the Hearth @Felthry@awoo.space

honestly magnetic materials are fascinating

there's that meme of like "magnets, how do they work" and yeah it's really hard to understand how they work

but when you do, even if you just understand how B, H, and M interact, it's really neat

especially the kinds of engineering people have done, stuff like powder cores and ferrites and magnetic tape and hard drives and FeNdB and SmCo magnets,
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worried a bit that the attacks on usps are working

our family mailed us a birthday present and it was supposed to get here yesterday, on our birthday, but it got delayed because everything's getting delayed right now due to lack of funding

our sister commented on how unreliable USPS is when she learned of this and i feel like it's just... people don't know that USPS is underfunded right now and they especially don't know that that's part of an active attack on public services by the current government
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why are FM radio stations always on odd-numbered frequency bands, anyway? is that a worldwide thing or just a US thing?
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Question for other engineering folk here (who have jobs), since we're looking for a job...

How much money do you make, and how many hours per week do you typically work? And do you consider that a fair amount to be paid, or do you think you're overpaid or underpaid? I'm wondering if our lack of luck finding any part-time jobs is due to covid or because part-time engineering jobs are just basically nonexistent
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when was the james webb space telescope due to launch again? Was it this year?
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we're starting to feel a bit less constant despair over job prospects... largely because we're starting to consider full-time jobs too even if that's not ideal

maybe we could negotiate shorter hours after getting one

or maybe we'll end up finding it's not that bad after all, but i doubt that
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why does this count up from the year 1
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but asking it that way is a little silly and doesn't show what the actual connection between the things are

if we just asked someone if they're more familiar with linguistics, chemistry, or beer, i think a lot of people would wonder why the hell we were asking that question
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...why the hell *are* we asking that question anyway
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sometimes i just want to make a poll
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honestly this is kind of just asking "are you more familiar with the history of linguistics, linguistics itself, chemistry, or beer"
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today we learned: apparently sachet is pronounced /sæʃei/, not /sætʃεt/

also apparently it's a word that people actually use, just not in the US. we had always kinda thought it was one of those archaic words that just isn't used anymore, for some reason
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does anyone else feel like stores should be required to include tax in their price labels?

i feel like this is probably a thing they do in most of the world and just the US is weird again
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IPA

everyone talks about the kobolds, but what about koitalics and kounderlines and kostrikethroughs and kosuperscripts and kosubscripts and
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Mm. Today is our birthday... I hope it can be a better day than the surrounding days have been.
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someone who knows japanese help me out here:

if shounen is manga for boys and shojou is manga for girls, what would manga for enbies be called
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listening to the prerecorded tapes and stuff they included with the first stereo tape machines is kind of fascinating

it's weird to imagine a time when stereo wasn't the default
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not that we're really upset about that, it's just an inconvenience that's unavoidable given All This

but we can probably start applying for jobs there. need to look into the UK and Ireland and Australia too though

(those are our first non-north-american choices because we would prefer not to have to learn a new language)
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did a bit of research into what it'd take to move to new zealand, since we're starting to look into jobs outside the US

apparently, we're automatically qualified for a visa on the basis of having a degree and experience (at least i hope we can claim our research assistantship as experience) in electrical engineering, a field they have on their "most needed" list

but of course because of covid they're not taking immigration applications "until further notice"
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context for this: we use almost exclusively the right shift (even typing things like |, yes that's awkward) and we've noticed some pain in our right little finger lately and i wonder if they're related
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when typing on a physical keyboard, do you use