bluGill

There are a number of jobs that count various community contributions in your review. This is a very large topic - write a paper in a major journal, give a speech at a conference, submit high profile bug reports - you can get a large raise for it. (the worry of course is that you get a reputation and thus someone gives you a great offer so if they want to keep you they better pay enough that you won’t leave). Exactly what gets you those promotions/raises isn’t clear in part because they need flexibility for someone who honestly discovers a new way to get that reputation and thus they have to give them a promotion. People who don’t deserve the promotion see the policy in place and look for ways to cheat themselves to a promotion they don’t deserve.

Right they are released patents. Fairly common in many industries to release all patents in areas like disability or safety. You gain more by releasing them any by holding them.

I’m not surprised. They are very hard to make correctly and not that much better than other options that are easier to do. they are a “holy grail” of wood working skill for a reason. I’ve done a dozen in my life and the best is so awful I want to burn an otherwise nice creation to hide the evidence.

Welcome to the world. There are strange things all over. Sit back and enjoy laughing at the ride.

Watching sports is a useful activity when you confined to a hospital bed for a month or two as has happened to people I know. In one case they wouldn’t be allowed to game, even sports were in danger of being too exciting for their condition.

The game most of the world calls “football” is called “soccer” in the US. We have a very popular game we call “football” in the US that is unrelated to “soccer”, instead it is related to rugby (still very different from rugby, but there is a relation)

Cutting dovetails implies by hand - power tools exist for it, but those using power tools generally use different joints.

Watching someone cut a dovetail by hand is a lot more interesting now that I know from experience how hard it is. And maybe I’ll learn a trick to make my next ones better.

I can only watch so much football as can a rare other people like me. If I am watching football I want the view of one position. I don’t care that the quarterback got sacked on the play, how did the running back avoid the defense in his attempts to become open for a pass - or some such that I want to emulate when I next play. (i think that is a likely thing - I consider football too dangerous to play so I’m guessing - in reality I’d prefer to see other sports that I’m likely to play)

edit: spelling