Russian recruits surviving only minutes
(Perplexity) “Russian soldiers deployed to the front lines in Ukraine are surviving an average of just 20 to 35 minutes once they reach combat positions, according to Russian military bloggers cited by Oxford historian Peter Frankopan in a Foreign Policy essay published June 25. The total life expectancy of a new recruit — from arrival at a training ground to death — lies somewhere between 10 days and three weeks.“
Trex
“Trex is the giant of the composite decking industry. Founded in 1996 by four executives who bought the rights to a wood-alternative technology from Mobil, it essentially created the entire modern composite deck category. It has evolved quite a bit into a major outdoor living brand.” More » This :14 video illustrates how flexible the material is.
One of Trex’s biggest selling points is its massive recycling footprint. Every standard Trex composite board is made of 95% recycled and reclaimed materials. The recipe is pretty straightforward:
- Recycled Plastic Film: They are one of the largest recyclers of plastic bags, wrap, and packaging film in North America, having diverted billions of pounds of plastic from landfills.
- Reclaimed Wood: They use reclaimed industrial sawdust and wood scrap (like leftovers from cabinet makers and flooring factories) rather than harvesting fresh timber.
The Forever Book
“I recently gave Claude the task of selecting a seed library: the best set of books for rebooting civilization from scratch. It curated 200 books across fields as diverse as medicine, metallurgy, and mathematics. It did a remarkably great job. Many of its choices were classics, ones I would have chosen myself. It also pulled in obscure tomes that only a real student of do-it-yourself would be familiar with, and hauled in from far corners some very informative books of practical knowledge I had never heard of. Overall, it accumulated a strong list, among the best I have seen.”
New Deck: Phase One
We replaced the original deck to our home in 2015 and I guess we thought it would last more than eleven years but it was getting dangerous.
Step one for the new deck is taking down the old one. Took the guys about 90 minutes. Video above runs about 2 minutes. Gotta have a good deck. [Watch video above on YouTube]
Phase Two
