Can anyone rave me some/a decent open source drafting program(s)? I'm proficient in manual drafting and autocad, but ease of use would be great for my brain fog.

#drafting #cad #design #architecture

Failing the Perception Check

In the video game Baldur’s Gate 3 , you will occasionally stumble across traps—small landmines or treasure chests rigged to explode. To avoid taking damage, you roll a Perception check to see if you notice the trap before running right over it and potentially exploding your companions.
There’s a part of revisions that feels, to me, like failing that check over and over again.
I open the manuscript. I open a calculator. I think: this book needs to be 95,000 words to be competitive in traditional publishing (said someone, somewhere), which means the inciting incident must occur by word 11,400—that’s 12%, or halfway through the first act. I took Math for Liberal Arts in college and here I am calculating percentages. Already, we’re having a great time.
https://writerunboxed.com/2026/04/02/failing-the-perception-check/

#CRAFT #Editing #drafting #process #revising

This needs to be a dress by Friday. 😀

#sewing #drafting

I freecycled my drafting board today. 😢 Many long nights were spent over this board, drawing electrical schematics for angel-funded startups and creating large calligraphic posters. It's been under my bed for about 30 years; whatever skills I had were taken by time and a neck injury. I hope the student who claimed it is able to love it as much as I did.

#OldTech #Drafting

27.02.2026 –
Behind the scenes of a bathroom design 📁 Sharing the 2D construction drawings done in SketchUp & LayOut 📐 This is where the concept turns technical before the final render 🛠️ Do you like seeing the process? ☕✨

#SketchUp #Layout #DesignPlans #Drafting #Interior

Milano Cortina 2026: Speedskating Team Pursuit

Track cycling and speedskating often mirror one another, with similar events in each sport. In the team pursuit, for example, cyclists and skaters compete as a team to post the fastest time for a given distance. In cycling events, riders spend the race tucked into a line, with the lead rider providing a draft for their teammates. But that’s a tiring position for a cyclist, so every few laps the lead rider will pull off, move up the track, and drop behind their teammates for a rest. Speedskaters used to use the same technique. But no longer.

After working with aerodynamic simulation specialists, U.S. Speedskating pioneered a new race technique, in which skaters never change positions. Instead, each racer specializes in one position and skates while pushing the skater ahead of them. The technique requires a lot of practice, finesse, and trust; skaters in the later positions cannot see, skating as close as they can to the skater in front of them.

But, performance-wise, the new technique works. It’s taken U.S. women’s team pursuit from eighth in the world to number one. Other teams have adopted the technique, too, so this is likely what team pursuit will look like in the years to come. (Image credits: various, see image captions; via NPR)

The problem with "AI" in legal --- all ethical problems aside --- is that legal is heavily reliant on language in addition to logic. Determining the "correct" use of legal language is a difficult and ill-posed problem with multiple viable solutions and no means to safely choose between them without authoritative case law coming to the rescue.

Verifying legal solutions is a problem with a high human verification burden, so producing mass "AI" solutions mostly increases human workload, instead of reducing it.

#Legal #AI #Drafting #CaseLaw

Blog post on writing today: Editing isn’t one giant fix-everything move. Different kinds of revision need different kinds of attention; trying to do it all at once is a great way to freeze. Choose your horizon!

https://silencesandsounds.blogspot.com

#AmWriting #writetips #AcademicWriting #Revision #Drafting #WritingLife #AcademicChatter #blog #Research