Unpopular opinion: People keep saying '1984' is the most banned book in the US right now.

The ALA's 2023 list shows it's actually 'Gender Queer' by Maia Kobabe, which makes the whole 'classics only' argument feel pretty selective. Anyone else notice this pattern in their local library debates?

A flash flood at the Mesa Verde dig site last spring washed out part of our trench.

We lost a whole day's work and a few small finds because we didn't have the tarps anchored properly. How do you guys protect your open sites from sudden weather?

Update on that stubborn flange weld in the Tulsa plant

I was fighting a leak on a 3-inch steam line flange for two days, trying every standard gasket and torque pattern in the book. My foreman told me to try a double-ring graphite gasket with a light coat of high-temp anti-seize on the bolts, which felt wrong but stopped the drip cold. Has anyone run into a situation where the spec sheet torque just wasn't enough for the real heat?

Update: I just found out how many people still use Windows 7 and it blew my mind

I was reading a report from a security company last week, and they said about 5% of all Windows PCs are still running Windows 7. That's one in twenty machines. I work in a small shop in Toledo, and I see maybe one a month, so I thought it was basically gone. But the report said that's millions of computers worldwide. It made me think about all the old office machines and point-of-sale systems out there that never get updated. The security risks are huge, but some businesses just won't let go of old software that 'works'. How do you guys handle a client who refuses to upgrade from an unsupported OS? Do you just walk away from the job?

Showerthought: The difference in my shop after I finally got a dust collection system set up

For years I just used a shop vac and opened the doors, thinking that was good enough. My whole shop, especially the floor and every flat surface, would be coated in a fine layer of sawdust by the end of a big project. I finally bit the bullet and installed a basic two-stage cyclone system about three months ago. The change is night and day. I can actually see the grain on my workbench now, and my lungs feel so much better at the end of the day. I didn't realize how much time I was wasting wiping everything down before I could start a precise cut or a glue-up. It's not a fancy setup, maybe $600 all in, but it's the best money I've spent on the shop itself in a long time. Has anyone else put off getting proper dust collection and then been totally shocked by the difference it makes?

Vent: Bought a cheap aftermarket DPF filter for a Duramax, huge mistake

Spent about $350, half the OEM price. It clogged solid in under 3 months, threw constant regen codes. Had to buy the proper one anyway and eat the labor cost. Anyone know a decent mid-price brand that actually holds up?

My uncle told me to never take a job for less than my rate, even when I was broke

He said this about 8 months ago when I was really struggling and almost took a writing gig for 5 cents a word. I told him I needed the money, but he was firm and said it would trap me. I listened, turned it down, and spent that week looking harder. The next week, I landed a regular client at my full 12 cent rate. If I had taken that cheap job, I would have been stuck in that cycle and too busy to find better work. It felt scary to say no to money, but he was right. It's about survival, not just quick cash. Has anyone else had to walk away from a bad offer when things were tight?

A manager in Atlanta told me 'we don't do raises for potential' during my review. It changed how I ask for promotions.

I was cleaning out my great-aunt's attic in Cincinnati and found a box of letters from the 1918 flu... the ones from the city health department were all stamped 'Do Not Publish'.

I found 18 articles about a factory spill in Gujarat that never made the national news

I was doing research for a project and kept hitting dead ends on a specific chemical leak from 2022. After digging through local papers and regional archives, I counted 18 separate reports that were never picked up by the big networks. Everyone talks about transparency, but I think we ignore how much gets filtered out before it even reaches most people. Has anyone else found a story that was big locally but completely absent from the wider news cycle?