MICHAEL HAD BIG PLANS.
He was working on the old barn behind his old house, which he and his wife had bought less than a year earlier. The barn looked tired. Some of the posts showed bug-nibbled rot. Some of the windowpanes were gone. But Michael saw it for what it was: a beautiful red barn, solid where it counted, capable of wrapping its walls around all sort of memories we would have forever. He was nearly finished converting a portion of it into an exercise room (including a sauna). There were plans for a wine cellar in which you could host a dinner for 12, and a party space with a floor girded for dancing and twinkly lights in the ceiling.
I told Mike that my neighbor Andy had a tool he was trying to get rid of and asked did he want it. Andy works at a firehouse, and it's not unusual for him to send me a text asking if I want some odd thing one of the guys brought in. ("Do you want a vacuum sealer? Brand new." "Do you need any scrap metal picked up?" "Do you like pound cake?") This time it was a vintage Craftsman shaper, a four-legged machine that can create customized decorative wood moldings—and that must have weighed 150 pounds.
When I texted Mike asking if he wanted it, those little dots bubbled up within seconds, signaling that he was typing a reply. I already knew his answer.
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Denne historien er fra September - October 2022-utgaven av Popular Mechanics US.
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ONE OF THE 'GREATEST THREATS' TO THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST ISN'T WHAT YOU THINK.
EXPERTS ARE PREPARING THE REGION AGAINST THE THREAT OF DANGEROUS VOLCANIC MUDFLOWS, KNOWN AS LAHARS, WHICH COULD INUNDATE THE COMMUNITIES SURROUNDING MT. RAINIER IN AS LITTLE AS 30 MINUTES.
THE WORLD'S TOUGHEST ROW
They rowed 3,000 miles across the Atlantic, battling unpredictable weather, chaotic seas, and finicky equipment. But what they discovered gave them profound new insights into the power of the ocean.
HOW TO DIY OFF-GRID SOLAR
SPEND THE TIME UP FRONT AND PLAN IT CAREFULLY TO AVOID DISAPPOINTMENT
Are We on the Verge of an ARMS RACE in SPACE?
RUMORS OF A RUSSIAN SPACE NUKE, ALONG WITH OTHER SATELLITE-TARGETING WEAPONS, HAVE MADE GEOPOLITICAL TENSIONS EXTEND INTO ORBIT.
Fresh Fingerprints on an Ancient Statue
A CLAY FIGURINE HAS SPENT MILLENNIA incomplete, waiting at the bottom of a lake for its long-dead craftsman to finish the Iron Age-era statuette.
Quantum Entanglement in Our Brains
IT HAS LONG BEEN ARGUED THAT THE human brain is similar to a computer. But in reality, that's selling the brain pretty short.
The Tools of Copernicus
WAY BACK IN 1508, WITH ONLY LIMited tools at his disposal, Nicolaus Copernicus developed a celestial model of a heliocentric planetary system, which he described in hist landmark work De revolutionibus orbium coelestium. It was a complete overhaul of our conception of the universe-one that, unfortunately, earned him the ire of the Catholic church for decades after his death-and forever changed the way we look at the stars.
Building a Sixth-Generation Bomber Raptor
THE GLOBAL COMBAT AIR Programme (GCAP)-a project by the U.K., Italy, and Japan to develop a sixth-generation stealth fighter-has been busy at the drawing board reshaping its vision of the future of air warfare. And judging by the new concept model unveiled at this year's Farnborough air show, that future has big triangular wings.
The Electroweak Force of the Early Universe
TODAY, THE UNIVERSE AS WE KNOW IT IS governed by four fundamental forces: the strong nuclear force, the weak nuclear force, electromagnetism, and gravity.
This Ancient Fossil With a Brain and Guts
WE KNOW WHAT FOSSILS LOOK like. For example, typical dinosaur fossils are bones turned to stone and preserved from the passage of time, located, if we're particularly lucky, in large collections that can be reassembled to represent the beast they used to prop up in their entirety.
