The breaks worked similarly when I worked hourly shifts in the US:

• <= 6 hrs: 1x 15m paid break
• > 6 hrs: 1x 30m unpaid lunch, 2x 15m paid breaks

It was most common to be scheduled for 6 hr shifts so the company could avoid paying for the extra break.

OPSEC. I have history disabled on my phone. If anyone were to somehow access it, they would have more difficulty figuring out who is close to me.

When exiting an airplane, it is more efficient to remain in your row until the row ahead of you has accessed their belongings. This includes people that have no overhead luggage. Sometimes someone’s overhead luggage is behind their seat and it causes noticeable congestion/delays if there are people standing in the aisle obstructing their path. An exception could be made for patrons that need extra time for mobility issues, but this is usually arranged in advance with the flight attendants. Having said that, it’s best to make every effort to exit with expediency because there could be others that have very little time to reach their connecting flight.

It’s safe to generally assume that most others are equally (or more) tired of being on the plane and want to leave ASAP.

My brain just flashed back to 1992…

People are often advised to not lock their knees for a long time while standing (ex: marching band, or standing at attention in the military), and you cannot force anyone to have healthy posture. The ergonomics of these seats appear to take some of the load off the legs and feet, but it’s something to consider for patrons with more sedentary lifestyles. Many people believe themselves to be fit individuals until they are placed in uncomfortable conditions for a long time or experience unexpected stress. They could manage to injure themselves in some way, then find some reason to litigate.

Yep. :)

First I just wanna say, I appreciate the joke.

I can’t speak for other countries but, in numerous states in the US, it is illegal to “incite fear” of bodily harm, even as a joke or prank. One common example is brake-checking other vehicles on the road. Another example could be placing “caution minefield” signs on your lawn to deter pet owners allowing their animals to poop on your lawn, etc.

I used to work for the U.S. Department of Defense and can confidently approve of massive defense budget cuts and merging of several military branches. This is only a single and relatively minor anecdote, but it is a small piece of a much larger problem and is one I can share from personal experience:

I used to be the government lead for a highly successful defensive capability that only consisted of myself and 2-3 defense contractors. We outperformed several long-standing projects that had 10x the staff, 100x the budget, and had been around for approx 10 years without going operational (“operational” in this case meaning that intelligence analysts are authorized to provide actionable intelligence derived solely from the tool). My team released 3 operational releases within 1 calendar year from the start of contract.

I don’t say this to disparage the staff of the other project(s), but rather to highlight how the government can afford to cut long-standing under-performing projects and become more lean and efficient. The government funding allocation is often in the realm of $300k/yr for a single FTE. Multiply that by a team of 20-30 that works on a project that is shelfware after 8-10 years.

My same project was approached by numerous branches of the US and FVEY military community. Branch A offered tons of money to put it on a ship; branch B offered even more money to put it in the back of reconnaissance aircraft or fighter jet; branch C offered money to make it man-packable for ground troops. US taxpayers already paid for this capability once (my team and myself) and we made it as unclassified (i.e. disseminable) and modular as possible (it was literally designed to run on a general host computer running Linux), yet each branch was willing to fork over tens of millions of dollars for something they could have installed on a $2k computer using some internal software repository. And that’s what I suggested they do.

Again, this is just one minor anecdote. How often does this happen where taxpayers are forced (being that they have absolutely no control over how the defense budget is organized) to pay for the same (perhaps MUCH more expensive) tools e.g. 5-10 times because military branch A, B, C, etc, want their own flavor of the same thing? Why does the military often have pissing matches of authority when there is so much overlap between some of them? Take away their stick by taking away some of their funding, and force them to share and cooperate.

Sometimes a trash bin is located near the door, so I’ll use the same paper towel I used to dry my hands to open the door, hold the door open with my foot, then throw the paper towel in the bin. But these make hygiene so much easier:

I have a very hard time believing that an internal combustion engine would sustain significant damage prior to stalling. An engine could run, albeit very poorly, with extreme backpressure (say, an exhaust blockage but perhaps some leaks elsewhere in the exhaust system). If the exhaust was perfectly sealed, there would be so much backpressure that the mixture would be starved of air and there would simply not be any explosion in the cylinders. I have limited knowledge of diesel engines but would expect a similar result.

Here’s a video where an exhaust pipe is plugged. You can see how quickly the car stalls (at 10:00): https://piped.video/watch?v=jnoW0skAChA