Travis

@MoundLore Indiana is sorely underrated. I used to hate it, thinking it was nothing but flat ground and bare fields. That is what you see off I-65 Louisville to Indy. Visiting relatives I started going through via different routes, and wow, cool places and historical sites everywhere.

Yesterday I went to McCormick’s Creek expecting a waterfall for the family. Instead I spent most of the day thinking about a quarry. The waterfall is beautiful. The canyon is too. But the thing that stuck with me was learning that stone pulled from those woods helped build the Indiana Statehouse. That’s a strange connection to find in a creek valley in Owen County. You start out looking at limestone walls and a waterfall, then realize you’re standing in a place that helped shape the state itself. The rock around McCormick’s Creek was already ancient before the first person ever saw it. It formed beneath a shallow sea hundreds of millions of years ago. Water kept working on it. Caves formed. Sinkholes opened. The canyon deepened. Then the human story got laid over it. Native people knew this landscape long before Indiana existed. Settlers attached names to it. Quarrymen cut stone from it. CCC crews left their work in it. A tornado tore through parts of it. Through all of that, the canyon remained. You can still see pieces of those decisions everywhere. In the old quarry. In the stonework. In the fact that someone looked at this place in 1916 and decided it was worth saving as Indiana’s first state park. I think that’s what I enjoy most about places like this. The older I get, the less interested I am in landmarks and the more interested I am in the layers underneath them. Most people will remember the waterfall. I’ll probably remember the quarry.

@MoundLore I think I've been there, its been a while though.

I like fire towers.

@wxornotBG Hate it for Final Finish, if I were them I'd be a bit upset it picked just me to mess up.

More details on Friday night's tornado in Butler County. It was weak and very short-lived, but this is why we say that "spin-ups" can still do damage.

@MoundLore I'm sure it's no longer part of the franchise, but I know of a Radio Shack still open I visit from time to time. It's not quite what it once was but it still has that feeling. Really nice guy runs it too, and somehow I always end up buying sonething....

RadioShack was the last store where being confused felt useful. You’d walk in for batteries and end up standing in front of tiny drawers full of parts you didn’t understand yet. Resistors. Switches. Speaker wire. Fuses. Project kits. Adapters for problems so specific they sounded made up until somebody behind the counter nodded immediately and disappeared into aisle six. People remember the batteries. They forget the feeling. RadioShack made technology feel close enough to touch. You could buy a soldering iron, a police scanner, a bag of LEDs, a replacement remote part, a weird cable, a battery club card, or one tiny component that somehow brought the whole thing back to life. Kids built crystal radios. People repaired RC cars. Teens stripped speaker wire in garages. Some employee who looked like he had worked there since 1987 could translate your terrible explanation into exactly the part you needed. That kind of place teaches a different relationship with the world. Machines had backs and screws and wires. Things failed for reasons. You could open them. You could make mistakes. You could learn enough to stop being intimidated. Then the world changed. Screens replaced screws. Batteries got glued in. Devices got sealed. Parts disappeared. Stores stopped assuming people wanted to understand anything below the surface. People call that convenience. But there’s a reason people remember RadioShack harder than they should. It was one of the last places that made technology feel unfinished. Like normal people still had permission to participate. Now most of us carry objects more powerful than anything in that store ever sold and most of us would not even know where to begin if one stopped working.

@BaronDestructo Yes, but it's a terrible thing to eat from a health perspective. I try not to think of what they chop up and chemically concoct to make it Spam....

Spam Dog? Yes/No

Conservative Primary Voters Excited To Choose Which Politician Will Betray Them Next buff.ly/SCIsC3M

International Harvester once employed over 100,000 people and operated dozens of plants across the Midwest. Chicago, Rock Island, Fort Wayne, Louisville, Indianapolis, Springfield. Foundries, engine plants, transmission shops, test farms, steel stamping, casting, machining. For decades, International Harvester helped mechanize American agriculture itself. The tractors, combines, and trucks coming out of those plants didn’t just move products. They changed how millions of acres were planted, harvested, transported, and fed into the global economy. Entire towns organized themselves around that reality. High schools taught shop classes because there were actual jobs waiting afterward. Local machine shops survived off supplier contracts. Diners filled up before sunrise with welders, toolmakers, and line workers covered in metal dust and hydraulic oil. Then the system started breaking apart. Foreign competition increased. Leadership failures piled up. The 1979 strike hit hard. Farm debt exploded in the 1980s. Plants closed. Suppliers disappeared. Skilled workers scattered. And something deeper disappeared with them. America used to treat mechanical competence like a civic asset. A person who could rebuild an engine, run a lathe, diagnose a hydraulic system, or keep industrial equipment alive carried real status in a town. International Harvester’s collapse wasn’t just economic. It marked part of the moment America started separating intelligence from physical work. That collapse changed rural America more than people realize. One closed plant, one lost supplier, one empty storefront, one auction at a time.

@MoundLore I've actually had people scoff and suggest I'm silly for doing my own vehicle maintenance and working on things without hiring a "professional." It is a sad state where people think learning how things work and taking pride in caring for your equipment is somehow beneath them.

@Jack2LOneill @nypost The good news is per the documentary, we end up able to hold our own with all of them.

@nypost WE'VE BEEN THROUGH THIS

Four species of aliens have been pulled from crashed UFOs: ex-government researcher trib.al/joEAoCd

@amazonmilkfrog Agree. Give me Carlson / AutoCAD all day. Most GIS feels like you have to work half an hour just to make a blank file to work in.

lidar is sick as hell but unfortunately GIS is of the devil

@Ke0Vim Don't let kicking your own butt stop you from continuing, kudos for getting out of the chair! Fight the ham stereotypes!

I got tired of the fact that I’ve become so sedentary. So I decided it was time to go out and get a hike in (carrying all of my radio gear of course). 11 miles might have been too ambitious.

@Not_Firestine Take and post shirtless photos of yourself and send them to everyone. Sell a paid membership where subscribers can opt out of said photos.

I need a grift, and I'm taking suggestions from the people I will potentially be grifting. Suggestions?

@BaronDestructo It looks good "on paper."

Stargate: SG-1 concept art - season 1

@TheNotARubicon How to remove splinters from gums.

Caption this photo

@sammaelsama @BaronDestructo I think the implication may be they were the unlucky first Jaffa to use the gate after the gate was buried. I guess the idea of the iris and filling the ring with material blocking a wormhole wasnt fully fleshed out yet like it was for the series.

He knew! #Stargate

@iamstill3681092 @Jack2LOneill @SirBylHolte They saw Origins and it moved the garbage bar so far Universe was palatable.

@Jack2LOneill @SirBylHolte why do people pretend universe wasnt complete garbage

For 10 seasons and over 200 episodes, "Stargate: SG-1" was the gold standard for sci-fi television. Premise: a military dream team, Colonel Jack O'Neill, Dr. Daniel Jackson, and the alien warrior Teal'c must save the universe from the enslavement of the diabolical Goa'uld. The show deftly mixed Egyptian mythology, creative science, kickass action, and epic space travel — all while keeping a perfect balance of humor, camaraderie, and genuine wonder. And at its core was brilliant astrophysicist and soldier Major Samantha Carter: smarter than everyone in the universe, but NOT a girlboss. She followed orders, loved her team, respected her male counterparts, and never once had to belittle the men around her to feel strong. She earned her place through competence, not attitude. That’s why the show worked so well for so long. It spawned 2 fairly well-received spinoffs, "Stargate: Atlantis" and "Stargate Universe"... ...and 2 direct-to-video films, "Stargate: The Ark of Truth" and "Stargate: Continuum." But it also begat the disastrous 2018 GIRLBOSS REBOOT prequel web series, "Stargate Origins: Catherine." Released on MGM’s short-lived "Stargate Command" YouTube channel, it retconned the series into a story about a young Catherine Langford uncovering the Stargate in 1939 Egypt. Langford was brash, bullying towards men, and a thoroughly unlikeable precursor to all the "strong women" plaguing media today. The series BOMBED ENTIRELY, was cancelled after one short season, and is largely forgotten or dismissed today. Thanx to female empowerment, TV will never see male-centered shows as entertaining as "SG-1" again. But thankfully, we can rewatch these gems over and over again to remind us how good we once had it.

@BaronDestructo Gotta go with Rodney if for no other reason than to preserve comedic annoyance for Samantha.

The search for our ship's Techie begins (The Sweet Sixteen+) Choose -

@BaronDestructo Got to stick with Teal'c, voted against him in another role so get to make up for it now. He's just a bit more emotionally stable than D'Argo, much as I like him too.

The search for our ship's Enforcer/Warrior continues! (The Elite 8) Choose -

@BaronDestructo Pilot! Wash is wonderful but can he re-grow appendages and thibg about 10 things at once, while being a gentle giant? I think not.

Holy smokes! The search for our ship's Helmsman concludes in a most unexpected championship face-off! Can Pilot pull the upset? Choose -

@BaronDestructo Pilot is my choice, but Travis has a nice ring to it.

The search for our ship's Helmsman begins! (The Elite Eight +) Choose -