ignoring someone can be more harmful than arguing, but why ?

KEY POINTS

• Research finds that feeling ignored can affect people’s sensory perceptions, such as feeling that surroundings seem quieter.
• Being ignored creates feelings of self-doubt, feeling a lack of control, and feeling not worthy of attention.
• Knowing appropriate responses to people with whom you differ is helpful in managing tense relationships.

Where there are people, there is conflict. Interpersonal conflict could manifest in the “hot” form, such as experiences, people’s everyday intuition, theory, and empirical evidence (Williams, 2009) suggest that being ignored hurts more than being argued with.

People’s fear of being ignored or socially excluded is often reflected in their hypersensitivity toward even the slightest cues that could signal social exclusion (Wirth et al., 2010). Further, the feeling of being ignored or excluded is so strong that it can affect people’s sensory perceptions, such as making the surroundings seem quieter (Wang et al., 2021). These beg the question: Why is the cold shoulder so much scarier than arguments?

Self-Esteem Doubts

As with most social psychological phenomena, there is likely a multitude of answers. One possibility is that unlike in a direct argument in which the cause of the conflict is still communicated, when people are ignored, information is cut off.

This means that ignored individuals need to engage in self-reflection to figure out what they have done wrong to upset the person ignoring them. In addition to the inherent unpleasantness of expending mental effort, the uncertainty that comes with such informational drought often results in the dismissed individual systematically contemplating various possible reasons for why they are being ignored. This usually involves going through a list of obnoxious or offensive words, actions, or personality traits that they have said, done, or possess, respectively.

When overwhelmed with a list of negative qualities (e.g., being mean, saying inappropriate things, not caring on a particular occasion, etc.), an individual’s self-esteem inevitably suffers. On the other hand, during a direct argument, the problem would have been identified, and no further rumination would be required (Williams, 2009).

Lack of Control

Another potential reason why being ignored is often more feared than arguments is that there is bilateral communication during an argument. Therefore, the content of the interaction, and hence the outcome, could more or less be controlled by both parties. However, when ignored, the individual loses that sense of control simply because, unlike arguments, being ignored is unidirectional. There is no way to repair or salvage the situation by re-engaging in discourse (Williams, 2009).

Not Worthy of Attention

Sometimes people attribute being ignored to a belief that they are not significant enough to warrant any attention, such as a considerable disparity in social status between themselves and their ignorer (Williams, 2009). This makes intuitive sense since conventional wisdom suggests that arguing with someone is an effortful task, at least more of one than ignoring a person. It follows, then, that individuals who are ignored could infer that the other person would rather forgo their friendship than expend the effort to reconcile any differences or clear any misunderstandings. This would understandably be a bitter pill to swallow.

Considering some possible reasons why the cold shoulder could be more destructive than arguments begs the question: Are there any practical implications? It is essential to be mindful of our goals when choosing a particular strategy in different contexts. For instance, when a Youtuber receives hate comments, whether the “haters” should be ignored or argued with depends on what goal the Youtuber wants to accomplish. If the goal is to clear up misunderstandings, then arguing would be the suitable option. If the goal is to imply to the haters that they are not high enough on the pecking order to warrant any attention, then it might be wise to opt for “silent retribution.”

The same logic could be applied to geopolitical conflicts in which one country has offended or wronged another. If the goal is to clear up misunderstandings and repair bilateral relationships, open communication would be appropriate. However, if the goal is to punish a country and encourage its leaders to self-reflect on their various wrongdoings, perhaps terminating communication entirely would be an apt tactic.

the early talent and skills of Park Jihyo, known mononymously as Jihyo. Jihyo is a South Korean singer and dancer. She is the leader and vocalist of the South Korean girl group Twice, formed by JYP Entertainment.

By Brianna Wiest

“Wishful thinkers” always get a bad rap, and idealism is so often considered to be an Achilles’ heel that we overlook all of the ways it’s actually a profound strength. Sure, nobody’s denying that ungrounded, whimsical ideology isn’t effective, but it does serve a purpose. To illustrate, here are all the strengths (even occasionally) idealistic people have over everyone else:

1. They seek the best in others. Because they immediately see the humanity in everyone, they are able to love others unconditionally. They are more forgiving, accepting and open-minded.

2. They are constantly working on themselves. They see themselves as the people they hope to become, and everything else is simply a product of the work-in-progress.

3. Their perpetual disappointment with less-than-perfect outcomes leads them to find a sense of inner control. The downside of being an idealist is feeling as though dreams are often dashed – yet this usually leads to discerning what is and isn’t within your control.

4. They’re the most effective problem solvers. They are able to imagine an outcome that is better than anything otherwise conceived of. That doesn’t mean it’s always practical, but the ability to even fathom it is the first step to making it possible.

5. They are the most romantic people alive. Romance is all about seeing an imperfect person perfectly, so to say, and idealists who channel that perspective often have happier relationships.

6. They see the world as it is and still hope for the best, which is nothing short of a gift. They don’t become jaded by all of the horror that exists, they see it mostly as a pathway to deeper compassion and understanding. They recognize that to see how far we are from an ideal is to also know there is an ideal to aspire to.

7. They are the only people who actually have a chance of living out their dreams. Anybody can work hard. Not everybody has the ability to imagine what they want to work toward, or to believe in it enough that they won’t give up.

8. They don’t lose hope. It doesn’t mean life doesn’t try to knock it out of them now and again, it just means they persevere regardless. Their baseline is hopefulness, and it’s that attitude that gets them through the worst, and moves them forward to the best. 

written by: Simon de Burton

No watch at auction has ever created as much media hype as a scuffed up 1968 Rolex Daytona, given as a gift to Hollywood icon Paul Newman by his wife, which achieved a world record price of $17.75 million in 2017.

Arguably, that sale also triggered the frenzy of demand for Rolex watches that has transformed the entire watch market ever since.

With power like that, it is little wonder that a second Rolex Daytona, once owned by Paul Newman, is likely to set the auction world alight when the watch goes across the block at Sotheby’s in December.

Unlike the $17m Daytona, the Rolex in question is not one that Mr Newman is known to have worn regularly, and was given away as a gift to a fellow racing enthusiast, Hollywood daredevil and stuntman who doubled for the actor in several movies, leading to them becoming close friends.Stan Barrett with Paul Newman enjoy stock car racing together.

The daredevil in question is Stan Barrett, whose adrenaline-seeking led him to attempt to become the first person to break the speed of sound on land in 1979, travelling at more than 700 mph in the Budweiser Rocket Car.

WATCHPRO columnist Simon de Burton picks up the story of Mr Newman and his double Mr Barrett, and finds out why a pair of steel Rolex watches worn during the Rocket Car attempt could realize more than $600,000 when they cross the block at Sotheby’s in December.

During the final run at Edwards Air Force Base in California on 17 December 1979, Stan Barrett wore the Cosmograph Daytona and GMT-Master.Stan Barrett wearing both the Rolex and GMT Master on one wrist. (picture courtesy Courtesy of Stan Barrett and RolexMagazine.com)

Afterwards, he was presented with a gold GMT-Master by August Busch, CEO of Anheuser-Busch, the main sponsor of the Budweiser Rocket Car and ‘Project Speed of Sound’.

That watch will also be auctioned and could realize $100,000, with a percentage of the money from the sale of all three pieces going to a Ukraine children’s charity that Mr Barrett has supported since 1987.This golden Rolex Reference 1675 GMT-Master was given to Stan Barrett by August Busch, CEO of Anheuser-Busch, the main sponsor of the Budweiser Rocket Car.

But the estimates for the two steel watches could prove conservative – because both were given to Mr Barrett by Hollywood idol Paul Newman, his best friend of 40 years and the godfather to his sons: NASCAR racing driver Stanton and television producer David.

As is well known, a Rolex Daytona gifted to Mr Newman by wife Joanne Woodward remains the most expensive wrist watch ever auctioned following its sale for $17.7m at Phillips New York five years ago. As a result, any Rolex with a connection to the Hollywood legend is now deemed ultra-valuable – and the latest two to come to market should be no exception.

Although 18 years Mr Newman’s junior, Mr Barrett formed a close relationship with the star after working as his main stuntman on numerous films, starting with Sometimes a Great Notion in 1971. Barrett was particularly well suited to the job due to his remarkable resemblance to Newman.This Rolex Reference 1675 GMT-Master Pepsi was on Stan Barrett’s wrist during the Rocket Car attempt.

Speaking by telephone from his Bellevue, Idaho, home in an exclusive interview for WATCHPRO, Mr Barrett said that Mr Newman had given him the Daytona watch immediately on hearing about the proposed record attempt. “We were at his home in Connecticut and he just went upstairs and came down with the Daytona. He could be very funny about me having the right watch to wear, and was always extremely generous.

“About four years earlier, after he had given me the GMT-Master, I bought the same model for my father – but it got stolen. The next thing we know, my father receives a replacement from Paul in the mail.”

Insatiable horophile Mr Newman gifted several watches to Mr Barrett throughout the friendship, including a Breitling Navitimer. “That time I had arrived at his house without a watch on,” recalls Mr Barrett. “Again, he went upstairs, and came down with this Breitling – and when he handed it over to me he said ‘Stan, be careful where you wear it. It was a present from Bruce Willis’.”

But it is the Rolex GMT-Master and Cosmograph Daytona now up for sale that are more interesting – not least since the former is tipped to realize $50,000-100,000, while the latter could achieve as much as $500,000.Stan Barrett wore this Rolex Reference 6262 Stan Barrett’s Rolex Daytona is expected to sell for up to $500,000.

While Mr Newman was photographed trying the Budweiser Rocket Car for size during practice sessions at Bonneville Salt Flats earlier in the year, he refused to watch the run proper.

“Paul called me after the Bonneville runs – during one of which the car’s canopy blew off at 600 mph – and he said ‘Stan, look, I want to support you, but everyone says you aren’t going to make it. And I don’t want to watch you die’,” recalls Mr Barrett.

To keep Mr Newman by his side in spirit, Mr Barrett strapped both gifted watches to his left wrist – and that is where they remained while he drove the rocket car to an unofficial 739.66 mph; a speed that, if accurate, would have made him the first person to break the sound barrier on land.The Budweiser Rocket Car unofficially broke the world land speed record. (Picture courtesy of Department of Defense photo by MSGT Paul J. Harrington)

But the record remains disputed due to the radar scanner being faulty, the fact that Mr Barrett only completed one run and because no one heard the tell-tale sonic boom that usually accompanies the sound barrier being broken.

All the same, no one else came close to the 700 mph mark for another 18 years until Andy Green drove Thrust SSC to 713.990 mph at Black Rock desert in September 1997, and then to 760.343 mph the following month.

Sotheby’s watch specialist Jonathon Burford says the watches relating to the Budweiser Rocket Car run will appeal to a wide range of collectors.

“They are not simply watches, but a part of American history the like of which won’t be seen again,” he told WATCHPRO. “All three were part of a moment in time that epitomizes a spirit of adventure that was so prevalent in America during the 1970s – and they will appeal to everyone from watch purists to motorsport fans and Hollywood memorabilia collectors.

“We have estimated them at what we believe to be realistic levels, but we do believe they are sufficiently significant to attract very strong bidding,” he added.

Mr Barrett says he wore the two steel watches regularly and often for more than 30 years, as did his son, Stanton – until they saw the huge price realised by ‘Newman’s own’ Daytona back in 2017.

“When I saw how much that one sold for I decided that maybe it wasn’t such a smart idea for us to keep wearing the watches that Paul had given me,” he said.

“I’ll be very sad to see them go, but it feels like the right thing to do. I’ll probably give around 30 per cent to the charity Slavic Gospel that I have worked with for the past 35 years and use the rest to pay-off my property loan”.

And unless Mr Barrett has a very large loan, we suspect there might be some left-over.

The sale of the Stan Barrett/Paul Newman Rolex watches will take place at Sotheby’s, York Avenue, New York on 6 December 2022. More details available soon atsothebys.com.

Your relationship may be toxic if it is characterized by behaviors that make you feel unhappy, including disrespect, dishonesty, controlling behaviors, or a lack of support. 

what is a toxic relationship?

In a healthy relationship, everything just kind of works. Sure, you might disagree from time to time or come upon other bumps in the road, but you generally make decisions together, openly discuss any problems that arise, and genuinely enjoy each other’s company. 

Toxic relationships are another story. In a toxic relationship, you might consistently feel drained or unhappy after spending time with your partner, which can suggest that some things need to change. 

Maybe the relationship no longer feels at all enjoyable, though you still love your partner. For some reason, you always seem to rub each other the wrong way or can’t seem to stop arguing over minor issues. You might even dread the thought of seeing them, instead of looking forward to it as you did in the past. 

Below are some hallmark signs of toxicity in a relationship.

what are the signs of a toxic relationship ?

Depending on the nature of the relationship, signs of toxicity can be subtle or highly obvious.

When you’re in a toxic relationship, you might not always find it easy to notice the red flags popping up. All the same, you could notice some of these signs in yourself, your partner, or the relationship itself. 

1. lack of support

Healthy relationships are based on a mutual desire to see the other succeed in all areas of life. But when things turn toxic, every achievement becomes a competition. 

In short, the time you spend together no longer feels positive. You don’t feel supported or encouraged, and you can’t expect them to care about anything you do. Instead, you might get the impression that your needs and interests don’t matter, that they only care about what they want. 

2. toxic communication

Instead of kindness and mutual respect, most of your conversations are filled with sarcasm or criticism and fueled by contempt.

Do you catch yourself making snide remarks to your friends or family members? Maybe you repeat what they said in a mocking tone when they’re in another room. You may even start dodging their calls, just to get a break from the inevitable arguments and hostility.

3. envy or jealousy

While it’s perfectly fine to experience a little envy from time to time, it can become an issue if your envy keeps you from thinking positively about your partner’s successes.

The same goes for jealousy. Yes, it’s a perfectly natural human emotion. But when it leads to constant suspicion and mistrust, it can quickly begin to erode your relationship. 

4. controlling behaviors

Does your partner ask where you are all the time? Maybe they become annoyed or irritated when you don’t immediately answer texts or text you again and again until you do. 

These behaviors might stem from jealousy or lack of trust, but they can also suggest a need for control — both of which can contribute to relationship toxicity. In some cases, these attempts at control can also suggest abuse. 

5. resentment

Holding on to grudges and letting them fester chips away at intimacy. 

Over time, frustration or resentment can build up and make a smaller chasm much bigger. Note, too, whether you tend to nurse these grievances quietly because you don’t feel safe speaking up when something bothers you. If you can’t trust your partner to listen to your concerns, your relationship could be toxic. 

6. dishonesty

You find them constantly making up lies about the whereabouts or who they meet up with.

7. patterns of disrespect

Often you realize that you are tolerating actions of disrespect that you would never permit from any other person.  

8. negative financial behaviors

Sharing finances with a partner often involves some level of agreement about how you’ll spend or save your money. That said, it’s not necessarily toxic if one partner chooses to spend money on items the other partner doesn’t approve of.

It can be toxic, though, if you’ve come to an agreement about your finances and one partner consistently disrespects that agreement, whether by purchasing big-ticket items, spending excessively, or withdrawing large sums of money.

9. constant stress

Ordinary life challenges that come up — a family member’s illness, job loss — can create some tension in your relationship, of course. But finding yourself constantly on edge, even when you aren’t facing stress from outside sources, is a key indicator that something’s off. 

This ongoing stress can take a toll on physical and mental health, and you might frequently feel miserable, mentally and physically exhausted, or generally unwell. 

10. ignoring your needs

Going along with whatever your partner wants to do, even when it goes against your wishes, is a sure sign of toxicity.

11. lost relationships

You’ve stopped spending time with friends and family, either to avoid conflict with your partner or to get around having to explain what’s happening in your relationship. 

Alternatively, you might find that dealing with your partner (or worrying about your relationship) occupies much of your free time. 

12. lack of self-care

In a toxic relationship, you might let go of your usual self-care habits.

You might withdraw from hobbies you once loved, neglect your health, and sacrifice your free time. This might happen because you don’t have the energy for these activities or because your partner disapproves when you do your own thing. 

13. hoping for change

You might stay in the relationship because you remember how much fun you had in the beginning. Maybe you think that if you just change yourself and your actions, they’ll change as well. 

14. walking on eggshells

You worry that by bringing up problems, you’ll provoke extreme tension, so you become conflict avoidant and keep any issues to yourself.

the capacitor

In the realm of passive components, capacitors are second only to resistors in ubiquity. They are everywhere, in almost every electronic device you will ever come across. So it’s no surprise that capacitors are an integral part of audio circuits in general, and guitar effects specifically.

What makes capacitors so important? Well, they can be used to perform some very important functions:

• DC Blocking:Capacitors pass alternating current (AC), but block direct current (DC)
• Coupling: Capacitors are used in between various stages in audio circuits
• Filtering: Capacitors are key elements of filters, such as a tone control
• Smoothing: Capacitors are used to smooth out ripples and noise in power supplies
• Timing: Capacitors are used to set the timing of circuits such as low frequency oscillators
• Storing: Large value capacitors are used to store up energy. For example, the flash of a camera typically uses a capacitor to store and quickly discharge amount of power

Units of Measure

As with all passive components, you need to have a basic understanding of units of measure when working with capacitors. Capacitance is measured in Farads, named after English physicist Michael Faraday. A value of 1 Farad is actually quite high, so we use sub measures as follows:

If you are like me, the concept of base 10 arithmetic is wildly advanced and causes your head to hurt. So I invariably turn to the awesome online and downloadable calculators from http://www.electronics2000.co.uk for doing unit conversions.

Capacitor Types

Although capacitors come in an almost bewildering array of types and sizes, no need to worry. The majority of capacitors in guitar effect designs fall into three types:

• Electrolytic: Usually for large capacitance values, typically 1μF and above. These are usually polarized, meaning there are positive and negative leads.
• Film: The most commonly used types, typically in the range of 1nF to 999nF. These are non-polarized and can go in either way.
• Ceramic: Used for smaller values, typically from 10pF to 999pF. As with Film capacitors, these are non-polarized.

With these basic types in minds, let’s learn a bit more about each.

Voltage Rating

One of the most common questions about choosing capacitors is voltage rating. Different capacitors are rated for different voltage ranges. The best rule of thumb is to choose a capacitor with a voltage rating that is at least twice the operating voltage of your circuit. So if you are building a circuit that runs of 9 volts, choose capacitors with ratings of at least 16 volts.

Electrolytic Capacitors

Electrolytic capacitors are visually distinguished by their ‘can’ form factor. They are commonly used in power supply filtering and decoupling applications. They are usually polarized which means that they have a positive side and a negative side. (See “Non-Polarized Electrolytics”below).

Electrolytic capacitors come in several physical configurations:

	Axial: There are leads coming out either end of the cap. Typically mounted parallel to the board.
	Radial: Both leads come out of one end. Typically mounted vertical to the board.
	Snap-In: For larger electros, not recommended for DIY stuff because they lack the long leads that make it easy to fit them to a board.
	SMD: Surface mounted device, which are designed to be assembled/soldered by automated devices. Not so user-friendly to human solderers.

The polarity of the electrolytic capacitor is almost always indicated by a printed band. Additionally, the positive lead is usually longer.  

When working with electrolytic capacitors, here are a few things to keep in mind:

• Polarity: Most electrolytic capacitors are polarized. Hook them up the wrong way and at best, you’ll block the signal passing through. At worst (for higher voltage applications) they’ll explode.
• Getting Shocked and Possibly Dying: This is not usually a concern for low-voltage stompbox applications, but for high-voltage circuits, especially tube amplifiers, big electros can hold a charge for quite a while. Before you open up anything that plugs into the wall, google capacitor discharging and approach with caution. See ;Capacitor Fires and Explosions” below.
• Radial vs. Axial:To maximize the real estate on a PCB, you’ll almost always want to use radial leads. When you order caps, get the radial ones. If you order Axial by mistake, it isn’t hard to bend the leads so as to mount them in a radial, upright configuration.
• Non-Polarized Electrolytics: To further confound you, electrolytics are made in non-polarized versions. These are rarely used. The only place I’ve seen them is on either side of the first opamp stage in the Tube Screamer.

Ceramic Capacitors

Ceramic caps are typically used for lower capacitance jobs. Values are usually in the picofarad to low nanofarad range. They are ugly looking, and that is about as technical as I’ll get on the whole ceramic vs. film caps debate.

Most folks cannot discern an audible difference between the two types in common stompbox use, so you’ll have to try for yourself. A good rule of thumb is to remember that from an electrical engineering standpoint, film capacitors are generally preferred over ceramics in audio path applications. Ceramics are non-polarized and usually supplied in the radial lead configuration.

The Great Tantalum Debate

Tantalum capacitors were popular in the eighties in stompbox designs like the Ibanez Tube Screamer and various MXR and DOD designs. The primary benefit of tantalums is that they offer a higher range of capacitance values in package that is physically smaller than electrolytics.

Like electrolytics, they are polarized so you’ll want to get the direction right. Tantalums are *very* susceptible to polarity inversion. In other words, if you hook one up backwards you might as well throw it away–there is a good chance it is cooked.

Do they sound better? Do they sound different? The answer is a definitive yes. No wait, that’s a definitive no. There are many opinions about tants, so I really cannot offer you anything definitive on this subject. I can however, share some of the feedback and comments I’ve heard and read.

• Replace place all electrolytic caps in the signal path with tantalums for a smoother sound.
  Some folks hear more “grit” and treble with tantalums. Some hear a smoother sound.
• Replace the .022 tantalum in your tube screamers with a poly film part for better sound, others claim the original part is integral to the true tube screamer sound.
• Some folks claim tantalums are not as reliable as electrolytics, but this may be mostly due to older composition and packaging types uses in decades past.

As always, your mileage will vary. But this is one of the most wonderful areas of stompbox design–there are so many variations, we’ll probably never get bored. Try the variations yourself until  you find your ideal sound.

Capacitors on the Fringe

There are various esoteric or rare capacitor types that pop up from time to time.

Tropical Fish Caps

These are vintage poly film capacitors that use color codes to denote the capacitance value. Very rare nowadays and expensive too. Some builders like to use them in vintage circuits,especially wah pedals.

The Wima Audio Black Box Audio Cap

Rare, elusive and really expensive. I don’t have much info on these, but some audiophile people swear by them.

Wet Tantalums

Most tantalum caps are of the dry-slug variety. This means that they are composed of dry tantalum powder. Wet-slug tantalums on the other hand use gelled sulfuric acid. For more mojo, I wonder if wet-slug tantalums would be worth trying. Although they are typically used for high temperature and voltage applications, one has to wonder…

Audiophile Parts

In the world of DIY audiophile building, a great emphasis is often placed on capacitor performance. As a result, there are a number of manufacturers of high-end (and expensive) capacitors. I’ll leave the subjective vs. objective argument to the reader. But it does make sense to point out that guitar effects, especially in stompbox format, are not designed to be audiophile devices.

Which Type Should I Choose?

As with all component types, there are pros and cons for each type. In general, the choice of capacitor type will be made for you, either by the author of the schematic you are using, or by the simple factor of capacitance value. In other words, the schematic will specify electrolytic or film by the symbol used. That makes the choice easy.

But what about when a specific type is not specified, only the value is shown? In general, you look at the value specified, and choose the type appropriate for that value. Other factors may influence your choice of capacitor type, particularly in audio circuits. So I’ve include benefits and drawbacks of each type.

Capacitors on Schematics

Here’s what capacitors look like on schematics:

What about Variable Capacitors?

One of the first questions I had when I started building stompboxes was “I have variable resistors (potentiometers) all over the place. Why don’t I have variable capacitors?” The answer is that they are limited to a very small capacitance and are quite expensive too. As such, they are not practical for stompbox usage.

Here’s a trick to simulate a variable capacitor, especially useful for tone control applications. Attach two different capacitor values to a potentiometer–moving the wiper then sends more or less of the signal to one of the caps thereby changing the frequency response.

Capacitor Fires and Explosions

Like other components, capacitors can explode, burn, and/or stink when they are voltage-abused. Here are some fun fire and explosion pictures. Note that many capacitors were harmed during these experiments.

Some builders have intimated that tantalum capacitors smell the worst when on fire. This is a very useful piece of engineering knowledge to have.

The Application of Capacitors in Stompboxes

So now we are familiar with the basics of capacitors, how can we use them in stompboxes? In a surprisingly large number of ways actually.

Power Supply Filtering

In the context of stompboxes, power supply is a low voltage (usually 1.5-18 volts) direct current. The battery is a pretty ideal power source for stompboxes. As long as the battery isn’t dying or depleted, it doesn’t fluctuate wildly or introduce DC ripple into the equation. So if you are running solely on battery power, you really don’t need to worry much about filtering.

Power supplies, like the ubiquitous unregulated black wall warts on the other hand aren’t so ideal. If you are sure that your stompbox design will only ever see external voltage as supplied by a nicely regulated and filtered AC adaptor, then you don’t need to design in filtering. But in the real world, such assurances are not available. You have to assume that at some point you (or the person you build stompboxes for) will plug in a cheap nasty Szechuan special and noise and nastiness will result.

Of course, it is interesting to note that many stompbox schematics will include no filtering at all, and for the majority of uses, that is actually ok. Filtering really becomes an issue when your circuit is presented with a crappy power supply or fluctuating “crazy Ivan” mains voltage.

A wall wart uses a transformer to step down the mains voltage to a pedal friendly 9-11 volts or so (for a 9v adaptor) and then converts AC into DC using a 4-diode bridge rectifier. The rectifier flips all the waveform swings of the AC voltage but still results in some “ripple” in the DC waveform. Ripple equates to noise in your circuit. The simplest way to get rid of this ripple is to tack a largish-value electrolytic cap from the power supply to ground to smooth things out. For most stompbox designs, this works just great. Let’s look at an example.

Here we simply add a 100uf polarized electrolytic from the power supply line to ground to reduce ripple:

Finally, there is an additional electrolytic on the bias voltage (C3) which smoothes out the bias supply.

A parting note on caps in power supplies. For amplifier circuits, you’ll see big electrolytic cans in the power supply section that you don’t see in stompboxes. These act as “reservoirs” of current to handle short spikes in power demands from the amplifier and to smooth out the available pool of current.

The Input and Output Caps

Almost every stompbox design has these two caps. As we talk about these, keep in mind the following schematic of the Electro Harmonix LPB booster (I’m using this one because it has input and output caps and is about as simple a circuit as you can find.)

The input cap (C1), if you haven’t already guessed, is attached at or very near the input. The purpose of the input cap is to form a high-pass filter, in conjunction with a resistor (here the R2 part). It also acts to stabilize the rest of the circuit from the input which is usually a guitar, bouzouki, or another pedal. The key point here is:

The value of the input cap directly controls any frequency attenuation that happens before the signal hits the main effect circuitry.

Now on to the output cap. In our schematic above, that’s the C2 value. The output cap serves two purposes. First, like the input cap, it can serve as part of an RC network to attenuate or pass certain frequencies. If you want the full frequency range, a value from 100nf to 1uf can be used. The output cap also serves to remove any direct current from the signal. Remember that our stompbox designs almost all run on direct current–we want to be sure none if it escapes from the output jack, so an electrolytic cap will do the job nicely.

Let’s say you are building a treble-booster–you would want to attenuate any low frequency content before it hit the amplifier circuit. So you would put in a lower value input cap to accomplish this. The Dallas Rangemaster, perhaps the most famous of all treble boosters, has an incredibly small .005 uf cap.

Another great example of the effect of cap values on frequency response isa href=”http://folkurban.com/Site/LofoMofo-724.html”>Tim Escobedo’s LoFoMoFo. Look at the very small values for the input, output and shunting caps (R1, R3 and R2, respectively). These parts conspire to remove pretty much all the bass content of the input signal:

Alternatively, let’s say you want the majority of the useful frequency content to be passed through–in this case you would use a larger value cap, say 100nf-1uf. A rule of thumb is that a 1uf capacitor, input or output, will allow all guitar frequencies to pass through.

Filters

Variable Low-Pass Filter

Here we use a small value cap (500pf up to 50nf is a good range for experimentation) wired in the signal path of a circuit. If the pot’s wiper is at the full open position (no resistance) the signal will bypass the cap and go straight through. But as the resistance is increased, more signal will pass through the cap which will attenuate higher frequencies.

Another way to implement a low pass filter is to used a potentiometer in series with a capacitor to ground. This type of configuration can be spliced into the signal path of a circuit, but it should be noted that there is some signal loss. This is the case with all such passive circuits. Usually, there is a gain stage after a passive tone control to boost the signal lost in the passive section. For example, look at the last transistor stage in the Big Muff Pi circuit: it’s function is to make up for the signal loss in the preceding tone control.

Smoothing Diode Clipping

You can add a small-value capacitor in parallel with a diode clipping arrangement to smooth out the high-end of the clipping. This is a somewhat interesting area for experimentation.

Capacitors for Timing

Another common use for capacitors is to control the time interval of a circuit. For example, in a low-frequency oscillator, a capacitor is used in conjunction with a potentiometer to set the frequency. Our first example is a simple LFO based on the 40106 Hex inverting Schmitt trigger. The combination of C1 and VR1 set the frequency:

Next, we have a classic 555 basic monostable oscillator. In this configuration, the frequency is set by a combination of R1 and C1.

“I don’t know why they call it adultery, there is nothing adult about it…” Patrick Scheidegger, 2023

These indicators aren’t meant to be alarmist but if your gut is trying to tell you something, they could prove useful.

By Suzannah Weiss

Most of us tend to give our partners the benefit of the doubt as far as fidelity goes. But the truth is, signs of cheating do exist. In fact, according to a 2016 survey, one in four married and cohabiting young adults admitted to cheating, while only half confess.

You probably know the obvious signs of cheating, like lurking on dating sites long after getting into a relationship or always coming home late without a solid excuse. But in order to really ID a cheater, it pays to watch for subtle signs that aren’t as overt.

The following indicators aren’t meant to be alarmist—almost all of them can have alternate explanations—but if your gut is really trying to tell you something, they could prove useful.

Your relationship started as an affair

For some people, there is some truth to the saying “once a cheater, always a cheater.”  John, 44, says he should’ve seen it coming when he got into a relationship with a married woman. “We were good in bed together, but she enjoyed being good in bed with others, too, apparently.”

They regularly accuse you of cheating

Beyond being classic projection, this tactic serves two purposes, says Healing Infidelity Coach Caroline Madden, LMFT. It puts you on the defensive so you don’t have the chance to consider the opposite possibility, and it makes them look so anti-cheating that they couldn’t possibly do it to you. It could also be a genuine reaction to them realizing that since they got away with cheating, you probably could too.

They’re taking out a lot of cash

Cheaters often use cash when they take their secret partners out so that their S.O.’s can’t track where they’ve been, says Rhonda Milrad, founder and chief relationship advisor of Relationup. But if you share a financial account, what you can track is a spike in ATM withdrawals.

They’ve suddenly got new sex moves

Of course, it’s possible they’ve just been doing their research—in which case, great if you’re into it—but other signs of cheating combined with a very noticeable change in sex routine could mean they’re picking up those new techniques from someone else and discovering new things they like, says Milrad.

They’re suddenly hyper-critical of you

Cheaters will sometimes try to justify their actions by making their relationship out to be so bad that they had no choice, explains Madden. She typically sees this happen in situations where the cheater feels they’re in love with their cheating partner, since they have a sense that their affair is happier than their relationship. 

Your typical relationship issues seem to  disappear

Madden’s clients are often surprised to find their partners are cheating because they thought everything was going well around the time the infidelity started. But sometimes, the reason things are looking up is that the needs that weren’t met in the relationship are being met elsewhere.

They’re paying more attention to their looks

If your S.O. is once again hitting the gym, buying new underwear, or taking a newfound interest in shopping, they could be in an early stage with someone else, says Madden.

They forget what stories they’ve told you

If your partner frequently starts stories with, “Did I tell you this already?” it could mean they’re having trouble keeping track of multiple confidants, says psychologist Colleen Long, PsyD.

They’re confiding in you less

Becoming less inclined to discuss problems with you could be a sign that your partner’s been venting to someone else, says Long. Even if they’re not sleeping with anyone else, this could point toward emotional cheating.

They keep strict tabs on your schedule

Lauren, 33, says her ex started to ask when she was coming home from work more often when he was cheating. Now, she sees he was trying to figure out when he and his cheating partner would have the place to themselves.

They have random new interests

“My ex had been content to listen to about eight songs, total, during our entire time together,” Julie remembers. “A bunch of new CDs without any writing to identify their contents—and a sudden interest in a whole host of new music—was due to the influence of this new partner.” Attachment to a particular place can especially be a giveaway: Julie’s ex insisted on joining a gym because of a climbing wall when he didn’t even climb. It turned out his secret girlfriend was a member.

Cheating was accepted in their family

Looking back, John thinks his ex’s parents should’ve been a clue. “She came from a family where her mother and father both cheated on each other and she told me that,” he says. “But her parents were still married. So they set an example for their daughter to follow.”

 They get irate when you try to confront them

Someone who hasn’t cheated will likely have a good explanation for their suspicious behavior and do what it takes for you to feel confident. A cheater, however, may get defensive because you’ve blown their cover, says Milrad. “It is very common for cheaters to deflect responsibility and get irritated by your questions. They often try and shut you down and even criticize you for being too controlling or suspicious.”

• KIERON WALKER
• SEP 17, 2022

What to Do When Alone on New Year’s Eve

The end of the year is here, and you want to do something fun to celebrate, but none of your friends is available. What are you going to do?

Don’t start stressing just yet. Bringing in the new year on your own doesn’t have to be a depressing alternative. There are tons of things that you can do solo that will still leave a smile on your face.

The list below highlights just some of the options available to you if your friends can’t make it out with you. Figure out which one matches your personality and give it a try. You can even roll a few of the suggestions together to bring some variety to your night. Before you know it, the clock will be hitting midnight, and you won’t want to stop what you’re doing.

11 Ideas for Celebrating New Year’s Eve on Your Own

1. Go Out on the Town Anyway
2. Have a Movie/Television Series Marathon
3. Redecorate Your Living Space
4. Write Letters to Your Friends and Family
5. Set Goals for the Upcoming Year
6. Travel to a Special Destination
7. Play Your Favorite Video Games
8. Start Reading a Good Book
9. Work on an Arts and Crafts Project
10. Host a Hangout With Other Friends
11. Give Thanks and Go to Bed Early

1. Go Out on the Town Anyway

So you’re home alone on New Year’s Eve. Who says you can’t get dressed up and go out anyway? Bars, clubs, and other venues will still be packed with people ready to party the night away.

Sure, it’s always fun to have your closest friends around for nights like these, but the likelihood of running into someone you know is still pretty high. Even if you don’t, you may just start off the new year by meeting a new group of friends.

Here are a few things to keep in mind before you head out:

1. Make sure you’ve arranged for a safe trip to and from the party. Free cabs and shuttle buses are usually readily available.
2. Have fun, but be cautious. Your friends are usually the people who watch out for you on nights like these. Make sure you are extra careful with strangers if you don’t have someone to watch your back.
3. Try sticking with familiar venues. This may increase the chance that you run into someone that you know during the night.

2. Have a Movie/Television Series Marathon

If you do decide to stay home, not much beats relaxing on the couch and watching television. New Year’s Eve can be the perfect time to catch up on television episodes you missed during the year or movies that you don’t mind watching over and over again.

As a matter of fact, between your personal DVD collection, Netflix, and Amazon Prime, it shouldn’t be difficult to create your own television marathon. You may get so involved watching a movie that you completely forget the ball dropped at midnight!

Before creating your own movie marathon, consider the following tips:

1. Come up with an entertaining theme.This can range from Star Wars night to a Lord of the Rings showcase. If you like horror movies, come up with a list of the scariest ones you haven’t seen yet. If TV shows are your thing, watch your favorite episodes from your favorite show (“The Walking Dead,” “The Wire,” etc.).
2. Come up with creative snack foods to eat during the marathon and in between shows. If you don’t feel like cooking, call ahead to your favorite restaurant and see if they offer any sort of party platter.

3. Redecorate Your Living Space

Have you been meaning to reorganize your house for the whole year? Maybe it just looks like a war zone inside. No matter the reason, New Year’s Eve presents the perfect time to get your home looking beautiful again.

Your renovation project can be as large or small as you want it to be. It can be as simple as sorting/recycling a stash of old magazines or hanging new photos throughout the house. You can even use the time to trim down on some of the old clothes hanging inside your closet. The list of DIY activities available to you is endless!

Should you choose to put your home first, here are a few ideas that may help you:

1. Focus on a specific room or area within your house. Trying to take on your whole living area at one time can be intimidating, and it may end up leaving you feeling defeated at the end of the night.
2. If your projects involve moving furniture, make sure you use furniture sliders. You can even make your own by cutting small squares made out of cardboard. Just slide them under the corners of your furniture, and you can move them around without needing another person’s help.

4. Write Letters to Your Friends and Family

The end of the year is the perfect time to reflect on what you have done and share your accomplishments with your friends. Rather than meeting up with them for drinks or sitting in front of Facebook all night, try breaking out a pen and paper and writing them an actual letter.

If you’re not sure where to start, here are some ideas:

1. Use the time to come up with an annual update. Let your friends know about everything that happened every month throughout the year and what you plan to do in the upcoming year as well. If you have a chance, include some photos of yourself that your friends can put up in their homes.
2. If a handwritten update seems daunting, send a short email instead.Everyone loves getting real snail mail that isn’t related to bills, but if you can’t handle writing your update, then at least take a few moments to email your closest friends and family. It can keep open the lines of communication and possibly help you start planning for next year’s New Year’s Eve activities!

5. Set Goals for the Upcoming Year

New Year’s is the time of making resolutions. While some people hate the thought of making them, others see the beginning of the year as the perfect time to start working on a new goal.

One of the things that people remember the most about resolutions is how often they fail. Many times, this is due to a lack of good planning. Why not use New Year’s Eve as a time to set up your goals and make plans to accomplish them?

A few things to remember about making goals for the new year:

1. Be realistic. It’s OK to think big, but think of all the little goals that lead up to the big one. Not only will you be more likely to accomplish the small goals, but you’ll also be motivated by your success.
2. Consider your support system. Don’t just focus on your goals. Think about the people that are going to help you get there. Everyone has days that they don’t feel motivated. Often, these lead to people giving up on their resolutions completely. Figure out who your personal cheerleaders are so they can give you that extra boost of energy on those days.

6. Travel to a Special Destination

Have you been waiting all year to take a vacation? Has Vegas been on your mind for a while? Disney World, maybe? Possibly even the Caribbean? Instead of waiting for friends or family, just go for it!

• Pros: It may actually be easier on you financially to just pack up and go by yourself. Rather than having to book multiple airline tickets and larger hotel rooms, you can just set out on your own personal adventure.
• Cons: The most difficult part about this option is waiting too late to schedule your trip. Most people don’t plan on being alone in advance. Luckily, there are a ton of travel sites out there, and even the major airlines offer package deals that may still be available at the last minute.

7. Play Your Favorite Video Games

Let’s face it: Playing video games is an acceptable way of life. Kids play them. Adults play them. Even some grandparents are out there playing them. Whether it’s on the Xbox, PlayStation, personal computer, or even the smartphone, people are out playing games somewhere.

• At first glance, it may seem antisocial to stay in and play video games, but it doesn’t have to be. Many games offer multiplayer options in which you can connect with other players from around the world. Just be sure to take frequent game breaks, especially at midnight.
• Even if you decide not to play with/against other players, there are quite a few games on the market that offer single-player campaigns that can keep you busy for the whole night.

8. Start Reading a Good Book

Not long ago, there was a statistic circulating that the percentage of college students that never read another book after graduating was 42%. While the number seems high, it isn’t totally shocking. It seems that lack of free time and the availability of information over the Internet have finally caused people to put down their books and forget to pick them up again.

With that being said, a quiet New Year’s Eve at home is the perfect time to dive into that book you’ve been meaning to read all year:

1. Get comfortable. Find yourself a cozy corner of the house, break out a warm blanket, and maybe even throw on some subtle background music.
2. Try out a recommended book. If you’re not sure what to read, check out some of the latest books on the New York Times Best Sellers list or some of the great classics listed on the Greatest Books.

By the time New Year’s Day comes around, you may be ready to make reading a permanent part of your life again!

9. Work on an Arts and Crafts Project

For those people with a creative side who don’t like being idle, an arts and crafts project might be the best way to spend the evening.

Start out by looking around your home and finding a spot that could use some extra character. Then set out to find a project that will turn heads the next time you have company. It could be a new charcoal drawing, a refinished piece of old furniture, or newly painted pieces of pottery. No matter what you decide, take the time to put your own flair into it.

If you need ideas, here are a few ways to get inspired:

• Try checking out a few craft books from your local library.
• Browse through Pinterest to see what other people have made.
• Take a walk through a craft store such as Michaels or Hobby Lobby.

It won’t take long for you to find something to do, and you can show it off for years to come.

10. Host a Hangout With Other Friends

So you decided to stay in for the night, but it’s a definite possibility that some of your friends made the same choice. If so, break out your laptop, tablets, or other devices and have a New Year’s Eve Google Plus Hangout party.

Google Hangouts allows you to connect with your friends and family through video calls over the Internet (similar to Skype). You could get your whole crew together and celebrate without even being in the same house.

While it may not be the same as going out to your local bar or club, you could make it as crazy as you want it to be—the sky is the limit! Fun ideas include the following:

• Share stories about the past year.
• Play drinking games.
• Listen to music.
• Watch the same movie.

11. Give Thanks and Go to Bed Early

The easiest option on the list may actually be the most appealing one. After a year full of running around, maybe you just want to wind down and get a full night’s rest.

Make the most of your restful evening with these tips:

1. Relax. Prior to calling it a night, you could enjoy a glass of wine, a nice relaxing bath, and some soothing music. Find your favorite ways to pamper yourself before climbing into bed.
2. Reflect. Before you fall asleep, take a moment to reflect on the past year, and then get ready to tackle a new one the next morning.

However you choose to spend your New Year’s Eve, don’t let being alone prevent you from enjoying it.

Happy New Year!

If you’re thinking about or planning on spending Christmas alone or alone-ish and have some questions/concerns, I’m here to talk you through it!

Christmas is a time of comfort, joy, and a shitload of cultural expectations about family and togetherness.

1. “Hi, yes, I have a question. I might end up being alone on Christmas but I don’t really feel like deciding or planning what I want to do that day. Can I just, like, wing it?”

2. “OK, fine. Where do I start?”

3. “Does it really matter what I do all day?”

4. “OK, I think I want to stay home. What should I do with myself all day?”

5. “Wow, OK, that was a lot! And what if I want to get outside the house?”

6. “Speaking of feeling sorry for yourself, you said something earlier about wallowing. Is that still on the table?”

7. “I feel OK about spending Christmas alone, but I’m anxious about telling other people about my plans; I don’t want to be judged or have to defend my choice. What should I say?” It really depends on what you’re comfortable with. My goal has always been to a) make it clear that I have plans (because I do!), and b) tell the truth, but obscure the fact that I’ll be alone. I do this mainly because I don’t want to be pressured to join their holiday celebration (which is a truly kind thing to offer, but I’m good!) or have to endure hearing “But you can’t be ALONE on CHRISTMAS!” (Yes, I can! And I WILL!!!) So my preferred reply is something to the effect of, “Oh, nothing exciting — just staying around here, keeping things chill. How about you?” You could also share a little bit about your plans: “Working all day and then making lasagna soup later!” And a more forthcoming version might be something like, “I’m taking some me time! I’ll probably make some food, see a movie, do a face mask, start a puzzle — you know, fun solo stuff! I’ve been dying for a quiet night to myself for ages.” Ideally, if you use one of these scripts, they won’t press you further or turn it into a huge thing. But if they do, keep your tone breezy, be vague and boring, and change the subject/turn things back to their plans.

1. “Can I just not tell anyone I’m going to be alone?”

1. “Yeah, I have more of a comment than a question. Christmas is about FAMILY and JESUS and it looks like liberal BuzzFeed is participating in the WAR ON CHRISTMAS and WHY would anyone turn their back on their FAMILY on CHRISTMAS, YOU SHOULD COME SPEND CHRISTMAS WITH MY FAMILY, REALLY, I INSIST —”

1. “Mmmkay, anything else I need to know?”

1. “Are you sure being alone on Christmas isn’t the saddest thing ever?”

1. “Got it. Anything else I need to do to prepare myself for the big day?”

“Jetson ONE Is A $92,000 ‘Flying Sports Car'” – Autoweek

“You Could Soon Fly To Work In A $92,000 Flying Car That Can Reach 63 Miles Per Hour” – INSIDER

“The Jetson ONE Is A Personal eVTOL That Anyone Can Fly” – designboom

THE JETSON ONE WANTS TO MAKE FLYING AVAILABLE TO ANYONE

After the successful launch of its prototype in 2018, Swedish startup Jetson is back with its consumer version of the Jetson ONE: Jetson ONE eVTOL. available in 18 units — of which 15 have already been reserved — the personal electric aerial vehicle is here for anyone to own. and although all vehicles for 2022 have been sold, the company is now taking orders for vehicles to be delivered in 2023.

“Our mission is to make flight available to everyone,” said Peter Ternstrom, founder of Jetson. “The Jetson ONE is an electric helicopter that you can own and fly. We intend to make everyone a pilot.”  

Unlike other types of physical abuse, sleep deprivation doesn’t leave a mark.

Alice’s former husband often woke her up by slamming his hand down on the bed. He would keep her awake “until the wee hours of the morning,” she recalled. Sometimes, it didn’t matter who went to bed first; he would still find reasons to wake her in the middle of the night. “It could be because I was snoring. It could be because he [had woken up] and I was asleep and if he couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t sleep. [Or] he’d had a dream and I’d done something in his dream and therefore he was really upset with me.”

Nights were terrifying, she said, though she often felt it was safer to go to sleep after her husband. “It became a really big deal for me,” she said. “If I was to fall asleep before he did, that’s usually when something would get out of hand.”

It’s been 10 years since Alice left her husband, but she remembers those experiences like they happened yesterday. To process her experience and help others understand the complexity of domestic violence, Alice (whose last name we’ve withheld to protect her children’s privacy) started a personal blog. One of her most viewed posts was the one published in 2012 detailing how her partner intentionally deprived her of sleep.

Victims of domestic violence often have trouble sleeping. But when a person intentionally weaponizes sleep deprivation-including not allowing their partner to go to bed, interrupting their sleep or punishing them for sleeping-experts say it becomes a form of physical abuse and torture, one that often goes unnoticed to the outside world. “I don’t know that anybody really would have told me it was abuse [back then],” Alice said. “I had a very good therapist at that time who pointed out that that wasn’t okay, but we didn’t spend a lot of time on it either.”

Everyone needs sleep; it is a basic biological function that is critical for our health. And it’s only now that we’re realizing how powerful, and devastating, sleep deprivation can be.

A 2007 exploratory study in the journal Violence Against Women offered a glimpse into how sleep loss leaves survivors feeling vulnerable to violence. Researchers interviewed 17 women whose sleep was disturbed by an abusive partner; all reported adjusting their sleeping patterns to minimize the daily threat of violence they faced. Some said they were afraid to sleep “too deeply” and others said they avoided sleep altogether when their partner was home.

“You would pretend to be asleep, then you would have to pretend to wake up. Either way it would be better to be awake, trying to figure out what he wanted or what he was going to do next,” one woman said.

As the study’s authors write, these narratives “bring into sharp relief the connection between sleep deprivation and the establishment of a regime of power and control by one person over another-the hallmark of domestic violence.”

In a follow-up study, researchers determined: “Sleep deprivation was clearly a direct strategy of abuse used by perpetrators. It also indirectly undermined the mental and physical resilience of women.”

Unlike other types of physical abuse, sleep deprivation doesn’t leave a mark. “Unfortunately, I think the only thing that society recognizes as abuse is a black eye,” said Heather Frederick, a spokesperson for the National Domestic Violence Hotline. “A lot of people who are experiencing sleep deprivation as a part of abuse understand this isn’t healthy, it’s not sustainable…but they may not make the connection that it’s about their partner trying to control them or trying to strong-arm them or have power over them.”

“Sleep deprivation was clearly a direct strategy of abuse used by perpetrators.”

At her organization, Frederick said sleep deprivation is classified as a form of physical abuse, though it easily falls under emotional abuse as well. Similar to stopping someone from taking medication they need, interrupting someone’s sleep has a significant impact on their bodies and minds.

Victims of sleep deprivation often experience drowsiness, difficulty concentrating, and eventually disorientation, hallucinations, and paranoia. Chronic sleep loss can lead to serious health problems, including risk of high blood pressure, depression, and heart attack.

According to data gathered by the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, four in 10 women and four in 10 men have experienced at least one form of coercive control (which includes any behavior a person uses to dominate their significant other) in their lifetime. One example where sleep is a vehicle for manipulation, Frederick said, occurs in the context of a long-distance relationship: A partner may require the other person to videochat with them to prove that they’re home alone or ask them to leave their phone on their pillow all night to listen to them sleep.

In Alice’s case, her partner even justified the sleep deprivation with one of the messages in the sermon given during their wedding, which had to do with married couples never letting the sun go down on their anger. “He used that against me for a long time,” she said, referring to her former husband. If she begged for sleep, he accused her of loving sleep more than she loved him.

In these scenarios, abusers usually aren’t trying to reach any kind of compromise, Frederick explained. “Their goal is to wear their victim out so that they cave in and give in to whatever it is the abusive partner is wanting to happen or whatever they’re looking for.”

As recently as 2014, the United Nations’ committee against torture called on the United States to end its practice of using sleep deprivation on detainees, calling it “a form of ill-treatment.”

In 2016, Tania Tetlow, then a law professor at Tulane University and now president of Loyola University New Orleans, made a compelling argument for states to pass laws “banning torture by private actors” as well, primarily as a better way to address domestic violence. She included sleep deprivation among the techniques that should be outlawed.

Imposing sleep deprivation on someone isn’t a crime in and of itself, Tetlow said in an interview, but that’s why the analogy of torture and domestic violence works. Domestic violence generally is a pattern crime, similar to stalking. “Any one act in isolation will not seem that egregious. It is the context of the pattern of behaviors and the intent of those behaviors and their cumulative impact that really makes it terrible.”

Tetlow acknowledged that sleep deprivation is one of those abusive tactics that may not seem like that big of a deal on its own. But it is an effective way to render somebody unable to function and make good judgments. “The biggest risk of lethality with domestic violence is not measured by the level of violence; it’s about the level of control,” she said. “That is a bigger indicator of the chance that someone will murder their victim.”

As an example, Tetlow pointed to one 2010 case in Louisiana: Jennifer Muse, 31, was shot and killed by her 78-year-old husband. Two days earlier, he’d been acquitted of domestic violence battery, a charge stemming from a fight in the middle of the night when she was upset that he woke her. According to Muse’s testimony, he did so often.

Repositioning domestic violence in the law as torture-a legal argument that’s yet to gain any traction-would send both abusers and the people they hurt a powerful message, Tetlow said: “Describing domestic violence as torture focuses the criminal justice system and the public on the defendant’s clear premeditation and culpability. We see batterers as merely angry, whereas we acknowledge torturers as cruel.”

For Alice, the survivor who left her partner over a decade ago, the long-term pain caused by the abuse continues to disrupt her life. She still has trouble going to bed at times. “I do feel like I’ve come a long way. I’m in a much different spot than I was then, but I still have my triggers. I still have things that can upset me quite a bit.”

By Kimberly Lawson

Jake Epstein, Charles R. Davis, John Haltiwanger, and Lloyd Lee

• Two people were reportedly killed after Russian missiles landed in an eastern Polish village.
• Poland is a member of NATO, which operates under the principle of collective defense.
• It’s not clear how Poland or NATO will respond.

Two people were killed after Russian missiles landed in an eastern Polish village on Tuesday, a US intelligence official told the Associated Press. The incident seemingly marks the first time that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war has spilled across Ukraine’s borders and into the territory of a NATO member.

The missiles landed in the village of Przewodów, which is located in eastern Poland a short distance from Ukraine’s western border, and reportedly came amid a barrage of over 90 Russian missiles that targeted Ukraine’s infrastructure. 

A Polish government official said the country’s prime minister called an emergency defense committee meeting. Russia denied reports that its weapons landed in Poland, with its state-run TASSnews agency calling reports they had “a deliberate provocation.”

A spokesperson for Poland’s Foreign Ministry confirmed in a statement that a “Russian-made missile fell” into the region and that an ambassador for the Russian Federation has been asked to provide an immediate explanation.

The damage shifts attention onto the NATO alliance, which has repeatedly warned it will defend the territory of its allies from Russia. Poland is a member of the NATO, which operates under the principle of collective defense — enshrined in Article 5 of the alliance’s founding treaty. Under this agreement, an attack against one NATO country is considered an attack against the entire military alliance. But Article 5 has only been invoked once in NATO’s history, following the terror attacks against the US on September 11, 2001. 

Article 5 states that NATO members will assist the attacked party or parties by “taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.”

It’s unclear what caused the Russian projectiles to land in Poland, which could have a major bearing on how the alliance reacts. 

The US and its Western allies have warned Russia repeatedly that an attack on NATO territory would trigger a strong response.

“We have a sacred obligation under Article 5 to defend each and every inch of NATO territory with the full force of our collective power,” President Joe Biden said in March. 

Adrienne Watson, the White House National Security Council spokesperson, said Tuesday afternoon that “we’ve seen these reports out of Poland and are working with the Polish government to gather more information. We cannot confirm the reports or any of the details at this time. We will determine what happened and what the appropriate next steps would be.”

Echoing these comments, Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder said during a press briefingthat the US is “aware of the press reports alleging that two Russian missiles have struck a location inside Poland near the Ukraine border. I can tell you that we don’t have any information at this time to corroborate those reports and are looking into this further.” 

Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told reporters he did not think the apparent strike was intentional.

“I have to believe that it was a mistake by Russia,” he said, per The Washington Post’s Liz Goodwin. “And I think if it is, Russia should come out very quickly and say that.”

Poland’s foreign affairs ministry and NATO did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Insider. The Russian government also did not respond to an inquiry.

The incident immediately triggered remarks from top officials in neighboring countries. 

“My condolences to our Polish brothers in arms. Criminal Russian regime fired missiles which target not only Ukrainian civilians but also landed on NATO territory in Poland. Latvia fully stands with Polish friends and condemns this crime,” Latvia’s defense minister said on Twitter.

A spokesperson for the Hungarian government said that Prime Minister Viktor Orbán would also convene a meeting of the country’s defense council in response to “the missile hitting territory of Poland.”

The incident comes as Russia fired a barrage of missiles across Ukraine on Tuesday, leaving half the population of Kyiv without power. 

Translations by Oleksandr Vynogradov.

Reactions from r/worldnews on Reddit:

Mod: ‘dieyoufool3’

Pinning this comment from the Live thread to assuage people’s worry around article 5 being invoked in light of the 2 killed in the Polish border town.

This is NOT the start of WW3, folks. Calm. However, Poland has a lot of options to make things incredibly unpleasant for Russia without kicking off WW3.

The situation is still developing and I will update this comment as confirmed information comes in.

The current most credible theory is:

US official have told POLITICO it was likely caused by a missile strike or errant missile, not remnants of a missile Ukrainian armed forces shot down. Source

Polish Foreign Ministry confirm a Russian-made rocket fell on the territory. Source

Russia missiles did hit electrical infrastructure near Kovel, Ukraine, 50kms (31 miles) from the Polish border. Source

Ukraine confirmed earlier today 73 missiles (out of ~100) and 11 drones were shot down. Source

A quick refresh on NATO bylaws:

Article 5: An attack on one member of NATO is an attack on all of its members.

Article 4: The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.

Here’s everything you wanted to know about Article Four of the North Atlantic Treaty but were afraid to ask.

Update 19:00 GMT:

Poland holds urgent meeting amid reports of stray Russian missile strike.

Update 19:32 GMT:

Pentagon looking into Poland missile strike reports.

The Department of Defense Press Secretary, Brig Gen Patrick S Ryder, has said:

“We are aware of the press reporting on this. We have no information at this time to corroborate those reports but again, are taking them seriously and looking into them. And so I will make sure that we provide you with any updates as soon as we have them.”

He continues: “We’re looking into these reports – don’t have any information to corroborate them at this time. So I don’t want to speculate or get into hypotheticals. When it comes to our security commitments and Article 5, we’ve been crystal-clear that we will defend every inch of Nato territory.”

Update 19:59 GTM:

Lithuania PM” “Concerning news. Every inch of NATO territory needs to be defended.”

Update 20:07 GMT:

Russia denies any involvement in ‘missile strike on Poland’.

Russia hasdeniedstatements from Polish media outlets and officials that Russian missiles fell on the Polish village of Przewodó near the Ukrainian border.

The Russian ministry of defence posted on its Telegram, calling the reports “a deliberate provocation in order to escalate the situation.”

Update 20:20 GMT:

NATO Statement: “We are looking into these reports and coordinating with our ally Poland.”

Update 21:21 GMT:

Poland ‘raises military readiness’…

Polish government spokesman Piotr Muller has confirmed that there was an explosion that killed two Polish citizens, Reuters news agency reports

Poland is raising the readiness of its military units, he says, and “verifying if we need to activate Nato Article Four.”

That article says: “The Parties will consult together whenever, in the opinion of any of them, the territorial integrity, political independence or security of any of the Parties is threatened.”

Update 21:33 GMT:

NATO Secretary General’s Tweet: “Spoke with President Duda about the explosion in Poland. I offered my condolences for the loss of life. NATO is monitoring the situation and Allies are closely consulting. Important that all facts are established.”

Update 21:40 GMT:

US President Biden has been briefed and is speaking to Polish President Andrze Duda, officials say.

Sweeping south from positions in the Kharkiv region in Ukraine’s northeast, Ukrainian forces have made their largest gains since routing Russia from Kyiv in April.

KYIV, Ukraine— Ukrainian forces have scored the most significant battlefield gains since they routed Russia from the area around Kyiv in April by reclaiming territory in the northeast, according to Ukrainian officials, Western analysts and battlefield imagery.

In his overnight address to the nation Thursday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said that the Ukrainian military had captured scores of villages and large chunks of Russian-occupied territory across Ukraine since the offensive began. “In total, more than a thousand square kilometers of the territory of Ukraine have been liberated since the beginning of September,” he said.

On Friday the Ukrainian military appeared to be moving rapidly to cut off the city of Izium, a critical logistical hub for Russian military operations.
The exact positions of Ukrainian forces in the area around Izium could not be independently established. But satellite data, independent military analysts and photos and videos of Ukrainian forces indicated that they had moved quickly toward Kupiansk, another logistical hub just north of Izium.

The new offensive in the north appears to have caught the Russian forces off guard. On Friday, its Defense Ministry said on Telegram that it was moving troops to reinforce the Kharkiv region, without specifying their numbers or specific locations.

Ukraine’s advances in the northeast sent a shock wave through Kremlin-friendly military bloggers, pro-war cheerleaders who typically call for more aggressive action.

“We need to be honest, the Ukrainian command has outplayed us here,” said Yury Podolyaka, a Ukrainian pro-Kremlin blogger with more than 2.2 million followers on Telegram. He warned that if the Russian forces failed to “stop the Ukrainian breakthrough” in the coming days “this will be the most serious combat defeat” for Moscow.

Ukrainian and Western officials cautioned that the offensive operations were in their early days, that the situation was fluid and that the gains were far from secure. Not all of the claims of advances by Ukraine could be independently verified, and much about the state of the fighting in both the east and the south of Ukraine is shrouded in uncertainty as the government in Kyiv enforces a media blackout, restricting journalists’ access to the front.

For months, Ukraine’s leaders declared loudly and often their intention to launch a counteroffensive in the south, around the port city of Kherson. And they proceeded to batter Russian supply lines, ammunition depots and command centers in the region with precision rockets, while massing troops and orchestrating covert attacks on military bases and Russian collaborators far behind enemy lines.

Ukrainian soldiers near the Kherson front this week. Ukraine’s leaders had long declared their intentions to retake Kherson, but said little about the north. Jim Huylebroek for The New York Times
But they said virtually nothing about the northeast, until this week.

Accounts from witnesses, the local Ukrainian authorities, Russian proxy officials, geolocated video on social media and satellite footage offered a window into the Ukrainian campaign.

On Thursday, Ukrainian officials said their troops had pushed through the town of Balakliya, less than 30 miles from the city of Izium, which lies close to the Donbas, the contested area of eastern Ukraine that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has vowed to seize. President Zelensky released video of soldiers raising Ukraine’s blue-and-yellow flag above the town’s administrative building, and other officials posted videos, not all immediately authenticated, of locals coming out to greet the soldiers.

Ukrainian soldiers on Friday posted photos that purported to be in the vicinity of Kupiansk, which has served as the capital of the Russian occupation in the region. The Kremlin-installed head of the city administration, Vitaly Ganchev, urged women and children to evacuate as Ukrainian forces approached.

Mr. Ganchev said the city is under “constant rocket attacks from the armed forces of Ukraine,” according to RIA Novosti, a Russian state news agency.

In response to the growing threats in the south, the Russian military redeployed thousands of troops from the Donbas, apparently thinning their defenses in the north and providing an opening for the Ukrainians.

Russia’s seeming inability to secure a key flank near Izium also highlighted its challenge in defending occupied territory along front lines that stretch 1,500 miles from northeastern Ukraine to the Black Sea coast in the south. And the battlefield setbacks seemed to underscore the manpower issues plaguing the Russian army, which the United States estimates has suffered at least 80,000 wounded and killed since the invasion began in late February.

On Friday, some of Russia’s military bloggers voiced dismay over the inability of Russian commanders to prepare stout defenses. Others have demanded an explanation from the Russian military command or other authorities.

Maksim Fomin called on law enforcement to figure out why Russian forces were unprepared for the Ukrainian offensive. “The situation is very diffilcult,” he said. “Let’s exhale and say that we have been defeated.”

Yevgeny Poddubny, a Russian state TV reporter, posted a video of Russian transport helicopters that he said were transferring Russian troops to the Kupiansk and Izium areas, citing Russian defense officials.

Some of the pro-Kremlin bloggers have warned that the loss of large swaths of occupied lands in Ukraine would undermine the “Russia is here forever” message that the occupying authorities have been preaching in order to sway locals to support them.

Occupation forces outside Donetsk this month.Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters
While the Ukrainian gains in the north were capturing most of the attention Friday, the southern counteroffensive also made gains, with Ukraine’s Security Service releasing photos of what it said was the city of Vysokopillia, in the Kherson region. That claim could not be independently verified.
Last week, Ukrainian forces reported that they had broken through the first line of Russian defenses in multiple locations in the Kherson region, where they remain engaged in fierce battles to drive the Russians back from well-fortified positions.

Michael Kofman, the director of Russian studies at C.N.A., a research institute in Arlington, Va., said the campaign in the south did not appear to be a diversion to draw Russian forces.

“These appear to be interrelated offensives,” he said on Twitter on Thursday. “Kherson likely intended as a more deliberate, sequenced advance. Kharkiv to take advantage of favorable conditions.”
Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said on Thursday that Ukraine has made tangible gains in recent days, but he sought to temper expectations for what will probably continue to prove a bloody campaign.

“There is fighting — both offense and defense — all the way from Kharkiv all the way down to Kherson,” he said at a news conference in Germany.
Still, General Milley said the Ukrainians were making efficient use of newly acquired weapons systems to set the stage for their offensive. The American-made HIMARS missile system, he said, has been used to strike more than 400 targets. And it is just one of a number of advanced weapons systems now being deployed by the Ukrainians.
But he emphasized that Russia, although its supply lines were strained and its manpower troubles far from resolved, retained significant advantages in the war.

“The war is not over,” he said. “Russia’s a big country. They have very serious ambitions with respect to Ukraine.”

Authors:Marc Santora reported from Kyiv, Ukraine, Ivan Nechepurenko from Tbilisi, Georgia, and Marco Hernandez from New York. Anna Lukinova contributed reporting from Kyiv, and Alan Yuhas from New York.

Source:https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/09/world/aeurope/ukraine-russia-kharkiv.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare
Published on:9 September 2022

The Matic is the most sought-after collection for underwater enthusiasts, not only for the functionality of the product but also for the cutting-edge production techniques, guaranteed to meet needs of even the most demanding divers.

From the bright shades of the dials to the applied indexes, all the details are designed to captivate with a perfect harmony of colors that shimmer underwater. Beginning with the iconic Squale case back, the introduction of some structural changes has made possible the creation of a watch that performs even better, allowing you to reach a depth of 600 meters below sea level.

Not just a functional tool, but a watch for life…

Domed sapphire crystal

To retain water resistance up to 60 atmospheres, the watch is equipped with a double-domed sapphire crystal that allows for better performance. Despite the curvature, legibility is always perfect from any angle, thanks to the anti-reflective coating.

Bezel insert with applied indexes

The bezel insert is the distinguishing element par excellence of the Matic collection. Starting from a steel disc, the semi-finished product undergoes a lacquering process. Next, the indicators are applied, and finally the whole thing is covered in a transparent varnish, giving it a smooth and resistant finish.

Let’s build one of my favorite DIY guitar tools that I use daily in my shop. I’ll show you two versions and then explain how to put them into action.

Welcome back to Mod Garage. After receiving numerous requests to show more DIY tools for guitarists, today we’ll explore one of my favorites. For years I’ve used this one in the shop daily and I’m sure you’ll love it. It’s cheap and easy to build, but very effective for analyzing circuits of electric guitars and basses without opening the electronic compartment or lifting the pickguard. It’s a kind of adaptor or extension to measure a pickup’s DC resistance (DCR) from outside the guitar. After building one, we’ll discuss how to interpret the measurements.

The DCR of a pickup is by far the most common parameter you can read when reading pickup descriptions and often it’s used as an indicator of the output. The reason for this is that it’s easy to measure, but, sadly, it doesn’t tell us anything about a pickup’s output nor its tone. To quote pickup designer Bill Lawrence: “DC resistance tells you as much about a pickup’s tone and output as the shoe size tells you about a person’s intelligence.”

I’ve written about DCR as a pickup parameter in detail and you can read about it in “Mod Garage: Demystifying DCR.”

DCR is not a primary parameter in pickup design. It’s simply the result of the type and gauge of the pickup’s wire, the number of turns, and other parameters like the winding pattern, etc. But it isn’t completely useless, and we can use it as a good reference point for analyzing pickups both inside and outside a guitar or bass circuit. All you need for this is a digital multimeter (DMM). You don’t need an expensive calibrated precision DMM—any entry level DMM will work. You can get a simple digital DMM for $10, but if you want to invest in a better device, it can’t harm.

The easiest way to analyze a pickup is outside a circuit. Simply set your DMM to ohm and connect the two pickup leads to your DMM. If your DMM doesn’t have an auto-range function, set it to 20k ohm. Now you’ll get the DCR reading for your pickup. You can compare it to the factory specs of your pickup and it should be close. If your DMM shows “infinite” or “overload,” you know the pickup wire is broken. Let’s say your pickup should read 7k ohm, but yours reads around 2-3k ohm. Your pickup likely has a short circuit somewhere in the winding. Used this way, the DCR is always good to quickly check if a pickup is alive or not.

To quickly analyze a guitar or bass circuit with one or more pickups, you first need to build the DIY adaptor tool this column is about. There are two different versions, and you don’t need much for this:

• Version #1: This is the quick and dirty version. You need a standard 6.3 mm straight mono plug (the same type on all your guitar cables), some wire of your choice (preferably in two different colors), and two insulated alligator clips.
• Version #2: A more elegant version that you can also use with a scope if you have one. You need the same parts as for version #1, but instead of two alligator clips, you need two 4 mm banana plugs, and the two wires need to be longer than what you’d use for Version #1.

So, heat up your soldering iron and let’s get to building version #1.

1. Solder one piece of wire to the HOT terminal of the mono plug and another one to the GROUND terminal. I prefer a red wire for the HOT and a black wire for the GROUND terminal (Photo 1).
2. Solder an insulated alligator-clip to each end of the two wires, preferably a black one to the black wire and a red one to the red wire. Ready!

Version #2 is built the same way, but, instead of alligator clips, you solder a 4 mm banana plug to each end of the two wires, if possible, also in black and red. The two wires should be long enough that can place your DMM and/or scope at some distance from the guitar. In Photo 2, you can see version #1 on the top and version #2 on the bottom.

The difference between the two versions is that with version #1 you put the plug into the output jack of the guitar, connecting the two probes of your DMM to the alligator clips: the black probe of the DMM goes to ground (black wire) and the red probe goes to hot (red wire) as seen in Photo 3. With version #2, you need to remove the two probes from your DMM, plugging the two banana plugs directly into your DMM or your scope, also seen in Photo 3.

Both versions work equally well. Version #2 is just easier to operate when you also want to use the adaptor for a scope.

For a quick check, you can also directly touch the hot and ground terminals with the probes of your DMM, but you need both hands or a second person for this if you want to play around with the controls or the pickup-selector switch.

Now we can easily check four things with this tool, assuming everything is connected the way it should be and your DMM is set to ohm and auto-range or the 20k ohm scale if your DMM doesn’t have an auto-range mode:

1. Do you receive a reading on your connected DMM? If not, check if the volume pot is fully opened. Do you receive a reading now? If so, close the volume pot completely and see if you still receive a reading. No? Perfect, you just proved that the volume pot is alive and well.
2. With a fully opened volume pot and a reading on your DMM, slowly turn down the volume and watch the reading on the DMM. If you receive some crazy reading, chances are good there is a treble bleed network on your volume pot. If the reading slowly goes down to zero, you know that there is no treble bleed network on the volume pot, and you can check if it’s an audio or linear volume pot (plus the taper it has, if it’s an audio pot). Let’s say we have a 500k volume pot. When you close the volume pot halfway and receive a reading around 250k, you know it’s a linear pot. An audio pot, depending on its taper, will result in a much higher reading on the first 50 percent of the volume pot. If you read 500k until the volume pot is almost fully closed, this means the pot has a 90:10 audio taper—exactly the kind of volume pot you don’t want to have. If you read something around 300k in the middle of the volume pot, you know it’s a 60:40 audio taper.
3. If the volume pot is fully opened and you don’t receive a reading on your DMM, chances are good that your output jack is broken, not connected, or connected incorrectly. Please make sure there is no activated kill-switch in the circuit that can also cause this “problem.”
4. Turning the tone knob(s) will make no difference in the reading you receive. If you receive a slightly higher reading with a tone pot fully opened compared to when it’s closed, you know it’s a no-load tone pot.

There is a lot to discover from just the outside of any guitar or bass. So, now let’s see what we can measure from outside the instrument starting with a Telecaster with a 4-way switch. The readings in all examples are the readings I received with guitars I had in the shop, but they can be different in your instruments:

• Bridge pickup only: 5.85k ohm
• Neck pickup only: 6.76k ohm
• Both pickups together: 3.18k ohm
• Pickup selector switch in position #4: 12.30k ohm

The readings for both pickups are within the factory specs and are in a typical range for a vintage-flavored Telecaster pickup set. With a reading of 3.18k ohm for both pickups together, you know that both pickups are in parallel. With the reading of 12.30k ohm, you know that both pickups are in series with each other.

Here is the simplified math behind these readings:

• Series connection: DCR pickup #1 + DCR pickup #2
  • In our example, it’s 5.85k + 6.76k = 12.61k ohm, which is very close to the reading of 12.30k we received. The missing 0.31k ohm are eaten up by the resistance of the pots and the tolerance of your DMM. For this test, I chose the cheapest DMM I could find in the shop. A calibrated high-quality DMM will have much less tolerance.
• Parallel connection: (DCR pickup #1 + DCR pickup #2) divided by four
  • In our example, it’s 5.85k + 6.76k = 12.61k ohm divided by four = 3.15k ohm, which is very close to the reading of 3.18k ohm we received.

Now let’s repeat this with a standard Stratocaster:

• Bridge pickup only: 7.07k ohm
• Middle pickup only: 5.88k ohm
• Neck pickup only: 5.70k ohm
• Bridge + Middle pickups together: 3.26k ohm
• Neck + Middle pickups together: 2.94k ohm

All three pickups are within the factory specs of this Strat. We have a slightly hotter bridge and two vintage-flavored pickups. The two in-between positions are in parallel.

Lastly, let’s try a vintage PAF-loaded Les Paul:

• Bridge pickup only: 7.77k ohm
• Neck pickup only: 7.09k ohm
• Both pickups together: 3.74k ohm

Both PAFs have the typical vintage DCR and are in parallel in the middle position.

by Dick Wacker – PREMIER GUITAR

Texas Republicans are pushing for a referendum to decide whether the state should secede from the U.S.

The demand for Texans to be allowed to vote on the issue in 2023 was one of many measures adopted in the Texas GOP’s party platform following last week’s state convention in Houston

Under a section titled “State Sovereignty,” the platform states: “Pursuant to Article 1, Section 1, of the Texas Constitution, the federal government has impaired our right of local self-government. Therefore, federally mandated legislation that infringes upon the 10th Amendment rights of Texas should be ignored, opposed, refused, and nullified.

Texas Republicans are pushing for a referendum to see if the state should secede from the U.S. Above, Kenny Wolfam open carries a pistol and wears a “Trump 2020” t-shirt while counter-protesting a “Moms Demand Action” protest at Buffalo Bayou Park in Houston, Texas on June 17, 2021.

In another section on state governance, the platform states that Texas Republicans want the state Legislature to pass a bill in its next session “requiring a referendum in the 2023 general election for the people of Texas to determine whether or not the State of Texas should reassert its status as an independent nation.

The myth that Texas can secede from the U.S. continues because of the state’s history of independence, according to The Texas Tribune. Texas declared independence from Mexico in 1836 and spent nine years as its own nation before becoming a U.S. state. Texas then seceded from the Union in 1861 before being readmitted following the end of the Civil War in 1870.

The U.S. Constitution makes no provision for states to secede and in 1869, the Supreme Court ruled in Texas v. White that states cannot unilaterally secede from the Union.

“If there was any constitutional issue resolved by the Civil War, it is that there is no right to secede,” the late Justice Antonin Scalia once wrote.

Still, modern secessionist efforts have continued in the state for decades—and calls to secede tend to become louder when a Democrat is a president, according to the Tribune.

It’s not clear how popular the effort is among Texans, but the Texas Nationalist Movement’s website claims almost half a million Texans support its work to “make Texas an independent nation again.”

The movement’s efforts have been promoted by Texas Republicans. Last year, state Representative Kyle Biedermann introduced a bill that called for a “Texit” referendum, which was endorsed by Texas GOP chairman Allen West. The bill ultimately failed.

The bill was rebuked by lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, with Republican state Representative Jeff Leach branding it a “disgrace to the Lone Star State” and the “very definition of seditious.”

As well as the issue of a referendum, delegates also voted on more than 270 platform planks as the convention closed on Saturday. The votes will be tallied and certified in Austin, but it is rare for a plank to be rejected, party spokesperson James Wesolek told The Tribune. He has been contacted for additional comment.

Texas Republicans also approved a resolution declaring that President Joe Biden was “not legitimately elected,” signaling the continued support for former President’s baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

The Texas GOP’s new party platform also called for full repeal of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Other planks also indicated a further shift to the right for the party, giving prominence to culture issues. The platform describes homosexuality as “an abnormal lifestyle choice,” and also declares that the party opposes “all efforts to validate transgender identity.

The platform also calls for a total ban on abortion and “equal protection for the Preborn.” Abortion is currently prohibited after around six weeks of pregnancy in Texas, but an imminent ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court could overturn the decision in Roe v. Wade that guaranteed abortion rights nationwide and trigger a law in Texas making abortion illegal.

The new Texas GOP platform also states that the education system should focus on “imparting essential academic knowledge, understanding why Texas and America are exceptional and have positively contributed to our world, and while doing so, also offer enrichment subjects that bless students’ lives.”

It calls for students to learn about the “Humanity of the Preborn Child,” including teaching that life begins at fertilization. It also demands that the state legislature pass a law prohibiting the teaching of “sex education, sexual health, or sexual choice or identity in any public school in any grade whatsoever.”

A drawing / sketch / illustration of a human skeleton posed kneeling with hands together and looking upward, either praying to God or begging, perhaps both; hand drawn or sketched on paper or parchment with charcoal or graphite; in juxtaposition with a typical anatomical study done by a student of fine arts for figure drawing or medical illustration. -Patrick Scheidegger

In the devastated town of Borodyanka, northwest of Kyiv, Natasha Romanenko has pushed paper into the bullet holes peppered across her windows.

It’s to keep the cold out, she tells us.

“You can see, there are holes where they were shooting directly in our window when we were hiding there,” she says, speaking through NPR’s interpreter.

When Russian forces invaded and occupied the town, the damage was devastating. Ukrainian officials say Russia deliberately bombed civilian areas and that hundreds are still missing more than a week after the invading forces withdrew. Now, crews are sifting through the wreckage to see what — and who — survived.

We start to see signs of the destruction on the drive from Kyiv into Borodyanka. What should be a quick trip now takes hours as destroyed bridges mean more cars crowd onto the few reliable routes, and the military checkpoints create long lines on narrow roads.

We pass through the village of Dmitriovka and see a burned-out car near homes reduced to rubble. A little farther on, there is a flattened tank.

Then, another destroyed car that has the word “children” spray-painted in Russian along the side door.

We arrive on Borodyanka’s main street — Central Street — with a humanitarian convoy that immediately begins handing out food and water.

It’s here that we meet Natasha. She and her family spent a month hiding in a cramped, dark root cellar.

“What did we eat? Mostly potatoes,” she says. “I had some spare oil, and I have a cow, so I had milk. And I went to my neighbor, I gave her some milk. She gave me some other things, some cheese. So this is how we survived. Our cow saved us.”

Natasha takes us to the cellar, which is mostly filled with crates of potatoes. She explains that at night, they would lay a carpet over the crates and try to sleep on top of that, keeping warm under all the blankets they had.

In the final days of the occupation, Natasha says, a Russian soldier confronted her. She had ventured out to milk her cow, and he thought she was scouting Russian troop locations. She says he took her out to the middle of the road and pointed a gun to her head.

“He was threatening me,” she says. “And what did I say to him? I said I just wish one thing: that he would see my face for the rest of his days, so he would never forget what he’s done here.”

The soldier spoke to someone else on his radio. Then, Natasha says, he let her go.

As the aid workers move through the main street, we break from the group, and the scale of the destruction starts to sink in. It’s utter devastation everywhere you look. 

There’s an apartment building blackened from flames, with the middle collapsed from the bombing. The windows in all the storefronts have shattered and roofs have collapsed. There are burned vehicles in the streets, and most of the power lines are down and frayed on the ground.

Across from the destroyed apartment building, there’s a small park with a monument in the middle. On top sits a giant bust of Taras Shevchenko, the famous Ukrainian poet. Bullet holes pierce his forehead.

The tall pillar that the bust rests on is cracked and crumbling from all the shrapnel. Three policemen are holding a ladder while another man stands nearby, ready to climb to the top.

Yaroslav Halubchik is an artist from Kyiv and has come here to help create an ad hoc art project — an instant memorial of sorts.

“We’re calling it ‘The Curing of Shevchenko’ or ‘The Healing of Shevchenko,’ ” he says.

Yaroslav steps up the ladder and starts to wrap a big gauze bandage around the bust’s giant head. As he does that, a man in a Ukrainian military uniform comes up and asks him what he’s doing.

Yaroslav explains that it’s performance art, and the soldier seems satisfied. It turns out, he was worried that they were repairing it.

“In this case, it is vital that we keep this monument as it is right now, it shouldn’t be touched,” the soldier says. He adds that it’s especially important because of who Shevchenko was.

“This is really important, because we all know that Shevchenko and other Ukrainian poets were always enemies of Russia,” he explains. “I really hope that people will rebuild everything here as it was, but we should keep this as it is now.”

We ask his name. He’s Yevhen Nyshchuk — the former Ukrainian minister of culture. He’s in the military now and based nearby.

We keep making our way down the main street. Building after building has collapsed from the bombardment of tank and rocket fire.

In the nearby town of Bucha, bodies were found in the street. Here, with so many collapsed structures, the worry is that bodies are still trapped underneath.

Several cranes carefully pick up debris, as recovery teams look for remains. There’s a playground in front of one of the buildings and a woman is sitting there on a bench next to a slide, watching the recovery work.

Her name is Ludmila Boiko.

“My sister and her son lived here. This is what’s left of them,” she says, pointing to a pile of old notebooks. “His mother kept his old notebooks from school.”

Ludmila found them scattered around the debris of the apartment building. That and some pictures, she says, are the only things she’s found.

Ludmila’s sister Olyna Vahnenko was 56. Her nephew, Yuri, was 24. He had just graduated from college.

They’d left their apartment and sought shelter. But on March 1, during a break in the shelling and bombing, Olyna and Yuri went back. Ludmila says they talked on the phone, and Olyna said they had been able to shower and eat some food.

An hour later, Russian forces destroyed the building.

“Our friends were trying to help us, but for four days, it was a huge fire here,” Ludmila says. “And so first they were trying to fight the fire. They didn’t have a chance to do excavations right away.”

When the fire stopped, people started trying to look for survivors. Then shelling began again, and they had to flee.

After that, she says Russian forces were posted here, and nobody could get near the building.

Searching couldn’t resume until a month after the attack. So Ludmila sat, and waited.

“I just want to see how they discover all the bodies that they assume should be there, and then probably I would like to do something like with DNA testing because I want to know for sure what happened,” she says.

“I was so close with them that I don’t even know how I should live now. How should I live in this place?”

The crane continues to slowly remove rubble from a collapsed building.

Soon, workers discover a woman’s body. Ludmila climbs up the pile of rubble to look. 

The body is removed, covered and placed next to three others found earlier that day.

Ludmila goes back to the playground and sits down, continuing her vigil.

“Guilt transference” is a ploy commonly used by cheaters. If your spouse is unfairly accusing you of cheating, she might be hiding something herself…

My wife worked in a high-powered male-dominated field, while I work in decor and deal with many women. She started accusing me of flirting when she heard me talking to clients on the phone, then she kept asking me whom I was seeing when I went on calls to clients’ homes.

I was innocent and didn’t see the signals that SHE was cheating and trying to deflect any suspicions I might have had about her, since she often worked late and travelled for work.

The truth came out when I saw her lover’s texts on her phone, which she thought she’d lost. 

But I found it stuck under a seat of her car when I drove it in for repairs as a favour to her.

Wrongly Accused

It must’ve felt like watching a magician’s performance of the Great Transferring Act. You got wrongly accused and hounded about things you never did, while the swirl of accusatory questions and unfair blame kept you from seeing the reality.

Her daily sham production — the powerful job, her time spent with her lover, playing the wife role back home — all made for a drama which she had to keep going so you wouldn’t even look for the truth.

It’s a destructive ploy that’s not uncommonly used by determined cheaters. Many therapists have noted this “guilt transference” among people who refuse to take responsibility for their own misbehaviour.

You haven’t said that it’s over. But it’s hard to imagine that she would drop her self-righteous pose to admit she’d been the bad guy in the marriage, and want to repair it.

I met this guy through a mutual friend whom I trusted. Though he lived out of town, he did business in my city and visited me often. We became intimate and I thought he could be the One.

I ignored the small concern about why he didn’t contact me much during the week when he was in his city, unless he was in his car. 

He’d phone me when travelling to clients, and he’d say the most romantic things and wind me up about our being together again.

But once when he travelled abroad and didn’t contact me at all, I was hurt and told him so when he returned. He kept saying he “couldn’t do that,” and it suddenly clicked. 

He was travelling with another woman. It turned out she was his fiancée and they were married a few months later. What a scumbag! I no longer think much of our “friend,” either.

Duped and Disgusted 

That was no friend, if he/she knew the guy was already deeply attached, and/or a proven player (since he was pretty practiced at deceit).

A lover who only calls you from a car usually signals that he/she’s a cheater. It means the person can’t call any other time. It’s likely you weren’t the only other person this guy was stringing along, even while he was engaged.

He’s also the kind of unashamed rogue who may try to reconnect after newlywed life makes him feel hemmed in (I give that about six months max). 

Don’t even have the conversation with Scumbag, or he’ll try winding you up again.

The lesson: Check out your “small concerns” in any next relationship. Look for reasons that make sense. Otherwise, recognize the red flags and follow them to whatever’s being hidden.

Tip of the day

If you’re innocent but constantly being accused, look closer at who might be the cheater.

by Brian Moniz

Anyone who has ever been on a dating app has been down this road before — you meet someone online who messages you, “Hey handsome! You’re very cute and I like your profile, I’d love to meet you sometime!” Both of you chat for a few days, maybe even a week or two, then agree to meet in person. After a little time spent together, the other guy gives you the typical rundown of cliché compliments every gay man says to each other, “You’re so awesome, you’re unlike all the other guys out there.” “You actually seem sweet and genuine and not just looking for a hookup.” “You’re the man of my dreams! I’m so happy we met!” and my personal favorite, “How are you still single!?” The date goes well and you leave the night on great terms, maybe even with a kiss. Just before bed, the other guy reinforces his interest in you with a goodnight-text, “I had a great time tonight. Great to meet you and looking forward to hanging out again!” Every single one of you reading this has experienced a night like this, and unfortunately, know what is likely going to happen next.

The next morning you wake up and check your phone to see if this new handsome gentleman has left you any messages — nothing — but it is still early, so you text him, “Good morning handsome, thanks again for a great night!” An hour goes by and still no reply…maybe he’s at work. Around lunchtime you send another text, “Hope you’re having a nice day!” Another few hours go by and still no reply. You give him a day or two and decide to text him again, “Want to hang out again soon?” Again, nothing. You hop on Facebook or Instagram to leave him a message and can’t seem to find his profile page anymore. When you log back into the dating app where you first met you discover his profile is missing altogether. That’s when it hits you — he didn’t delete his accounts, he deleted you.

The other person has blocked you and probably blocked your number, too. You re-trace your steps from that first night, wondering what you could have possibly said or done to turn this guy off. You pick up your phone and call him only to hear two rings before being sent to voicemail. If it went straight to voicemail that means his phone was off or dead; if it had rung many times that means he didn’t see it or was away from his phone; but it rang twice, that tells you he saw his phone ringing, saw your name on it, and declined your call. You hang up and leave a text message:

“Hey (name), I hope I haven’t said or done anything to upset you, you seemed really nice and I thought we had a good time. Did you delete your Facebook and Instagram? I wanted to leave you a comment earlier today but noticed we aren’t connected on them anymore. If you don’t want to hang out or go on another date that’s a bummer but could you just tell me so at least I know that’s what you want. Anyway, I hope everything is okay and you’re having a nice day. Hope to hear from you, even if it’s just to tell me you’re not interested anymore. Thanks.”

If you are even lucky enough to hear from him at all, you’ll get the “Hey sorry just been super busy. You seem nice, but I honestly don’t think we will work out romantically, but I’m down to stay friends?” text. Which as anyone who has ever received that text knows, there is absolutely no chance of staying friends. You read that text and put your phone away knowing you will never see or hear from that individual again. Like I said, that’s if he decides to contact you back at all. Most of the time he will just delete you everywhere, block your number and move on to the next guy he finds on a dating app. You may even run into him on the street or in a bar, to which he will make awkward eye contact, give you a guilty half-smile and avoid any contact until one of you leaves.

This is the unfortunate, common way people our age date now; we are a generation of ghosts. “Ghosting” is the act of abruptly ignoring someone completely in hopes of getting them to forget about you and leave you alone. You don’t give them any reasoning, explanation or closure, you simply try to make yourself disappear from their life, which often includes blocking their number, their social media accounts, their dating app profiles and avoiding them in-person at all costs. While ghosting is very immature and just plain cruel, it has become the new normal for young people these days. It is much easier to just ghost someone than to have to explain to them why you suddenly don’t have any interest in them. No one wants to own up to hurting someone else’s feelings, so it’s much easier to just click “block” and hope the other person gets the hint and goes away.

The world of dating has come a long way from leaving love notes and taking someone out to dinner and movie, earning a kiss on the third date and then meeting the other person’s parents. We live in a hook-up culture where meeting people has become painfully easy. Many people would rather just get a quick fix with strangers they met online than go on proper dates and develop a real relationship that is not just about hooking up and leaving when it is over. Of course, not everyone has ghosted someone else before, but we have all felt what it is like to be ghosted and it’s not fun.

If you are just looking for a hookup and are not interested in finding a partner, at the very least have the courage to tell anyone who wants to meet you that before you ghost and hurt them. They say whatever negative energy you put out into the world you get back ten-fold, so to all you professional ghosts out there who still actively meet people then abandon them cold turkey, you might be able to avoid the people you hurt, but you can’t escape the karma that’s coming your way.

What it Means to Ghost and Be Ghosted? What to Do If You’re Ghosted

You’re in a relationship. Suddenly, and maybe without any warning at all, your partner seems to have disappeared. No calls, no text messages, no connection made on social media, no responses to any of your messages. Odds are, your partner hasn’t unexpectedly left town because of a family emergency, and isn’t lying dead in a ditch somewhere but, rather, has simply ended the relationship without bothering to explain or even let you know. You’ve been ghosted.

Who Ghosts and Who Gets Ghosted?

Why would someone choose to simply disappear from another person’s life, rather than plan, at minimum, a conversation to end a relationship? You may never know for sure why you were ghosted. While more studies need to be done specifically on the ghosting phenomenon, past research has looked at different types of attachment personalities and choice of breakup strategies; it’s possible that people with an avoidant type personality (those who hesitate to form or completely avoid attachments to others, often as result of parental rejection), who are reluctant to get very close to anyone else due to trust and dependency issues and often use indirect methods of ending relationships, are more likely to use ghosting to initiate a break-up.

Other research found that people who are believers in destiny, who think that relationships are either meant to be or not, are more likely to find ghosting acceptable than people who believe relationships take patience and work. One study also suggests that people who end relationships by ghosting have often been ghosted themselves. In that case, the ghoster knows what it feels like to have a relationship end abruptly, with no explanation, no room for discussion. Yet they seemingly show no empathy toward the other, and may or may not experience any feelings of guilt over their ghosting behavior. 

What it Means to Ghost and Be Ghosted

Ghosting is by no means limited to long-term romantic relationships. Informal dating relationships, friendships, even work relationships may end with a form of ghosting. For the person who does the ghosting, simply walking away from a relationship, or even a potential relationship, is a quick and easy way out. No drama, no hysterics, no questions asked, no need to provide answers or justify any of their behavior, no need to deal with someone else’s feelings. Certainly, while the ghoster may benefit from avoiding an uncomfortable situation and any potential drama, they’ve done nothing to improve their own conversation and relationships skills for the future.

For the person who is ghosted, there is no closure and often deep feelings of uncertainty and insecurity. Initially, you wonder “what’s going on?” When you realize the other person has ended the relationship, you’re left to wonder why, what went wrong in the relationship, what’s wrong with you, what’s wrong with them, how you didn’t see this coming.

What to Do If You’re Ghosted

Ghosting hurts; it’s a cruel rejection. It is particularly painful because you are left with no rationale, no guidelines for how to proceed, and often a heap of emotions to sort through on your own. If you suffer from any abandonment or self-esteem issues, being ghosted may bring them to the forefront.

In this age of ever-advancing technology, your ghoster is likely to appear on your various forms of social media and, if that’s the case, this person who is now physically gone from your life, is still quite visible. How do you move on? Unfortunately, there’s no magic bullet or proven advice to quickly guide you into recovery from a ghosted heart, but there is common sense.

“Avoid reminders of your ex,” advises Gwendolyn Seidman, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Psychology Department at Albright College in Pennsylvania. “They’re likely to cause painful emotions to resurface, and they won’t help you get emotional closure or insight into why they broke up with you.”

After you stop torturing yourself by going over old photos, saved old texts, new social media postings, and anything else you think might give you insight into the mind and current whereabouts of your ghoster (and let’s face it, you’re bound to be doing that even if you’re not normally an obsessive person), try to find a new distraction. Perhaps most importantly, know that this probably isn’t about you or anything you did wrong.

“You should realize that if your ex chose the strategy of ghosting to break up with you, it likely tells you something about them and their shortcomings, rather than indicating that the problem lies with you.” Dr. Seidman adds.

In other words, try to move on as quickly and completely as you can. Maintain your dignity and stay focused on your own health, happiness and future, leaving the ghoster to deal with the ultimate repercussions of their own immaturity and lack of courage in the context of a relationship.

A Russian warship that was damaged by an explosion on Wednesday has sunk, Russia’s defence ministry has said.

Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, was being towed to port when “stormy seas” caused it to sink, according to a ministry message.

The 510-crew missile cruiser was a symbol of Russia’s military power, leading its naval assault on Ukraine.

Kyiv says its missiles hit the warship. Moscow has not reported any attack. It says the vessel sank after a fire. The blaze caused the explosion of the warship’s ammunition, Russia says, adding that the entire crew were later evacuated to nearby Russian vessels in the Black Sea. It provided no further details.

After saying initially the warship was afloat, late on Thursday Russian state media broke the news that the Moskva had been lost.

“While being towed… towards the destined port, the vessel lost its balance due to damage sustained in the hull as fire broke out after ammunition exploded. Given the choppy seas, the vessel sank,” state news agency Tass quoted the Russian defence ministry as saying.

Ukrainian military officials said they struck the Moskva with Ukrainian-made Neptune missiles – a weapon designed after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014, and the naval threat to Ukraine in the Black Sea grew.

A senior Ukrainian official said as many as 510 crew could have been on board the Moskva.

Originally built in the Soviet-era, the Moskva entered service in the early 1980s. The vessel was actually laid down in Ukraine’s southern city of Mykolaiv, which has been heavily bombed by Russia in recent days.

The guided missile cruiser was previously deployed by Moscow in the Syria conflict where it supplied Russian forces in the country with naval protection.

It reportedly had 16 Vulkan anti-ship missiles and an array of anti-submarine and mine-torpedo weapons.

If the Ukrainian attack is confirmed, the 12,490-tonne Moskva would be the biggest warship to be sunk by enemy action since World War Two.

It is the second major vessel Russia has lost since the start of its invasion. In March, the Saratov landing ship was destroyed by a Ukrainian attack in the harbour of Berdyansk, a Sea of Azov Ukrainian port seized by Russia.

what the fuck are we gonna do with a robot?

Buy yourself a new Asshole at: amazon.com/astro

Meet

Keep home closer with Astro, the household robot for home monitoring, with Alexa. When you’re away, use the Astro app to see a live view of your home, check in on specific rooms and viewpoints, and get activity alerts. When you’re home, Astro can follow you from room to room playing your favorite music, podcasts or shows, and find you to deliver calls, reminders, alarms, and timers set with Alexa.

Buy yourself a new Asshole at: amazon.com/astro

Link:https://pin.it/3IcWNgp

Build ya a sexbot!

This is the perfect box to build whatever you want!

With speech recognition, simple, visual coding, motor/servo drivers, and analog and digital ports, this box with Raspberry Pi included is the perfect base for any of your projects!

• Raspberry Pi Model 3 B
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• 8 channel RPi GPIOs and 5 analog ports for sensors and actuators
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• Lead Time: this product takes approximately 30 days to arrive.

RASPBERRY PI 3 ROBOT KIT

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Got an old cell phone laying around pretending to be a paperweight? SURE YA DO! Round up your old phones and watch the video. It’s mildly entertaining and easy.

This super-small piece of electronics can hack into your car and home, and it requires only $30 to make. Not everyone wants to accept this simple truth, but that doesn’t make it any less real: hackers outpace security advancements. When it comes to both online security and real-world security, hackers have already devised 10 new tools by the time security researchers come up with an effective way to block one old tool. As a result, no one is ever truly safe — and a new device recently shown off by a well-known security researcher is yet another example of just how vulnerable we really are.

Online and offline security expert Samy Kamkar took to Defcon 2015 to show off a tiny device he calls “Rolljam.” The device is as shockingly simple as it is devious and brilliant, and it can be used to break into just about any car. Worse yet, it can even be used to break into a target’s home.

Rolljam is a tiny series of circuit boards with three in-built radios, Wired reports. It works by using two of the radios to jam the wireless signal sent out by a car’s keyless entry remote, while the third radio reads the code that was transmitted by the remote, which is then stored on the device.

Keyless entry devices use a system of rolling codes to prevent hackers from stealing them wirelessly and reusing them at will. Once a code is used a single time, it cannot be used again — and therein lies the brilliance of the Rolljam device.

Since the device blocks the signal from a car’s key fob while it is being transmitted, the unique code never reaches the owner’s car. The next time he or she presses the unlock button, a new code will be transmitted and it will successfully unlock the car. But that first code was never actually used, so the Rolljam can then transmit it at a later time and it will successfully unlock the target car.

Kamkar’s device was used to successfully unlock cars made by Nissan, Cadillac, Ford, Toyota, Lotus, Volkswagen and Chrysler, and it also worked perfectly with a number of garage door openers, potentially giving the user access to a target’s home

The TOS-1A heavy flamethrower system is meant to take on fortified enemy positions. Used against civilians, it would almost certainly amount to a war crime.

• One of Russia’s most deadly and controversial land weapons is the TOS-1A heavy flamethrower.
• It uses rockets with thermobaric weapons to destroy entrenched enemy troops.
• Used in Ukraine’s cities, the weapons would do massive damage to military and civilian targets alike, including ordinary people taking shelter from the fighting.

As Russia’s troops grow increasingly bogged down in their invasion of Ukraine, observers are concerned the Russian military could unleash one of its most devastating non-nuclear weapons in civilian areas: the TOS-1A heavy flamethrower system. Originally designed to destroy fortified NATO targets, the TOS-1A is designed to create shattering waves of searing heat and overpressure, killing enemy troops inside bunkers and other reinforced targets.

The Russian Ground Forces have, until Monday, refrained from using heavy artillery in Ukraine’s urban areas. This has been an impediment to typical Russian combat operations, as Moscow’s military doctrine usually prescribes a liberal amount of artillery to batter the enemy before a ground assault. Although there have been numerous sightings of heavy Russian artillery pieces rolling into Ukraine—and reports that Moscow has already used thermobaric weapons against civilians—there have been no official confirmations yet.

All of that may be about to change. Artillery bombardments of Ukrainian cities and towns are becoming increasingly common, with evidence of BM-30 Smerch 300-millimeter rockets, Grad-P 122-millimeter rockets, and other salvo-fired rocket systems in active use. The worst of all, however, is the TOS-1A. As the weapon’s state-owned exporter states in its marketing materials: “I will create hell for the enemy.” No lie detected.

The TOS-1A is a weapon without equivalents in Western armies. TOS-1A and weapons like it are called “thermobaric” due to their use of extreme heat and pressure to incapacitate or kill. The Soviet Union first developed the TOS-1A in the 1970s as a weapon to fulfill the role of a flamethrower, destroying enemy troops in bunkers. At the time, most armies were shifting away from the traditional role of a flame-spurting flamethrower, but there was still a need for a weapon that could somehow reach through the narrow firing ports of a bunker or fighting position to neutralize the troops inside.

The original vehicle, TOS-1, was designed to carry 30 rockets with a 220-millimeter diameter. Each rocket was packed with inert—but flammable—metal particles, dispersed in a cloud-like pattern at the target. Ideally, the airborne metallic particles filter into hard-to-reach places through firing ports in a bunker, crew hatches in armored vehicles, and cave entrances. The rocket then detonates the cloud, creating a deadly fireball.

The explosion also has a powerful secondary effect: the generation of powerful positive, then negative, pressure waves. The quick succession of positive and negative pressure waves is why some call thermobaric weapons “vacuum bombs.” The pressure differential has a devastating effect on buildings, structures, and the human body—particularly the lungs. The U.S. Air Force’s Mother of All Bombs (MOAB), the world’s largest conventional bomb, similarly kills through overpressure, and in 2017 was dropped on an ISIS cave complex in Afghanistan.

The modern version of TOS-1 is TOS-1A, also known as Solntsepek (Sun). The weapon still uses 220-millimeter rockets, but only carries 24 at a time. According to Rosoboronexport, the state company that markets and coordinates international arms sales, TOS-1A can launch its rockets just 90 seconds after coming to a full stop. It can fire all 24 rockets in six seconds, and a single vehicle can savage 40,000 square meters, the equivalent of almost ten acres. In addition to the Russian Ground Forces, armies in Algeria, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Saudi Arabia, and Syria also operate TOS-1As.

Here’s a video that Russia’s Ministry of Defense uploaded to YouTube in 2019, showing the loading and firing of TOS-1As during an exercise:

TOS-1A’s effects against soldiers are horrifying enough, but against civilians it has the potential for mass slaughter. The dangers to unprotected civilians are obvious, but it can also damage (or even collapse) non-military buildings, killing or injuring those taking shelter inside.

Two human rights organizations—London’s Amnesty International and New York City’s Human Rights Watch—have both claimed that Russia “appeared to have used widely banned cluster munitions, with Amnesty accusing them of attacking a preschool in northeastern Ukraine while civilians took shelter inside,” according to a February 28 report from Reuters, but those claims have not yet been verified.

TOS-1A will devastate civilian populations in Ukraine if Russia uses it against them. Already, Russian rockets are raining down in urban areas in Kharkiv, a city in the eastern part of the country that has managed to hold out against Russian forces despite overwhelming odds. If Putin grows desperate, he might order his military to deploy TOS-1A and similar rocket systems as terror weapons in an attempt to break Ukraine’s morale.

While such actions might have their intended effect, it would also broadly be considered a war crime, and land Putin and his administration in even deeper international trouble than it’s in now.

BY KYLE MIZOKAMI MAR 1, 2022

The Coyote Sandbag:

“Man I need an ice pack… This bitch just gave me The Coyote Sandbag!

…maybe if you want to look like you made of wax…

It’s a long-standing debate about what the standby switches on Fender amps are used for. That’s why Sweetwater‘s own tube amp expert, Greg Bowers, decided to clear things up and end the debate once and for all. This is his story más o menos a few Fomedits:

The Standby Switch

The myth about the lowly standby switch on guitar amplifiers has gone on since they first came on the scene in the 1950s, so no wonder it is still misunderstood. You would think that by now with the internet around everyone would be up to speed, but the myth is too enduring! I have even read articles from educated people that I respect who have not quite gotten the whole story correct because of reasonable sounding, but incorrectly applied details about vacuum tubes. Then the myth gets distorted even more, because everyone thinks these people should know what they are talking about.

These switches are notorious for causing weird problems and numerous questions from my customers like “Why does their amp pop when using it?” (they pop because they are switching anywhere from 300 to 800 volts. WOW!)I have merrily gone on repairing amplifiers over 20 years and decided to break down the mythology of standby switches based on what I know as a technician and amp builder to separate what is folklore and what is fact. At the very least, I would like to explain what standby switches are NOT used for. Here is what I learned repairing amps, doing research and reading history from much smarter people than myself.

Tube Amp History

Back in the 1940s -50’s there were no books or schools for making guitar amplifiers. Amplifying a guitar was a relatively new idea. Most great guitar amp companies were not founded by textbook electronic engineers or scientists, but smart service technicians who experimented with the recommended RCA vacuum tube circuits already published to get a better sounding or louder amplifier. This is true even to this day.

Designers often push the limits of what a tube can handle to see if it will work past its conservatively rated parameters used for AM radios and Public Address amplifiers. This is kind of like what hot rodder’s do to cars. Special effects using very odd looking devices or circuits also find their way into designs. And yes, there are actual technical mistakes made by these self-trained designers that become accepted norm for a given model. So I learned to expect any reason could be possible for just why standby switches exist!

It’s not a mute switch for breaks

Historically, I have yet to see an amp made with standby switches until Leo Fender was around. He is accredited for first inventing the idea and I have no reason to doubt this. Leo Fender adopted the standby switch design from reading vacuum tube service manuals. He was self-trained in electronics and developed his own designs. Basically, his switch disconnects the high voltage from the circuit, but the big question is why?

Leo Fender did not intend them for use during beer breaks as a mute switch (the biggest myth of all), even though this is what everyone thought he meant by the “standby” switch label and used them this way! A “mute” switch is a common switch often used on audio amplifiers but never designed the way Leo Fender’s “standby” switch is wired to the high voltage. A mute switch simply connects the audio signal to ground, stopping it from passing through the amplifier, just like turning the volume control all the way down.

One should note the term “standby” has been used occasionally in place of the word “mute” on other switches that actually are audio “mute” switches for taking breaks, further adding to the public confusion. All guitar amplifier companies are infamous for incorrectly labeling or coming up with cute names for a switch’s function. Leo Fender also is known for mislabeling what technically is a tremolo circuit control as a “vibrato”. This is probably because he did not know how to play guitar? Maybe he could have come up with a better name than “standby” that is less confusing? Too late now…

It’s not for protecting tubes

Leo Fender did not use the standby switch to protect the tubes, because it actually is not good to have the tubes on a very long time in standby, which is a fact from the RCA tube manuals. There are so many people who get this part wrong. Beware advice given by some internet guru who was just regurgitating someone else’s myth that sounds technical, but is just wrong!

This myth started with a misunderstanding of the old RCA tube manual recommendation for using standby switches when running very, very high voltage radio station transmitter tubes. RCA was NOT talking about the tubes used in a guitar amplifier. The tubes used in guitar amps are the same type tubes used in Grandma and Grandpa’s old tube radio receivers, TV’s and record players, etc., which you never see with standby switches, do you? Therefore, why would a guitar amplifier be different than these other devices? Because they are not! Fender’s first “Tweed” amplifiers also did not have a standby switch!

For Leo Fender, tubes were cheap back then and actually made much stronger than tubes we have today, so why would he have this supposed concern for tube life? In order to get the tone he wanted, many of his designs are actually very hard on tubes pushing the limits of their power capabilities, therefore it stands to reason that tube life was not his concern.

The standby switch on a Fender amp was put there by Leo to solve a problem he had later when building the much demanded larger power amplifiers using higher voltages to operate.

The actual reason for standby switches

It’s all about the capacitors!

As the public asked for louder amplifiers, Leo Fender began to build amplifiers with higher power supply voltages. When first turning on the amplifier and before the tubes are warm, tubes do not conduct high voltage, so there is no “load” on the power supply. This phenomenon would allow voltage to rise above the maximum voltage rating for the large capacitors used in the circuit, putting them at risk of shorting out from the stress. This was especially true when Fender started to use solid state rectifier diodes that provided power supply voltage instantly when the mains power was turned on.

While the tubes are warming up, the standby switch removed the high voltage from the circuit until the tubes filaments were warmed up to operating temperature and the power supply voltage would be loaded down by the tubes to the nominal safe operating voltage for the capacitors.

Sure, Leo could have installed much higher voltage rated capacitors that could safely handle the voltage rise, but these were very expensive back in his day. His company’s goal was to produce high quality, but lower cost amplifiers (and guitars), so keeping the price down was important to him. Therefore, the standby switch was a cost-saving design feature much cheaper than the alternative very expensive capacitors.

Takeaways

In my experience, if you want your tubes and the other parts of the amplifier to last longer, put a small fan on the amplifier to get the heat out of it. Excess heat is the greatest problem, so only have the amp on when you need it. Let’s review the takeaways.

There are occasionally a few modern amplifier designs that are taking the problems with conventional plate voltage standby switches into consideration and have put in safer systems for tube warm up purposes. To be fair, these systems do not cause the same potential problems as the old fashioned standby switches. If you have one of these amps, the use of the standby switch may not be causing any harm. You will simply have to inquire about your amps features to know what is used.

However, I still refer to other much smarter engineers than I, including the RCA tube manual which do not list any standby switches in the recommended design of receiving tube power supplies. Don’t expect your tubes to last longer using them.

Don’t use it as a “beer break” switch. For short breaks, simply turn down the volume control (or mute switch if you have one) and don’t use the standby switch, so there is not that nasty pop in the house sound system that could damage speaker drivers. If the time between sound check and performing is longer than 20 minutes, turn the amplifier completely off. You only need 5 minutes at the most to completely warm up a tube amplifier.

It’s as simple as that. Why else would you use something that often pops loudly in the audio when used (remember I mentioned it cuts off the high voltage)? By the way, other brands did not use standby switches until Marshall copied Fender’s Bassman amplifier design and after the two biggest makers used these standby switches, everyone assumed you always had one on a guitar amp. Often, designers put these on amplifiers only because the public asks for them, not that they are needed. This is due to the power of the myth! These days we have other devices available to protect the capacitors and in general capacitors are much cheaper now and can be made to run at higher voltages without great cost.

Don’t put one on your amp because you were told it makes the tubes last longer! Is there a way to help my tubes last longer you say? The correct understanding of vacuum tube operational specifications prove there is no evidence that a standby switch can make your tubes last longer and actually could only hurt them if you overuse the standby mode.

ABY switchers are primarily used to feed two guitar amps from a guitar. The AB designates the ability to switch between amplifiers, while the Y means that both amps can be turned on at once.  Using an ABY switcher is easy. You connect your guitar or the output from your pedal chain to the ABY, and from the ABY, you feed the two amps. Unfortunately, the results often include tremendous noise, weird tones, and even an electrical shock!

Passive versus active

BigShot ABY

True-Bypass Switcher

The Radial BigShot ABY is a true-bypass ABY switcher that toggles or combines two guitar amplifiers in phase and without hum & buzz caused by ground loops.

The BigShot ABY is a compact passive switcher.

ABY pedals generally come in two categories: passive and active. Passive ABYs do not require any power to make them work while active ABYs must be powered like most other guitar pedals.

Passive ABYs are simple switches that divert the guitar signal to one amp or the other.  There is no ‘buffer’ or electronic amp inside the ABY to manage the signal. Some tone purists prefer passive switchers as they do not color the guitar signal in any way. When running two amps at once, the signal going to each amp is reduced by half, like a simple Y-jack cable.  The BigShot ABY is a passive ABY switcher.

Active switchers employ a buffer or unity-gain amplifier to lower the impedance to reduce susceptibility to noise and manage the electrical signal. A buffer not only drives the signal further without noise, but the capacitors in the signal path also block noise that may be coming from the amp from bleeding back into the guitar. The Twin-City and Switchbone are active ABY switchers.

True-Bypass

Pedals that completely remove the effect circuit from the signal path are known as true-bypass pedals.  The concept here is that a true-bypass pedal will relay the original sound of the guitar without any buffer or loading on the pickup which could alter the clean tone. The downside with true-bypass pedals is that they tend to produce switching noise. This is due to the hard contact that is created when the footswitch is depressed and the internal relay is called into action. The noise is most noticeable when using high-gain amps. The BigShot ABY is a true-bypass ABY switcher.

Active Switching

The benefit to using active switching with a buffered circuit is that it allows the electronic engineer to manage the signal to eliminate noise. The Twin-City employs electronic switching while the Switchbone employs a series of photo-electric chips (optocouplers) that ramp up and then ramp down the signal in a controlled fashion in order to eliminate the hard contact. This type of switching requires the signal to be buffered.

Twin-City

Active Amp Switcher

The Twin-City is an active ABY switcher that toggles or combines two guitar amplifiers in phase and without noise, with a class-A input buffer to drive both amps without any loss of gain.

Switchbone V2

Amp Switcher & Booster

The Switchbone V2 is a feature-packed ABY pedal that also features a third output to allow switching between up to three amplifiers without noise.

Types of buffers

There are two general camps when it comes to buffers. The most common is the use of an integrated circuit (IC) while the second is more of an old-school discrete class-A approach. For maximum efficiency, ICs pack thousands of transistors inside a very small package to produce tremendous gain. To control the gain, various degrees of negative feedback is applied. Most guitarists hate the sound of these buffers as they make a nice warm-sounding guitar sound harsh. This is the primary reason guitarists complain about the sound of wireless systems. Both the Twin-City and the Switchbone employ 100% discrete, class-A circuitry. Instead of trying to control the gain of a chip by applying tremendous amounts of phase-canceling negative feedback, individual transistors are used at each gain stage. This means only the absolute minimal amount of negative feedback is applied. And because we are using class-A circuitry, you get a much purer signal path.

Load Correction

Early on, we discovered that even with the very best circuit, buffering a guitar signal can make it sound ‘too clean’. To solve the problem, Radial invented Drag Control – a simple load correction circuit that compensates for the overly clean signal path and replicates the tone as if connected directly to the amp. This encompasses compensating for the natural roll off of the cable and of course the load that is typically applied from a tube amp – whereby it sounds totally different from a transistor amp. Check out the Dragster.

Ground loops

The hum and buzz caused by a so-called ground loop are produced when two amps are connected together and share both an electrical ground and an audio ground.  The noise problem can be mild to acute depending on the amps, the electrical circuit and other factors such as spurious noise from the electrical system. The first line of defense is to connect both amps and all of the pedals to a single power strip. This ensures the same electrical phase is powering both amps. Unfortunately, more often than not, this solution rarely solves the  problem that is inherent with varying voltage references and grounding schemes on the amps. To solve the problem, transformers are inserted into the audio path.

Transformer Isolation

A typical transformer is a device that is made up of two coils and an inner core. The primary or input coil becomes magnetically charged when current is applied. The magnetic field is then transmitted through the core where it excites the secondary coil which in turn produces an electrical current.  This creates a magnetic bridge that passes audio, while blocking stray DC currents and noise. Since the bridge is magnetic, there is no direct electrical connection. This disconnects the audio ground and breaks the ground loop, thus eliminating the hum and buzz. The Twin-City and Switchbone have transformers on output-B for this reason. The BigShot ABY also has a transformer that may be inserted into the signal path. As transformers are passive, you can lose some of the signal going through it unless the signal is first buffered by a pedal.

Phase

When playing two amps, it is important that they both play in phase. This means that both speakers are pushing outward instead of one going in, while the other goes out. When both amps are on, if the sound is distant, the amps are likely out of phase.  In order to phase-align the amps, you must be able to reverse the polarity at the output of the ABY switcher. This requires a transformer.  The BigShot ABY, Twin-City and Switchbone are equipped with transformers and 180º degree phase switches to invert the polarity.

Switching noise

As mentioned above, true-bypass switches are basically hard electrical switches produced by a footswitch or an electronic relay. These do not color
or load the pickup but do so at the expense of a loud pop. This is most noticeable when using high-gain or distorted amps. The BigShot ABY uses a true-bypass footswitch. Electronic switching as used in the Twin-City employs an electronic circuit to do the switching. This buffered circuit allows the engineer to control the switching to eliminate the loud pop. In this case, the buffered signal is always in the signal path. The Switchbone goes one step further by employing opto-couplers that ramp up and down the signal for a super smooth and quiet transition. Opto-couplers employ an internal light and receptor to do the work. These are expensive and rarely used.

Electrical Shocks

To avoid an electric shock, never disconnect the U-ground on your guitar amps. This is sometimes done to eliminate noise. The ground is there for safety and will save your life if ever you find yourself on a wet stage or somehow get entangled in a situation where the power system from the lights or PA is at odds with your guitar amp setup. Radial makes ABY switchers that solve the noise problem without placing you in harm’s way!

radial engineering

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In an amongst the guitar building I decided to break out the soldering iron to build an overdrive pedal – as light relief. I had stumbled across the “Valvecaster” schematic and layout at Beavis Audio.

This is a very simple circuit that uses a 12AU7 valve, running at a low voltage. Because it is running at such low voltage it is very easy to overdrive.

The schematic specifies an operating voltage of 9v but I decided to bump it up to 12v to give a fraction more headroom. I chose one from the tangle of old wall-warts I have tucked away in a drawer. It could use a battery but I suspect that the current draw for heating the valve would suck a PP9 dry in a matter of minutes.

If you search for “valvecaster” at Youtube, you’ll find plenty of examples of the pedal in action. One of the common comments is that this is a naturally “dark” sounding pedal. This was not exactly what I was after and so I was going to experiment with different types of tone stacks. As laid out in the schematic it includes a simple treble cut tone control. Even turned up full this would only make the pedal darker, allowing treble frequencies to escape to earth. I decided, initially, to build it with no EQ, and then add it later. One of the results of this was that it is not a dark pedal at all. It is wonderfully balanced and punchy just as it is, and it’ll not be getting any additional EQ added. To remove the tone control I just eliminated the 10nF capacitor (C2) and the A100k potentiometer (VR2).

I reused an old enclosure I had laying around, which I shot with a coat of black nitro-cellulose and a very light top coat of gold (both left over from my Shaftesbury restoration). The gold coat is thin enough to allow just a hint of the black to show through.

The chemistry geeks amongst you may, by now, have worked out where the inspiration for the name and colour came from.

I have yet to print up and apply the decals for the pedal but there’s the standard 1/4″ input and output jacks round the back. The top has the valve, a true-bypass footswitch and the power toggle switch. On the front, left to right, are the gain, a dummy pot (filling up a surplus hole in the old enclosure) and the output volume.

When I was buying the parts for this I also got hold of a 12AT7 valve. This works well too. It is more subtle and has less gain, but in some ways is all the better for it; smoother, warmer and just a bit less wild.

You can listen to a quick demo of Goldie with the 12AU7, that I recorded for my friend Alfie Lanos, who was really helpful in helping me plan this one out.

It was recorded on my mobile phone so the sound quality is not the best, but gives you an idea of what the pedal does.

At 30 large this isn’t a watch any of us mortals will be buying anytime soon, but the design of the Ressence Type 3 is fascinating enough that you’ll want to take a look. First off you’ll notice there’s no crown; all adjustments are made on the back of the watch, which is actually a series of concentric dials.

As if that wasn’t cool enough , take a close look at the display:

It practically looks like the graphics are projected onto that curved surface, no? Reading the description of how they pulled that off clues you in as to why the price tag is so lofty.

The indications and their mechanisms are mounted inside a bubble crafted from extremely tough, anti-reflective sapphire crystal. The complication and indications follow the shape of the crystal.

The mechanism (28 gears, 57 jewels 🤯 ) is enclosed in an upper compartment filled with a naphtha-type liquid that has a more similar index of refraction to the sapphire crystal than air does. Refraction bends light when it passes from one material to another, e.g. air-to-glass or glass-to-air. With the fluid-filled dial indications, refraction is greatly minimised, which tricks the brain into seeing the dial in two-dimensions rather than three. A thermal valve automatically adjusts for any expansion or contraction of the fluid. For $30,000 I’d like a guy in a tuxedo to follow me around with a flashlight, illuminating the dial whenever I raise my wrist in a dim environment. Instead Ressence uses Super-LumiNova, a non-radioactive, non-toxic photoluminescent pigment manufactured in Japan, for the engraved indications.

Oh yeah, and they’re only making 50 of these.

ᴡʀɪᴛᴛᴇɴ ʙʏ: ʀᴀɪɴ ɴᴏᴇ

LOSING GRADE A SUPPLY.

I will try to explain…

A narc can feel sadness but the experience of feeling sad is extremely stunted and restricted.

Sadness serves a purpose. It’s a feeling we all try to avoid but it’s inevitable and a part of life. Sadness rarely ends with sadness. It’s followed with a lot of reflection and maybe internalizing what caused us to feel sad. It’s a loss of something or someone. It brings about memories and puts things into perspective. Healthy minded people are able to process their sadness and discover what really matters to them, what’s important, what isn’t and maybe how they contributed to some of their own sadness.

A narc can’t do this. Their sadness starts at I feel sorry for me and stays at I feel sorry for me. That’s it. They don’t feel sad for a situation and they don’t feel sad for someone else. They don’t reflect and internalize their sadness. They don’t move past the sadness ……well not entirely true, it moves to, how dare you!

What makes a narc sad?

THE LOSS OF GRADE A SUPPLY. Especially if the grade A supply left them first and goes no contact. They will feel very sorry and sad for themselves. Don’t be confused though, they are not sad at losing the person, they are sad at losing the way the supply made them feel and look. They are sad they have lost that high end hit. If they can’t replace their grade A supply through another target, they will feel sorry for themselves.

As degrading as it sounds, narcs have their supply ranked as what gives them the most high. They have smaller hits from lower rank and higher hits from higher rank. Some of their supply is on standby for when they’re more desperate and can’t get the more fulfilling hit…imagine like they can’t get their favourite ice cream because it’s temporarily out of stock so they’ll settle for a generic hit until they can get the high end hit later.

Narcs are not going to ever be ok with losing any supply really BUT losing their grade A supply will make them sad. Again, don’t be confused, their sadness is not genuine out of love, care or concern…..it’s all about them. They are not capable of feeling sad for the people that they hurt.

ᴡʀɪᴛᴛᴇɴ ʙʏ: ᴛʀᴀᴄʏ ʜᴇʀʀɪᴍᴀɴ

In this article you will learn how to calculate turns ratio of ferrite core transformer for high frequency switch mode power supply inverters. High ferrite core transformers are used in almost every power electronics circuits like inverters and pure sine wave inverters. They are used to boost up or step up low dc voltage of battery and other dc sources like solar panels. Ferrite core transformers are also used in isolated dc to dc converters to step up or step down dc voltage. For example in isolated buck converter it is used to step down dc voltage and in isolated boost converter, they are used to step up dc voltage. In this article, we will learn how to calculate turns ratio of high frequency ferrite core transformer with examples.

Ferrite core turns ratio calculation 

For example in boost up stage we have two options to use from power electronics converters, push pull topology and full bridge. I will explain both methods one by one.  Turns ratio calculation formula and concept remains same for both topologies. The only difference between push pull topology and full bridge transformer design is that push pull ferrite core transformer requires a center tap in primary winding. In other words, push pull transformer have two times primary turn than full bridge transformer.

Push pull topology ferrite core turns ratio calculation with example 

Let’s start with example. For example we want to design a 250 watt boost up dc to dc converter. We are using push pull topology for this design. We are using 12 volt battery. We want to step up dc voltage from 12 volt 310 volt. Switching frequency of design is 50KHz. We are using ETD39 ferrite core which can handle 250 watt. It is beyond the scope of this topic to tell how to select ferrite core according to power rating. I will try to write separate article on it.  The output of ferrite core will be always high frequency square wave of 50 KHz. We need to use full rectifier to convert it into dc of 310 volt. You may also need to use LC filter to harmonics or AC components from output.

Ferrite transformer primary turns calculation

As you know battery voltage does not remain same all the time.  As the load on battery on increases, battery voltage will be less than 12 volt. With no load with fully charged battery, battery voltage will be near to 13.5 volt.  Therefore input voltage is not constant, we must consider it while calculating turns ratio of ferrite core transformer. Cut off voltage for battery is usually 10.5 volt.  We can take it as smallest possible value of input voltage to boost up dc converter. So we have following parameters now:

Vinput = 10.5 volt

Vout = 310 volt

as we know that formula of turns ratio calculation in transformer is:

N = Npri / Nsc = Vin / Vout

Where Npri is number of primary turns and Nsc is number of secondary turns. We have three know variables like turns ratio which can be calculated by above equation, input voltage and output voltage. But we need to calculate primary turns to find secondary turn of ferrite core transformer. Formula to calculate primary turns for ferrite core transformer is given below:

Npri = Vin * 10^8 / 4 * f * Bmax * Ac

But for push pull it will be half the primary number of turns.

• Where Npi is primary number of turn, Vin( nom) is normal input voltage which in our example is 10.5 volt.
• Bmax is maximum flux density. The unit of maximum flux density is Guass. Remember if you are using Tesla unit for maximum flux density, IT = 10^4 Guass. The value of maximum flux density is usually given in data sheet ferrite core. We usually take value of Bmax between 1300G to 2000G.  This is usually a acceptable range for all ferrite core transformers.  Note : High value of flux density will saturate the core and low value of flux density will lead to core under utilization. For example we will take 1500G for dc to dc converter example.
• f is switching frequency converter. In our example switching frequency of dc to dc converter is 50 KHz.
• Ac is effective cross sectional area of ferrite core. We have to refer data sheet for this value. In this example, we are using ETD39 core. The effective cross sectional area of ETD39 is 125mm^2 or 1.25cm^2.

We have all the values to calculate primary number of turns .i.e.

Vin = 10.5 volt, Bmax = 1500G, f = 50 KHz, Ac = 1.25 cm^2

By putting these parameters in two above formula, we can calculate turns primary number of turns.

Npri = 12 . 10^8 / 4 . 50000 . 1500 . 1.25  = 3.2

Hence Npri  = 3.2 But we cannot use fractional turns. So we need to round off primary turns calculated value into nearest whole number 3. The nearest possible whole number is 3. primary number of turns for ferrite core is 3. But before that we need check either for Npri = 3 Bmax is within acceptable range or not. As I have mentioned above the acceptable range for Bmaz is 1300-2000G. But the question is why we need to check the value of Bmax again? Because we adjust the value of primary turns from 3.2 to 3. So let’s calculate value of Bmax for Npri = 3 by using above forumla.

Bmax = Vin * 10^8 / 4 * f * Npri * Ac

Bmax = 12 * 10^8 / 5 * 50000 * 3 * 1.25 = 1600G

So calculated value of Bmax is 1600G which is within acceptable range of maximum flux density. Its mean we can take Npri = 3 for further calculations. Primary number of turns for push pull ferrite center tap transformer is 3 turns + 3 turns. In any design you will need to adjust the value of Npri if it is in fraction. You can easily adjust it. But you need to check value of Bmax every time. We start with assume value of Bmax and calculated Npri. But you can also start with assume value of Npri and check the value of maximum flux density Bmax. For example suppose a value of Npri =1 and check the value of Bmax and keep repeating this process, until it is become in acceptable range.

Ferrite transformer secondary turns calculation

Now let’s move to secondary turn of ferrite core. In our design the output of dc to dc converter is 310 volt at any input voltage. Input voltage is variable from 10.5 volt to 13.5 volt. We will need to implement feedback to get regulated 310 output voltage. So we will take little bit higher value of output voltage so that at minimum possible input we can still get output voltage of 310 volt by changing the duty cycle of PWM. So we should design a ferrite core transformer with secondary rated at 330 volt.  Feedback will adjust the value of output voltage by changing the duty cycle of PWM.  You should also take care of losses and voltage drops across switching devices and you should take them into account while designing transformer.

So transformer must be able to supply 330 volt output with input of 13.5 volt to 10.5 volt.  The maximum duty cycle for PWM is 98% and rest 2% is left for dead time. During minimum possible input voltage duty cycle will be maximum.  At maximum duty cycle of 98%, input voltage to transformer is 0.98 * 10.5 = 10.29 volt.

By using voltage ratio formula of transformer = voltage ratio = 330 / 10.29 = 32.1. Voltage ratio and turns ratio in transformer is equal to each other. Hence N = 32.

So we know all values to calculate secondary turns of ferrite core transformer.

N = 32, Npri = 3

Nsec = N * Npri = 32 *3 = 96

So number of primary turns is equal to 3 and number of secondary turns is equal to 96. So it is all about turns ratio calculation for high frequency transformers. If you have any issue, let me know with your comments.

Fom Tooley presents:

A classic circuit from the magazine Everyday Electronics (December 1977 issue).
Build your own boutique pedal for a fraction of the cost. A separate plan of the PCB is included as the final image (6 of 6). If you build it, they will come. If you build it, please post your construction and completed photos to fomtooley.com

https://youtu.be/Yg_PkILY6EE

The aim of this video is to inspire electronic engineers, hobbyists, STEM students to spend their time at homes working on different creative …COVID-19 – DIY Projects for Arduino beginners

Gretsch ControFuzz by Gretsch Instruments

Fom Tooley

By Harry Baggens (lol)

Seeed Studio miniature soldering iron

The Chinese company Seeed Studio offers a lot of interesting things for electronics enthusiasts. Along with selling products from various manufacturers, Seeed develops and produces their own products, many of which are very innovative. For instance, a year ago we had a close look at the DSO Nano V3 miniature oscilloscope. Seeed has also developed their own miniature soldering iron, which is now available in a European version. The unique thing about this soldering iron is that a display and the control circuitry are integrated into the grip. From the photos and Seeed’s description, it looked like a good idea for us to get our hands on one and try it out in the Elektor Labs. Along with the soldering iron and the associated tip and AC power adapter, the box contains a power cable, a grounding wire with a clip’, an Allen wrench and some spare tips. The miniature soldering iron is compact (16.8 x 1.65cm) and looks more like a fat fountain pen than a soldering iron. The grip is made from plastic with a sturdy feel. A small OLED display and two pushbuttons are located on the side of the grip (or is it the top?). The tip slides into the front of the grip and is secured by tightening a small screw with the included Allen wrench. At the rear of the grip there is a power connector and a micro-USB connector for connection to a PC. The soldering iron has a rated power of 40W with the included AC power adapter. You can optionally connect a higher-capacity power supply (max. 24V). That boosts the power to 65W.

After you switch on the power, some messages initially appear on the OLED display, and after you press one of the buttons the preset temperature of 300˚C is displayed. The display is small but easy to read, but unfortunately the information on the display cannot be flipped for left-handed users. The miniature iron heats up quickly – the temperature rose from 20˚C to 300˚C in about 15 seconds. You can use the two buttons to select a different temperature (up to a maximum of 400˚C), but unfortunately the selected value is not saved for the next time you use the iron. If the iron is not used for three minutes, the control circuitry reduces the temperature to 200˚C and the iron remains in sleep mode until it is moved again (apparently it has an integrated motion sensor).The soldering iron is small, light, comfortable and easy to use. The power cable could be a bit more flexible, but that is of course difficult to change when you use a standard AC power adapter. We also did not test the power cable for heat resistance, which is a standard feature with a normal soldering iron. The included soldering iron tip has a fairly fine point and is suitable for most typical soldering tasks with leaded components. It can also be used with relatively large SMD components, but for finer work a tip with a narrower point would be desirable.The iron can also be connected to a computer through a micro-USB cable. The computer recognizes the soldering iron as a USB drive containing a file with the name CONFIG.TXT. After opening this file in Notepad, we saw a number of lines of text with various settings for operating temperature, standby temperature, wait time for standby and some other parameters. These values can be changed and then the file can be saved, after which the iron will use the new values the next time. The software is open source, so you could also modify or extend it as desired.This miniature soldering iron is very handy as a complement to your regular soldering iron. It is small and easy to take with you. The soldering performance is very good, and on top of that you can program it according to your wishes. With a price of around 100 euros, the iron is not exactly low-cost, but when an Elektor designer says he would like to buy one for home use, you know it’s worth the money.

Photographer and Videographer Natacha de Mahieu  is the Edge of Humanity Magazine contributor of this documentary photography.  From the project ‘Far…Mass Sterilization Of Uighur Women, Forced Labor & Re-Education Camps | China’s Tactics Of Decimation

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We are excited to share that another owl has left the nest! Thank you to Kate for her support in our Alchemist’s Studio adventure! So what is it like…Flying free!

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Numerous eBay auction sellers rely just on eBay for creating 100% of their online earnings. If you feel you are one of these individuals, these are …How To Use eBay Auctions To Drive Traffic To Your Site

In an amongst the guitar building I decided to break out the soldering iron to build an overdrive pedal – as light relief. I had stumbled across the “Valvecaster” schematic and layout at Beavis Audio. This is a very simple circuit that uses a 12AU7 valve, running at a low voltage. Because it is running […]A DIY valve overdrive pedal – Goldie

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© Patrick Scheidegger 2020

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But Keith, you cool.
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