spjwebster

há 2 mesesdiscuss

My eldest is currently taking her GCSEs, and for the English Literature exam this week she had to write an essay on A Christmas Carol. Whilst helping her, I couldn't help but realise that the overarching messages around the importance of social responsibility are becoming increasingly relevant again.

spjwebster

há 2 anosdiscuss

Yours is definitely the spud gun I remember, and I suspect that's true for most folks of a particular age from the UK: a small die cast red gun and a monster potato to feed it ammunition.

If we're talking home made back garden arsenal, the go-to for my generation was the peg gun: https://www.instructables.com/A-Great-Peg-Gun/, which is, in retrospect, absolutely irresponsibly lethal with the right tension elastic bands.

spjwebster

há 3 anosdiscuss

A well-known UK startup, renting an old building just outside of London, is (or was, as of a few years ago) paying square footage cost for an entire floor that doesn't exist. The previous occupants - a government department - had the floor removed to make for higher, grander internal ceiling heights.

spjwebster

há 3 anosdiscuss

I wonder how many niches still use slide rules today. I'm currently training for my private pilot license, and many of the calculations for flight planning are still done using what is essentially a circular slide rule [1]. Having grown up in an entirely digital era it took me a good long while to get used to it, but there's a level of elegance baked into this multi-purpose device that it's hard not to like it.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_computer

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