Steven Kuski

[Daniel Franke @dfranke]

You buy a German anvil. It contains 83 moving parts and requires winding twice a day. It's forged from excellent steel, holds tolerances across all three striking faces to within three microns, includes a beautifully indexed horn-adjustment mechanism nobody asked for, and requires a proprietary 11-point spanner should you need to replace the rebound calibration bushing. It runs flawlessly for years, but one day it starts up in limp mode because the onboard anvil-management system detects that it's overdue for its 50,000-strike inspection.

You search AliExpress for a Chinese anvil, and are presented with a multitude of offerings from such household-name brands as DUKXJYIBF, HDBTGMXI, AND UEJQIP. They're all priced to within a few pennies of each other, appear completely identical except for the nameplate, and obviously all came out of the same factory. You text your blacksmith friend to ask if they're legit. He tells you he got one like that from KIXJBU a few years ago, and that it's been great and a terrific deal. You thank him, but KIXJBU seems to have folded so you buy the one from UEJQIP. When it arrives, it feels suspiciously light. You scratch it and realize it's iron-plated aluminum.

You buy an American anvil. It's five times the price of the competition, but it comes from a brand that your great-grandfather used to love. It comes boxed with a warranty registration postcard, twenty pages of safety instructions, assay certificate, and a regulatory slip which lists its FCC certification and ITAR registration. It looks just like your friend's KIXJBU. There's a "Made In China" sticker on the bottom.

You buy a Russian anvil. It arrives coated in cosmoline, wrapped in newspaper from 1974, and weighing 40% more than advertised. The finish looks like it was machined with a shovel. The face is not flat, but somehow this does not matter. You drop it off a truck, accidentally leave it outside for six winters, and use it to straighten a bulldozer blade. It's fine.

You buy a Swedish anvil. It comes flat-packed in a long cardboard box with cheerful Neo-Grotesk lettering and a line drawing of a smiling man assembling it with an Allen key. The instructions contain no words, only pictograms showing the anvil face, horn, waist, feet, and 112 identical-looking fasteners. Halfway through assembly, you discover that the pritchel hole was installed upside down, but only because you used peg B17 where you should have used peg B71. Once assembled, it is clean, stable, and works better than it has any right to. You immediately wonder whether you should have bought two.

You buy a Japanese anvil. It arrives wrapped in rice paper inside a paulownia box, accompanied by a certificate bearing three generations of signatures and a photograph of the first production example being presented to the Emperor. The face has been hand-polished by a seventy-eight-year-old master whose family has made striking surfaces since the Muromachi period. You are given detailed instructions for oiling it with a cloth folded in a specific way. It is the most beautiful object you own. You never quite work up the nerve to strike it.

[Ben Harack @benharack]

Governing AI requires international agreements, but cooperation can be risky if there’s no basis for trust.

Our new report looks at how to verify compliance with AI agreements without sacrificing national security.

This is neither impossible nor trivial.🧵

1/

[Steven Kuski @StevenKuski]

@benharack Yours is the only name I know on the authors list. Therefore, you must be the most famous.

[Steven Kuski @StevenKuski]

@Rainmaker1973 Does this remind anyone else of Mariocart?

[Steven Kuski @StevenKuski]

@ttmygh When Trudeau first entered politics he was one head of a multi-headed hydra. The other heads included, Gerald Butts, Katie Telford, and others I am unaware of. However, over the course of his first term the other heads were lost. Today only the talking head remains.

[Steven Kuski @StevenKuski]

@AMAZlNGNATURE When I was a kid we called these ninja turtles.

[Steven Kuski @StevenKuski]

@HinrichsZane A convoy

[Steven Kuski @StevenKuski]

@dalebeugin Not quite the current structure of the economy, but the econony as of When the I/O tables were updated, likely 2019. A lot has changed since then.

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

@cb_doge That’s me working on my 2nd cousin’s wheat farm in Saskatchewan. I think we did a barn raising that day.

If you want to see peak human labor productivity, a good old barn-raising is it!

[Doomberg @DoombergT]

Dear @weatherchannel:

It’s not extreme cold. It’s winter. In winter, sometimes it gets cold. It’s also not a major snow storm. It’s just a storm. In winter, it snows sometimes. Just fyi.

That is all.
Doomberg

[Steven Kuski @StevenKuski]

@designdxm @KevinSLeahy @RadioFreeTom Canada produces its own energy and lacks the capacity to export it, insulating it from global energy prices.

[Steven Kuski @StevenKuski]

@Super70sSports I still use that alarm clock

[Steven Kuski @StevenKuski]

@Super70sSports Always try to land on the history catagory because I am not up to speed on my celebrity gossip from the 50's and 60's.

[Steven Kuski @StevenKuski]

@ashleevance Where do spaceships fit on that scale?

[Steven Kuski @StevenKuski]

@bdtaylor_SU I get the same thing

[Steven Kuski @StevenKuski]

@elonmusk The solution to low birthrates is low birthrates. Once the population actually starts to fall housing prices will crash, this will allow people of child bearing age to afford a home. Once people have a comfortable home they will have babies.

[SaskPower @SaskPower]

7:31 PM: Outage affecting customers in REGINA EAST, between Park st and Rothwell st. Due to poor weather conditions Power will remain off for overnight, Next update will be at 6AM. #skoutage

[Regina Fire @Regina_Fire]

Total gridlock north south as many vehicles stuck in underpasses. If you can stay home do not venture out. #icy #yqr

[Steven Kuski @StevenKuski]

@DJSnM Where is the any key?