TheVat

Or maybe not. 😀 The letters do not seem to correspond to chess piece symbols (KQRBNP), the grid is the wrong number of squares, and I find no anagrams that spell words like stalemate, checkmate, gambit, zugzwang, fork, pin, promotion, Sicilian, black, white, or other chess terms. So one guess is the clue is to how to move through a group of letters, e.g. if you start on an outside square and move like a knight, you will get words like dine, girl, line, grid. If you move like a bishop, you get gin, lol. Nope, I don't see any inspiration yet. Probably overthinking, which almost never works.

Once fixed a cranky butterfly valve on a Dodge Colt with a paperclip slipped on it. Maybe not applicable to this, though. I switched to electric about 1985, and life was so much better. People hate the corded ones, but they are so much better than mucking around with the crappy batteries on the cordless ones that the mfr. claims will take 2000 charges and you are lucky to get 200 before they fail completely. And the cutting power is weak. And the batteries are the most expensive part of a cordless mower, so every four-five years you have to spend a ton of money to replace them. Corded mowers, however, last for eternity. My dad had a Black and Decker corded mower for forty years, from around early 70s, and it was in fine condition when I donated it to a Habitat store after his death. It is not difficult to develop a mowing pattern that keeps you from running over the cord. Really.

OP answer imho is No. Because without labor unions, collective bargaining, regulations and laws, you have people working long days at hard job for peanuts while management pushes paper around, barks at secretaries, and takes off at 2pm for golf, and they get millions. That's the natural trend in capitalism, so you need a lot of structured restrictions to counteract that. Otherwise the only "moral" imperative is shareholder profits.

I have lived mostly in handshake country (northern plains USA), so I sympathize. Hugging seemed to me reserved for family and very close friends. When I was on the West Coast, which is more huggy, I sometimes said, "I'm not really a hugger," and most people were ok with that, maybe because they knew where I came from. I don't like the subterfuge approach, because people often see through that and then they will think maybe you don't like them. Honesty remains the best policy. (though as George Carlin pointed out, by process of elimination dishonesty is then the second-best policy)

I mentioned being curious in another thread somewhere. Weren't his last posts expressing some dissatisfaction with a heated discussion he was in? (sorry, don't recall topic, maybe politics or sports/gender?) ETA: His last few posts in Transgender Athletes were sprinkled with down votes. But none indicated he was leaving SFN as a result of that.

English is my second language (I don't have a first one). And I can't quite figure out what the puzzle wants. Anagram, Sator Square, acrostic, what? Hint is....steps? chest? cheat?

Here at Penrose Tile Co. our goal is to cover the Earth's surface with aperiodic tilings, consisting of our two types of cement rhombi: kites and darts. Interviewee: When I saw your advert, I knew immediately that my deep hatred of biological groundcover, advocacy of universal paving, and love of aperiodic tesselation would be a perfect fit with PTC! How soon can I start?

I don't think so. Membrane doesn't affect flavor and will add a tiny bit of collagen (a good thing) to your coffee. On the road this week, so am slow to reply here. Many useful ideas, though I am not driving over walnuts for a week then working them over with a jackhammer and a sawzall or whatever the next steps were. Another money saver: make your rice go a little farther, and and add protein, with saved nail clippings.

Do the letters form a linen grid? I hope they aren't a result of redlining. 😀

Wood sticks filled with graphite. Very cheap, completely reliable, easy to erase mistakes, reduces plastic waste. Pens I only use for signing documents, or exterior labeling on a box where smudging could happen. Coffee bitter and acidity is also reduced by tossing a couple crumbled eggshells in the pot. Sweetens a mediocre blend. For tea, loose leaves allows you to get exactly the strength you want, and avoids ingestion of microparticles of polyester from a bag. Also cheaper because you aren't paying for the bagging process. Brewing should be brief, 4 minutes or so, because any longer and tannins build up, ruining flavor and irritating the gut.

Thanks, that was sort of how I was looking at it. It seems like this might work.

When I posted, I went to thread direct from activity list, assumed this was in the Lounge. Yes, a thread this frivolous should move there. I don't think poking fun at the vanity of politicians requires posting personal pics. Here are my balls, anyway:

Yes, I've noticed I have to not let my eyes linger on brain teaser posts shown on activity list. Not sure how that would be fixed. Maybe put SPOILER in large font, at top, which at least decreases chance of looking at the rest?

Not clear on definition of shape, e.g. any n-gon? Or literally any shape that's an enclosed space? Does it count as touching only on the perimeter, or must the shape not be around a point? Are fractals involved?

If one is pumping deep water up, why not use it for an OTEC system, producing reliable clean energy? Ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) is a process or technology for producing energy by harnessing the temperature differences (thermal gradients) between ocean surface waters and deep ocean waters. Energy from the sun heats the surface water of the ocean. In tropical regions, surface water can be much warmer than deep water. This temperature difference can be used to produce electricity... https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/hydropower/ocean-thermal-energy-conversion.php

Pointy headed Hilary Clinton tormentor, Trey Gowdy...

Turns out simpler than I at first thought. Good one.

Wondering if there are leagues with some sorting by weight and BMI, or similar. Some gender disparity between body size, bone density and mass, explosive (fast-twitch) muscle strength....seems like you would need some limits to prevent injuries. American football is already pretty hard on bodies and brains, even among the mutually brawny.

Wait, this is American style tackle football, with both men amd women on teams? That seems...problematic.

IIRC the town of Ukiah, CA has an annual haiku festival. Perhaps it's easy to guess why.

With green burial, conversion into soil, plants, animals that eat those plants, fungi, worms, soil nematodes, and (if your mortician was lazy and irresponsible) residues of mercury from dental amalgam leaching into the soil. Make sure you find a reputable and environmentally aware mortician, if you want a green burial, so that your fillings will be properly removed.

Har! Wonder if those old Up Pompeii shows have survived. Sounds like a series possibly influenced by Stephen Sondheim's sixties comedy, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. (which was also inspired by the farces of Plautus)

Seems like restoring a rainforest somewhere, or expanding a seagrass meadow, would fix more carbon than this approach, which sounds more like a recipe for giving marine mammals a case of the trots. MgOH is a laxative.

The spouse and I sometimes refer to AI as Artificial Idiocy. Note that the IBM "Watson" after defeating Ken Jennings and the other contestant on Jeopardy, was not able to participate in the chat at the end of the show. Or figure out that Toronto was not an American city, or that having a leg and missing a leg are not the same thing (a question about an Olympic athlete), or notice that another contestant had just given the wrong answer ("the 1920s") and amend its own answer accordingly. Bear in mind that Waton's entire purpose and design was to play Jeopardy.