect stealing the technology out from under the US. 

Rare earth elements and China's monopoly.

https://youtu.be/K6MLAkJDAYs?si=8c3B6ZMjcJ7pPkjY

8:57 "each F35 Tomahawk fighter jet contains half a ton of rare earth elements." 

Stock market is barely up if you factor inflation in.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1ZdcZNUnoX/

Every empire dies

https://www.facebook.com/share/1GnRQXyPzy/

Incredible art generated from AI data

https://youtu.be/I-EIVlHvHRM?si=SxOGc3RMoLHasZ2y

Flowing morphing patterns are mesmerizing. Artist Refik Anadol. 

Auto shops don't work on old cars.

Interesting perspective from a local car enthusiast group. Older cars just aren't worth the hassle for repair shops to deal with. The owners tend to be cheapskates, and it's easy to damage something while fixing someone else, and parts are hard to find. 

45 years a mechanic. 

To make money as a mechanic you need to turn and burn cars, you want cars you can scan and diagnose easily that get parts you can have delivered in an hour. You can't have cars sitting waiting for parts or techs spending hours diagnosing issues. 

Currently it's hard to get an oil filter or air filter for a 2002 VW or Mercedes. They are one to three days out. 

Let's say you get a pre 1996 car in your shop. No codes, no live data, if you have a running issue you have to start at basics. Test the resistance of the temp sensor at the current temp, then start warming it up and constantly check temp and resistance comparing then to a graph. You need to pin out the ECU and install mechanical gauges on everything. Customers don't want to pay for that anymore and most of us old enough to have the experience to troubleshoot based on experience, have retired. 

Let's say someone brings in a 30 year old car for coolant flush. What spec coolant do you use? Using the wrong coolant can pit the head or dissolve the head gasket. Chances are you can't just look it up, you need to read endless forum threads based on opinion and try to figure it out, no one wants to pay you for that. 

Does it use a mineral oil or glycol based brake system? Are the fuel lines ethanol compatible? How many people have been knuckles deep in this cars private parts in 30 years? How many people have scabbed in wiring? 

If you don't do older cars there are all sorts of issues. You won't know where to get brake shoes rebuilt or arched to the drum, or have the equipment to make lines. 

Find some guy with gray hair who knows your car, establish a relationship. I have people whose cars I have worked on for 30 years, I work on their kids cars now…

I did a coolant service on a 1963 190SL, I flushed the system and replaced the coolant, when I did one of the intake manifold coolant fittings was leaking as was the radiator. Both had been fine before I flushed the system. I had to have the radiator rebuilt and painted, the intake fittings are no longer available. I had to get a CNC shop to make them based on what was left of the 4 rotten ones I had. That took two weeks. And three for the radiator. It seemed like a good time to replace the various cracked hoses, they took 9 days to arrive and two weeks for the correct vintage clamps. 

Just saying. Don't play with vintage machines and think you're going to get parts at Autozone.

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In some aspects , older cars can be harder to work on than the newer cars because of all the diagnostics on newer cars. Also, a lot of mechanics are not trained on how to work on the older tech. At this point most mechanics don't know how to properly tune and jet a carburetor.

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You want your car to be worked on by a technician who is comfortable with working on it. If they say no, even for a basic service, then they probably are not. Parts are hard to find and little things can go wrong so easily. Find a place that specializes in your "classic" and it'll be better for both parties involved.

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I've worked for shops with these type of policies. It has more to do with the higher probability of consequential damage and parts availability. As a repair shop you get tired of customers demanding you pay to replace the fifteen year old, brittle coolant hose that broke apart the second you touched it. If that part is no longer made, you're screwed.

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1ZQK8vdYNs/ 

It's impossible to avoid AI

A reporter attempted to avoid any connection to artificial intelligence, but it proved almost impossible. 

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/28/style/48-hours-without-ai.html?smid=nytcore-android-share

Robots could save recycling from dying out

https://youtu.be/ZlLy-gT0n_k?si=oiey4h_IoH2itWfi

Painting one wind turbine blade black reduces bird mortality

"Researchers in Norway found that changing the color of just one turbine blade from white to black resulted in a 70% drop in bird deaths. The effect was strongest among raptors.

The study, published in Ecology and Evolution, followed up on previous lab experiments." ref.

This is because the black blade provides a high-contrast visual cue that makes the spinning blades more visible to birds, particularly raptors, reducing a phenomenon called "motion smear" where birds cannot track the fast-moving, monochromatic blades. In one Norwegian study, this intervention resulted in a greater than 70% reduction in bird mortality."

Over vs under toilet paper

"So one of my tasks at work is to refill toilet paper in the bathrooms. Very dull. But I got to wondering if people had a preference to which way the roll was on the holder and decided to run my own experiment. After refilling a side by side dispenser, I loaded 1 roll going over and 1 under. Replaced at the same time. Waited a couple days and discovered the over side was almost gone and the under side was hardly touched. I replaced the over and continued to wait. A couple days later the under roll had been used but still the over was going faster than the under. I went through 3 over rolls before the under roll needed to be replaced.

Redid the experiment replacing both rolls at the same time and swapping which side the over and under was on.....this time the over roll was replaced 2 times before the under needed to be changed out....."

https://www.facebook.com/share/1CJSimeuXM/

Bali classic reproductions made by hand

https://youtu.be/A4pJhtKBl9A?si=P3lscHVRlIpF6mex

Bali craftsmen painstakingly reproducing every component by hand in these reproductions (with modern Toyota Crown engine and drivetrain.)