@MatthewSGast profile picture
Matthew Gast @MatthewSGast

I like to learn stuff (and fly airplanes)

Joined August 2009
  • Posts 3,478
  • Following 245
  • Followers 1,380
133 Photos and videos
I went to the SF Philharmonic concert last night. I'd forgotten how much I love the dynamic range of Tchaikovsky's works.
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Also, fun observation: the evening opened with Keisuke Nakagoshi playing Rachmaninoff on the piano, and he had the score on an iPad with a bluetooth page-turning foot pedal. It was cool being close enough to the stage to be able to see the use of modern technology up close.
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Replying to @PlanetPayment
@PlanetPayment is a great business. I did some tax-free shopping in Europe, and between the reduced refund amount (21% of the total) and unnecessary currency conversion (another 14% to give me back dollars), I can see why so many people call it a "scam"!
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I was quite surprised that on a day when the official rate was 1 EUR = 1.06 USD, you were able to issue a refund at 1 EUR = 0.92 USD.
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Or, you know, you could just issue refunds in Euros. The credit card I used to make the purchase would happily convert for me, and it's clearly much less work for them, since they can do it for less than 14% of the total amount!
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@Visita_Madrid your tax-free shopping web site should be more honest about how big a cut the paper-pushing companies take
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Flying home from Europe today, and I'm in the British Airways lounge. They provide Wi-Fi, with a captive portal. I'm probably one of the few people in the world who'd notice that the captive portal is hosted at virginwifi.com.
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As somebody who is old enough to remember Branson painting Virgin America planes with "No Way BA/AA," this amuses me.
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Weird experience today. @sofi sent me a marketing offer for a credit card and bank account. They opened the bank account, but couldn't verify my identity for the credit card, and pointed me at ... my Experian credit report that showed they pulled my credit?
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In World War 2, Germany had a rocket plane, the Me-163 Komet. I knew about it, and have even seen an example in a museum, and today I learned a few fun things about it
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4a. The fuel was so toxic that if it leaked it was deadly. Apparently one pilot dissolved in a fuel leak. (eeeeew)
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5. Because there was no propeller slipstream, takeoff resembled gliders - no right rudder, and don't have the stick fully deflected when you reach the speed at which the controls are effective. (Pilot training is said to have taken care of most of this difference.)
No surprise here, this has been rumored for a month or so. justice.gov/usao-ndtx/pr/for…

Former Boeing 737 MAX Chief Technical Pilot Indicted for Fraud

justice.gov
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I really hope that another answer was "The program where @OphiraE and @jonathancoulton keep telling people they don't need to answer in the form for a question"
Kari Hess@486miles
14 Oct 2021
What is “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me” @waitwait @petersagal @Jeopardy
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TIL that the Bay Area was in the selection process to be the location for NASA's mission control facility.
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Very odd to think that in an alternate history, the Concord Airport might have been a major airport for NASA personnel going to the spaceflight center. (Pretty unlikely, though - it's not like the Texas politicians would have let that happen.)
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It's also interesting to think about how the very real NASA considered locations near San Francisco, which is the home base of the very fictional Starfleet.
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