Bruce Bower

@NobodymrRobert Took apart versions of that as a kid with bicycles, in that case it was the rear wheel in-hub brake, I called it a Bendix, one set of interleaved discs locked to the frame, the other interleave locked to hub, pedal backwards worked a screw that compressed the discs, FRICTION...

Name it.

@lippyent Howdy

Almost 100k people here! Yet under 3% can see my posts! Give a Hey or Howdy or something if you can see this!! Hmm 😒 🤔?¿

@grey4626 Calling DR incompetent??!!! That's like calling the sun dim.

Listen here, sweetheart... You are no authority on who deserves a seat at the table. You are a credentialed nobody clutching pearls over competence that didn’t genuflect at your altar of legacy-media gatekeeping. Zero. Your opinion is worth less than the interpreter’s coffee budget you’re now seething over. DataRepublican is a goddamn national treasure, a Deaf engineering savant who has built real tools, real patents, real data empires that actually move the needle while you tweet from the cheap seats of ideological irrelevance. She has nearly a million souls following her unfiltered intellect on X, endorsements from Musk and Kirk that actually mean something, and a Pentagon press corps slot secured through raw merit, supporter steel, and the sheer audacity of excellence. She earned every inch of it the hard way...code, conviction, and results...while you peddle selective DEI as a partisan scalpel, carving out space only for voices that flatter your worldview. That is not journalism critique, Doll. That is the textbook pathology of envy dressed up as principle. Your venom drips with the classic narcissistic injury of the midwit gatekeeper: watching a self-made powerhouse bypass every legacy choke-point you worship triggers that hollow ache in your chest. Psychology 101, sweetheart...projection on steroids. You accuse her of “spreading conspiratorial nonsense” while your own organization’s mission statement collapses the instant a right-leaning virtuoso refuses to play the victimhood game. Braver Angels? The irony is lethal. You don’t bridge divides; you police them, and the second a Deaf data warrior with zero tolerance for your bullshit walks through the door, your mask slips and the jealousy pours out like pus from a ruptured ego. You are riddled with it...pathologically, professionally, predictably. This isn’t about deafness, competence, or credentials. This is about your terror that the game is changing, that merit and momentum are replacing your tired little priesthood. Data doesn’t need your sanctimonious blessing; the Republic needs more like her and fewer like you. So deal with it, Doll. Step the fuck aside and watch a real force redefine the battlefield while your “braver” rhetoric rots in the rear-view mirror. Game over.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ 💀💋

@marty_hogan What??????

A personal favorite. Can anyone actually disagree?

@Headshok1962 ..Covid virus never had a chance...

Dodged a bullet on the Covid

@Headshok1962 YUP

Again, for those in the back that have not seen this: If you have a locked account, write in noodles, are from Africa, India or Pakistan or any country screaming "Death to America", or are a flaming liberal, I probably will not follow you back and will remove you as a follower. If you have a profile with no pic, no bio, or no banner, and zero or few posts and you have been on X for a while, I probably will not follow you back. If I follow you, and you immediately jump into my DM's with "Hey", I will block you. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

@cqcqcqdx Like the technique, I want to copy, what flux are you using?

Flux Party...

@SirBylHolte YUP!!!!!!!!!

I was born in 1961 IN AMERICA. So my name is William Michael Holte, not Muhammad, Mohamed, Kwame, Kofi or Bakari. I’m not African-American, I’m American. I’m not a black American, I’m American. My loyalty belongs to America, not to any fake African identity. My history is American history, not African history. My colors are red, white, and blue - not red, black, and green. My anthem is the Star-Spangled Banner, not the Black National Anthem. My flag is the Stars and Stripes, not the African Union banner. My symbol is the bald eagle, not the Black Power fist or the letters "BLM." I celebrate Christmas, not Kwanzaa. I celebrate Independence Day, not Juneteenth. I went to a white Catholic college, not an HBCU. I got ahead through hard work and good education, not DEI and Affirmative Action. In school, I recited The Pledge of Allegiance TO AMERICA. I support The U.S. Constitution, not the weaponization of it against American citizens. My future is tied to America’s success, not to racist democrat takeover policies. And my president is Donald J Trump, not anybody else. Who's with me on this?

@aj_inapi @Pontifex He has Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Dear @Pontifex, Are you going to speak on all global atrocities - or will the silence continue while the spotlight stays almost exclusively on U.S. and Israeli policy? The world is burning far beyond one conflict. Here are 10 ongoing crises that demand equal moral outrage, prayer, and calls for peace: • SUDAN’S CIVIL WAR — Year 4. Tens of thousands dead. Mass rapes. Ethnic massacres in Darfur with genocide markers. Famine threatening millions. One of the deadliest conflicts on Earth — barely covered. • MYANMAR’S CIVIL WAR & ROHINGYA PERSECUTION — Junta-led killings continue. Rohingya, Karen, Kachin targeted. Systematic atrocities with near-total impunity. • CHINA’S UYGHUR ATROCITIES — Mass detention, forced labor, surveillance, sterilization, cultural erasure in Xinjiang. Ongoing — enabled by global supply chains. • RUSSIA–UKRAINE WAR — Civilian bombings. Infrastructure destruction. Forced deportations. Thousands killed — including spikes in 2025. Families shattered for years. • YEMEN’S HUMANITARIAN CATASTROPHE — 11+ years of war. Torture, disappearances, shipping attacks, civilian deaths from all sides. Millions still in urgent need. • DR CONGO (EASTERN CONFLICTS) — Mass killings, militia violence (incl. M23), and an epidemic of sexual violence driven by resource wars. • SYRIA’S POST-ASSAD FRAGILITY — Retaliatory massacres (Alawites, Druze, others). Hundreds killed. A fractured nation at risk of renewed mass violence. • SAHEL INSURGENCIES (MALI, BURKINA FASO, NIGER) — Jihadist violence, coups, civilian massacres. A widening الإرهاب belt across West Africa. • HAITI’S COLLAPSE — Gang control, kidnappings, killings. الدولة in breakdown. A humanitarian nightmare with little global attention. • ETHIOPIA & AFRICAN HOTSPOTS — Risk of renewed Tigray conflict, ethnic violence, mass displacement. Ongoing crises in South Sudan & Nigeria. Pontiff - calls for peace matter. But moral authority requires consistency. Selective outrage - while these horrors rage - undermines the message of human dignity and fraternity. The world needs a voice for every victim. Not just the ones that fit a narrative. What say you? Prayers for peace must extend everywhere - or they ring hollow.

@MikeBales MANY millions..............

This is worth repeating: I never cared that you were gay until you started shoving it down my throat, and I never cared what color you were until you started blaming me for your problems. I never cared about your political affiliation until you started condemning me for mine. I really never even cared where you were born until you wanted to erase my history and blame my ancestors for your problems. I never even cared if your beliefs were different from mine until you said my beliefs were wrong. But now I care. My patience and tolerance are gone, and I am not alone in feeling like this. There are millions of us who feel like this.

@elonmusk Where??

More Tesla Diners coming

@MikeyDiMercurio ..And the wailing whiners don't understand Trump's "negotiation" tactics with the sand rats.. ..YUP!!

THE HOSTAGE CRISIS STORY You have to understand two things. First, nothing that happened was my fault. Totally not my fault. Second, the company I worked for, a French nuclear power company, had suffered having 4 of its employees taken hostage by al Qaeda when they were filling up their truck with gas in Algeria. Consequently, the company was justifiably CRAZY about the idea of someone taking their employees hostage. For our project, they’d hired a Security VP, responsible for the safety and security of all employees. I assumed he would be a sort of anti-hostage dude. The headquarters building in the center of Paris was this former bank building and one of the most beautiful structures I’ve ever seen. It took up a city block and had an interior courtyard, but the courtyard was all taken up with skylights that admitted natural light to the first basement level. That entire basement level was taken up with a task force of a couple HUNDRED people working night and day to resolve the hostage crisis. So, the story – I was VP construction for a $4.5 billion-with-a-B nuclear fuel project to be constructed in Idaho, and it was going smooth as silk until March 11, 2011. Wait, what happened on 3/11/11? Well, I’ll tell you what happened on 3/11/11. Fukushima happened. A Level 7 nuclear accident, matching the severity of Chernobyl. So I spoke to my CEO, who was the chief of the project. Me: Boss, Fuck-You-Shima happened. Our project is going to be canceled. CEO: No it isn’t, DiMercurio. Stop being so gloom-and-doom all the time. I swear, you should wear a black cape. (6 months later) CEO (to the project team): Alright, gang, listen up. The project is canceled. All you guys need to find jobs elsewhere in the company. First, I decide I’ll check out SGT, the steam generator team, a joint venture between my company and Chaos Engineering and Construction. The potential job would be to be the project manager of a boiler replacement at a giant nuclear power plant. Two things I didn’t like. The client rep was an absolute ASSHOLE, and knowing my sparkling personality, eventually we’d end up in fisticuffs. Second, taking the job meant I’d take over for an incumbent project manager, and they’d fire him. I don’t take a job where my position results in an employee getting fired, for good reasons. One is my empathy – it’s a shitty thing for a company to do, replace someone working and firing him. Second, if they can do that to the incumbent project manager, they’d eventually do it to me. So I turned it down. The second opportunity was to step in to be project manager of a $1 billion freakish solar power project being built in a dry lakebed in a province in India close to the Pakistan border. I say freakish because it didn’t use those photovoltaic panels that convert sunlight into electricity. Oh no. Imagine a soccer field or a football field. Now, replace the goals with A-shaped steel going a hundred feet in the air. Kind of like the steel of a swing set. Then, from goal line to goal line, put up a “collector,” which is just a big pipe going from the south goal to the north goal. That pipe will be enclosed by a hood to keep rainwater off. And underneath, there will be glass to keep the pipe from convecting heat to the environment. Bear in mind, it’s a hundred feet in the air. Down on the soccer field, from the out-of-bounds line on the east to the one on the west, there’s structural steel beams that will hold up big mirrors. Each mirror is the size of a truck’s flatbed trailer, each made in a custom factory built special on the project site. Each mirror has two expensive German motors that tilt the mirror to reflect sunlight up to the collector pipe. The mirrors run in rows, north to south, and they fill in the entire soccer field, and each row of mirrors has a different angle to shine light up to the collector. Now, water under pressure is fed up to the collector at the south end. The pressure makes it flow from south to north, and as it does, it gets heated by the sunlight from the mirrors, and eventually the water in the pipe evaporates to saturated steam, and by the that time, it’s all the way north, where it will turn around 180 degrees to run southward, and as it does, it becomes superheated steam. The superheated steam flows back to ground level and is piped to a large turbine to make electricity. Now, replicate this huge soccer field 34 times. The area of this is vast – a few miles north-south, a few miles east-west. Titanic. So you can imagine the scale of the project, over a thousand guys will be laboring in the field. The trouble with it is security. The client was responsible for building a fence around the site, but they were slow to perform. So the site was just open to the townspeople, who would walk in at night and steal things. Our engineered material was disappearing. So, as the new project manager, I call up the onsite construction manager (I’m working in Silicone Valley right by Google HQ). His name is Peg Leg Greggy – he’d been in a bad motorcycle accident and lost a leg. Me: Greggy, I want you to hire a security force. Greggy: No problem, I know a couple firms who are eager to do the job. I’ve been asking around. Me: Outstanding. So, I want 40 guys for dayshift and 40 guys for nightshift. Greggy: Okay. Me: And Greggy. I want them armed. With shotguns. I want the shotguns loaded. And I want each security guard to be carrying enough spare ammo to take out the whole village. Greggy: You got it boss. At first, we could only get 10 guys for each shift while the security company looked for more guys to hire. Now, you have to realize that the site is so vast that 10 guys, or even 40 guys, couldn’t really secure the site. Case in point – the time I got mugged. So there I am, walking the solar field with a cigar. I got my white hardhat. My dark wrap-around safety glasses. It’s hot, so I’m in short sleeves, jeans, steel-toed boots. But I got my bling on. My Rolex Submariner watch, my white gold Annapolis class ring on my right hand, my gold MIT “brass rat” ring on my left (it’s actually a beaver, you know, nature’s engineer, but it’s called a brass rat). So suddenly two guys heave-to right up in my grill, see, and they’re in their mid-20s, right? But they’re both ultra-skinny. I mean, their combined weight, I have 30 pounds more. So in English, they say, “Give us your jewelry.” So – options. 1. Give them my bling. 2. Scream. 3. Throw a punch and hope they don’t prevail in a fight. (The last time I did that, I got punched so hard in the throat that I couldn’t speak for a month.) 4. Use a method I’d learned from my first submarine captain. I decided to go with Option 4. I put a surprised expression on my face and look 90 degrees to my right, I point in that direction and say in amazement, “LOOK! TWO DOGS FUCKING!” Both Indians turn to look where I’m pointing and I just step expeditiously off in the other direction. Problemo – solved. But it points out the fact that the jobsite isn’t safe. I really should have taken someone with me on my inspection tours, but it’s hard to think if someone’s just there all the time. So, back in Silicone Valley, I’m fast asleep in my swanky hotel room. All the hotels there are four or five-star hotels, since, you know, the tech bros hang out there. There’s no Motel 6 or Holiday Inn. Just off-brand elegant places, see. It’s 3 am, right, and my cell rings. I have it set to blast out a klaxon ring tone, because India is 12 hours and 30 minutes ahead of California time, so my 3 am is their 3:30 pm. On the phone is Greggy. Greggy: Mikey, we have trouble. The concrete contractor you terminated took our lead civil engineer hostage. Okay, so the contractor who was hired to build the mirror factory hired this concrete contractor. You have to realize, despite us being in the sticks in Jodhpur, Rajasthan, India, we’re working a mob job, no different than Jersey City. Example, one equipment rental outfit decided to be a monopoly. Bought all new capital tools – they were all shiny, right? And he forced all our contractors to pay exorbitant rates for this equipment. Anyone who tried to being in their own equipment or rent it more cheaply elsewhere got beat to within an inch of his life with number 8 rebar, a steel reinforcing bar used in concrete that’s a bit over an inch in diameter. In fact, once a bus taking workers from the jobsite back to the village was stopped in a makeshift blockade of three vans blocking the road. When the bus stopped, three thugs with number 8 rebar clubs boarded, found the general foreman they were seeking, pulled him out of the bus and beat him bloody, broke his arms and legs and skull, then left him for dead. So when I say it was a mobbed-up job, I’m not kidding. And usually, with mob contractors, the wise project manager treads lightly. Except me. I never tread lightly. Fuck that. The concrete quality on the floor and foundation of the factory building was so poor that the concrete pedestals for us to mount steel columns was crumbling off. Just falling to dust. So I terminated the contractor for default. I fired him. I froze all his invoice money. Technically, we owed him about $100,000. Not anymore, my letter said. My letter said, you’re fired, get your clothes and get out, and that hundred grand? I’m using that to hire your competition to rip out your defective concrete and replace it. If there’s anything left when the foundation’s fixed, I’ll give it to you. You have to wait a month though. Oh, and if costs more than $100k, it’s your liability. Did I mention, I’ve seized your construction equipment? Yeah, if you owe me money at the end of the day, I’m selling your equipment to pay for what you owe me. So read your contract, asshole. The contractor’s response? Three thugs, each armed with number 8 rebar, grabbed the lead civil engineer – a very nice man named Singh – tossed him into a van and drove him to the contractor’s headquarters building in the village. Then they called Greggy. Greggy: They have demands. Me: What are their demands? Greggy: They want you to rescind your letter. Tell them they’re rehired. They want their capital tools back. And they want their hundred grand payment. In cash. In 24 hours. It took me a moment to stop laughing. Greggy: What do you want me to say to them? Me: Greggy, first get your security guys. Get three of them, all with their loaded shotguns. Send them to the contractor’s shack in the village. Greggy (sound psyched): Yes, SIR! Me: When they’re on their way, call the contractor, tell them guys with loaded shotguns are on their way and that they’ve been authorized to use lethal force to get our engineer back. There’s silence on the line for a moment. Greggy: Are you serious? You’re instructing the guards to shoot to kill? Me: Hell no, Greggy, I want us to just bluff. Tell the contractor our guys will open fire, but tell the security guards to – obviously – don’t do that. The threat of it should be enough. Greggy: Gotcha, boss. Me: Call me when you know something. I hang up with Greggy and I call my CEO. By now it’s 0330. He doesn’t answer. So I call the new Security VP. And HE doesn’t answer. So I type up an email with the subject line, URGENT – HOSTAGE SITUATION. I figure when my boss and the security geek see that, they’ll go absolutely ape. Now there’s nothing to do but wait for word from Greggy. That had to be the longest 20 minutes of my life. My phone goes BONG BONG BONG BONG. Me: Yellow? Greggy: It’s me, Greggy. So our guys stepped out of our truck with their shotguns and were halfway down the walkway to the front door of the contractor’s office. The front door opens and they push Singh out, then slam the door behind him. You did it boss! You resolved the hostage crisis! And I guarantee, no one on this jobsite is ever going to be taken hostage ever again. Me: Wow, that’s great. The bosses will be so pleased. Good job. Pay the guards a sweet bonus, yeah? Greggy: Sir, you from Texas, by any chance? Me: Nope, Kentucky and Jersey. Greggy (laughing): Well, the entire site got a lesson in good old American negotiation tactics. Hell, I don’t think Dirty Harry could do a better job! Me: Thanks, Greggy, but, shucks, I’m just doin’ m’job. So I write an email to the CEO and Security Geek with the subject line – URGENT – HOSTAGE CRISIS RESOLVED. And I go back to bed for a few hours. So at work, at the Mountain View CA office, I figured I’d have emails and calls of congratulations for having resolved a massive hostage crisis. I mean, after all, remember, the company was freaked out about the idea of employees taken hostage, right? Am I right? Air France landed that afternoon with the bosses of my CEO. I’m pulled into a late afternoon meeting with him and the corporate Grand Poobah of All Projects from Paris. So I figure they’re here to reward me, right? Poobah: I hear you hired security guards. Me: Yup. I called for 40 per shift but right now I only have 10. Poobah: I heard you armed them. Me: Shotguns. Poobah: And you ordered them to have their guns LOADED, right? Me: Yes. Because an unloaded gun is little better than a length of number 8 rebar. See, the thugs who took our guy hostage? They showed to a gunfight with iron bars and my guys had loaded guns. We won. Poobah: You violated company policy. You can’t have guns – much less LOADED guns – on a construction site! Me: That’s not true. There’s no policy about that. I was bluffing. I had no idea if there were a policy about weapons on jobsites, but I seriously doubt anyone would have taken the time to write such a policy, and it turns out, I was right. Poobah: Well, well, oh, hell, get the fuck out of the conference room while I talk to your CEO. So I leave and I wait to see I’m going to get fired. But the Poobah and his staff leave, and I never hear another word about the matter. That’s corporate America – and France – for you. Your reward? Not getting fired. Two weeks later, I got an email from Security Geek. He enclosed a brand new policy document that prohibited guns – even unloaded ones – on our construction sites. You guys know me. You already guessed it. I deleted the email. If anyone were to ask, I never got it. And for the next 2 years, security guards armed with loaded shotguns patrolled that jobsite. And no one tried any of that hostage stuff ever again.

@old_soviet Damn I miss that innocence, I know we can never go back. If you are ever near Northeast PA, drop a DM, would love to share stories and a few drinks.

It is not a curse. It is a blessing, and some of us should carry it forward, cubs… 🤝 Will we win? Most likely not. But at least our conscience will be clean. 🫡 #OldBearTruth

@grey4626 Slightly enhanced real pic?.. ..provocative.

Why in the fuck... Am I still awake? I need to go the fuck to sleep. My mind is going at a Mach 7 right now. That's why. I have way too many things on my mind. Wayyyyy too many things. @LexieAI enhanced this for me. It's absolutely fucking awesome. I love the definition in my eyes. Fire. 💀🖤💋

@grey4626 I doubt any of them have ever read the federalist writings.

Since when in the fuck do these elected parasites get to override the sovereign mandate WE delivered with our blood, sweat, and ballots We stormed the polls in 2024 and screamed America First…secure borders, mass deportations, an end to the engineered invasion that’s hemorrhaging our wages, schools, hospitals, and neighborhoods. The people spoke. The republic’s consent of the governed was crystal, Locke’s social contract invoked in the raw arithmetic of the vote. And what do these self-anointed trustees in the House do? They ram through a discharge petition… RINOs and Democrats in grotesque bipartisan betrayal…to extend Temporary Protected Status to over 300,000 Haitians, turning “temporary” into yet another permanent demographic Trojan horse while the Trump administration moves to terminate the program. This isn’t representation. It’s a pathological coup by a ruling class whose psychology is textbook sociopathy: insulated in their gated compounds and donor-funded echo chambers, they exhibit zero empathy for the citizenry they’re supposed to serve. It’s elite overproduction at its most necrotic… ambition untethered from duty, virtue-signaling as the cheapest high while the host body politic convulses under the weight of strained resources, cultural fracture, and rule-of-law erosion. They don’t see voters; they see obstacles. They don’t see Americans; they see the expendable feedstock for their cheap-labor cartel and their narcissistic self-image as “compassionate” cosmopolitans. Constitutionally, Article I, Section 2 is not a suggestion: Representatives are elected by and accountable to the people of their districts, not to some transnational piety or the next K Street payday. The Framers, steeped in the bloody lessons of history, designed a republic precisely to prevent this. Federalist 10 warned of factions devouring the common good; Federalist 57 insisted representatives would feel “a communion of interest and sympathy with the people.” Today that communion is a corpse, desecrated by the same oligarchic rot that felled the Roman Senate: senators trading plebeian welfare for patrician power until the republic bled out in bread, circuses, and imported clients. Philosophically, this is the death of popular sovereignty. Hobbes warned the Leviathan exists to escape the state of nature…not to import it wholesale. Locke’s Second Treatise is explicit: when government violates the trust, the people retain the right to alter or abolish it. We’re not there yet, but the pathology is metastasizing…politicians treating the electorate like an annoying app they can update or ignore at will. It’s gaslighting elevated to statecraft: “You didn’t really mean border security… you’re just angry…here, have more TPS and some thoughts and prayers.” No. We meant it. Every fucking ballot was a declaration of war on the open-borders regime and the contemptuous class that profits from it. These representatives aren’t confused. They’re traitors to the mandate, infected with the same metastatic hubris that has toppled every republic stupid enough to let its guardians become its predators. The venom isn’t optional anymore. It’s diagnostic. The body is rejecting the cancer. Time to excise it with surgical ferocity…primary challenges, recalls, relentless exposure, and the unyielding demand that the people’s will be the only law that matters. We voted. They work for us. 
Or they can fucking burn with the rest of the old order. 💀⚔️

@catsareblessing ..Too many times..

@TechOperator Dos for Dummies gets dusted off.....

You walk up to your computer and see this screen. Your next move?

@SGTWipper1Each My 32F20 extensive electronics training (crypto maintenance) actually gave me a lifelong carrier in engineering/industrial controls maintenance, as well as enhancing my electronics hobby.

What skill from the Military do you use the most in your civilian life?

@JesterJum Nah.. ..cat food.

If anyone ever invaded the US, the biggest problem our government would have would be trying to stop rednecks from taxiderming the invaders. Florida Man, where you at?

@Procyon86 Warning, garage/shop fills fast.. ..experience. ..Partial examples..

Another haul. There's a pretty cool scientific computer in the mix.