Spent a weekend in the Smokies and saw a ton of people with the same tent

Honestly, I was camping at Elkmont Campground last weekend and I must have seen at least a dozen of those Big Agnes Copper Spur HV UL2 tents. It was kind of wild. Ngl, it made me wonder if there's a reason everyone went for that specific model, or if it's just the current hot thing. Has anyone else noticed a single piece of gear taking over a campground like that?

My sister swore by jarred alfredo sauce for years, but I just tried making it from scratch in 15 minutes.

Appreciation post: I stopped using the same password for everything after my old email got hit

My old Yahoo account got broken into about six months ago because I used the same password on a sketchy forum, and it took me three days to get everything back. I started using a free password manager and making every password different, which felt like a pain at first but saved me when another site got hacked last week. Has anyone else made the switch to a password manager and found it actually stuck after a scare like that?

I finally stopped wrapping my brisket after 20 years of doing it wrong.

Customer at my shop in Springfield told me 'It's just a loose wire, I saw it on YouTube' while pointing at a fried ECU.

My video about the 2001 anthrax letters just hit 50,000 views

I mean, idk, I just make these deep dive videos as a hobby, mostly for myself. I spent like three weeks last fall going through all the FBI reports and the Senate hearings on the 2001 anthrax attacks, trying to lay out the different theories. I figured maybe a couple hundred people would watch it, tops. But it slowly kept climbing, and this morning I saw it cross 50k. It's not a huge number for some people, but it matters to me because it means there are still folks out there who want to talk about the messy details, not just the headline version. The comments are full of people sharing old news clips I'd never seen or pointing out timeline gaps. Maybe it's just me, but seeing that number made all those late nights reading PDFs feel worth it. Has anyone else had a project on a cold case or something just slowly find its people over time?

Serious question, did anyone else have their view of the Wind River High Route totally change after trying it?

I hiked the southern section from Big Sandy to Cirque of the Towers last month, and I always thought it was just a harder version of the CDT. But scrambling up Texas Pass in the fog, I realized it's a totally different kind of trip, more about picking your line across rock than following any real trail. Has anyone else done a route that felt like a different sport than normal backpacking?

Had a gate hinge shear clean off a 6-foot cedar fence in a windstorm yesterday.

The client's kid said it sounded like a gunshot. What's your go-to heavy-duty hinge for high-wind areas?

Why does nobody talk about checking the jib angle before the first lift of the day?

I mean, I always did a visual check, but for like a year I never actually measured it against the load chart. Then last month on a site in Spokane, my foreman made me use a digital inclinometer on a 150-ton crawler. The chart said 30 degrees, but we were at 33. That tiny difference changed the capacity by almost 2 tons. Now I check it with a tool every single morning, not just my eyes. Anyone else have a simple step they added that made a big difference?

Found my grandma's old recipe box and counted the cards

I was cleaning the attic and found her old tin box. I counted 73 handwritten recipe cards inside, all from the 1950s and 60s. That number hit me because I only ever knew her to make maybe five of those dishes. It makes me wonder what family favorites got lost over time. Has anyone else found a stash of old recipes and tried to bring one back?