4 ms·

see my handle so where the fuck to start go to a bunch of scrap yards, someones "door yard", like mine, where as a matter of course, bits and chunks of most met

see my handle so where the fuck to start go to a bunch of scrap yards, someones "door yard", like mine, where as a matter of course, bits and chunks of most metals end up as part of building and repairing, to larger operations that are huge, fast paced with prices and markets changing by the hour, and cash is used as the entisement to get people to bring metal in on everything from bicycles to the biggest rigs on the road, a cacophany of heavy equipment like car shredders, that reduce a full sized car to hand sized bits, and seperate out the more valuable metals, and waste plastic, grrrrrank!, done it's a wild, dangerous madhouse populated by characters that will most defintly get your attention, which is a mistake, because you dont want thiers. then there are hundreds of thousands of small to medium sized businesses that generate several hundred tons of scrap per year in acompletly normal, organized, boring fashion, except for when it gets dropped, and the expected and tolerated losses to dumpster diving. I could go into much greater detail as to how it works, the safeguards to prevent theft that are in place, but as in the case of guardrails say, the problem is that, legitimatly scrapped guardrails come in every day, or hyway crews just leave crash damaged ones lay beside the hyway when they fix the rails, 1 they are too busy, and 2 they know the bent ones spontainoiusly disapear, the scraped one is worth $17.26......nobody is doing extra paper work for that, right we are talking millions of tons pe anum of material moved in a completly random ad hock manner, dont take it the wrong way, but... go the fuck ahead bub, you fix it I'll watch

cwillu 1y ago
A couple presses of the enter key would greatly improve the readability of your comment.
- OccamsMirror 1y ago
  But would it have properly communicated their manic energy?
  - navane 1y ago
    Thank you! I first dismissed the post as badly edited, but it's a masterpiece! Three, four sentences.
ProllyInfamous 1y ago
I brought all the rabbit in from a big union data center job in Texas, over a decade ago. We had spent weeks installing thousands feet of 500kcm (that's a THICK wire) and I brought in trashcans full of bare bright. Scrapyard actually called the police requiring our facility manager to visit (they assumed it was all stolen, since there wasn't a drop of corrosion on any copper). >populated by characters that will most defintly get your attention, which is a mistake, because you dont want thiers. Really appreciated that they let me cut in line (the police forced this) so-as to not attact this unwanted attention. This was fifteen years ago, but IIRC they handed me/boss a check for $6k (made out to my company). Lots of leering onlookers.
- formerly_proven 1y ago
  > 500kcm "kilo-circular mils", that's an impressively cursed unit even for US standards: Combining an SI prefix, a decimal fraction (1/1000th) of an imperial base unit (inch) and then defining the area by diameter instead of square. Even if someone told you it's an imperial area measure that's about 0.5 mm², you'd never figure out on your own how kcm was defined to arrive there.
  - ProllyInfamous 1y ago
    >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_mil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_mil As blue-collars, we always referred to 500kcm as elephant cock (350kcm is donkey dick)... because it's almost an inch thick, with the sheathing. The copper is approximately 253mm² (177mm², respective). When phased we used brown/yellow/purple ... so it was anatomically correct, from afar. Sword-fights with 3ft sections of scrap [@$$$$$$$$$/foot] could actually become bloody (accidental).
  - navane 1y ago
    If a cmil has a diameter of one thousandt (mil) of an inch, then a kcmil (kilo=1000) has a diameter of 1 inch? 500kcmil has a diameter of 500inch? Which is about 10 meter?? Yeah I'm an engineer but this must be wrong.
    - 1y ago
mattlondon 1y ago
We had a similar thing replacing a radiator in our house years ago. We asked the plumber what to do with the old one, and he said "leave it on the street and it will be gone by the morning". He was true to his word and the magic scrap metal fairies came overnight to take it away.

cwillu 1y ago

A couple presses of the enter key would greatly improve the readability of your comment.

OccamsMirror 1y ago
But would it have properly communicated their manic energy?
- navane 1y ago
  Thank you! I first dismissed the post as badly edited, but it's a masterpiece! Three, four sentences.

ProllyInfamous 1y ago

I brought all the rabbit in from a big union data center job in Texas, over a decade ago. We had spent weeks installing thousands feet of 500kcm (that's a THICK wire) and I brought in trashcans full of bare bright. Scrapyard actually called the police requiring our facility manager to visit (they assumed it was all stolen, since there wasn't a drop of corrosion on any copper). >populated by characters that will most defintly get your attention, which is a mistake, because you dont want thiers. Really appreciated that they let me cut in line (the police forced this) so-as to not attact this unwanted attention. This was fifteen years ago, but IIRC they handed me/boss a check for $6k (made out to my company). Lots of leering onlookers.

formerly_proven 1y ago
> 500kcm "kilo-circular mils", that's an impressively cursed unit even for US standards: Combining an SI prefix, a decimal fraction (1/1000th) of an imperial base unit (inch) and then defining the area by diameter instead of square. Even if someone told you it's an imperial area measure that's about 0.5 mm², you'd never figure out on your own how kcm was defined to arrive there.
- ProllyInfamous 1y ago
  >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_mil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_mil As blue-collars, we always referred to 500kcm as elephant cock (350kcm is donkey dick)... because it's almost an inch thick, with the sheathing. The copper is approximately 253mm² (177mm², respective). When phased we used brown/yellow/purple ... so it was anatomically correct, from afar. Sword-fights with 3ft sections of scrap [@$$$$$$$$$/foot] could actually become bloody (accidental).
- navane 1y ago
  If a cmil has a diameter of one thousandt (mil) of an inch, then a kcmil (kilo=1000) has a diameter of 1 inch? 500kcmil has a diameter of 500inch? Which is about 10 meter?? Yeah I'm an engineer but this must be wrong.
  - 1y ago

mattlondon 1y ago

We had a similar thing replacing a radiator in our house years ago. We asked the plumber what to do with the old one, and he said "leave it on the street and it will be gone by the morning". He was true to his word and the magic scrap metal fairies came overnight to take it away.