Commonly used for scams, carriers will frequently filter messages that contain shortened links and any significant volume can end with the number being blocklisted.
For business/promotional campaigns they don't want the end content obscured at all.
(This is from personal experience running SMS newsletter blasts, they really hate services like bit.ly)
That's really nice to know JoeCool, thanks! There's a fair amount of struggle with the carriers trust scores. Overall, there's an inclination to keep the SMS OTP (so that people don't create hundreds of accounts with the 2 free links) but offer the option to switch to email or WhatsApp once the link is created.
Diagnosed ADHD person here. Among my acquaintances I’m known as a person who will accept coffee any time off day when I come visit. I don’t that because I really enjoy the flavor off coffee and it doesn’t seem to affect my sleep.
Anecdotally, I’ve had conversations with more than 50 people who say caffeine does not affect them who likely have ADHD or some kind of attention disorder.
For example, I was at a gas station this weekend buying coffee during a small road trip. The cashier and I we’re making small talk that it was early and I wanted my morning coffee, they said oh caffeine doesn’t affect me. When I hear something like that I usually ask if them if they have ADHD and they’ll typically respond with a yes.
There is definitely bias in my non-scientific survey, I only ask people who make the comment about caffeine not affecting them.
Do you mean it doesn’t affect their sleep? I remember the first time I tried coffee and the effect was profound, like my brain wasn’t working properly before that moment. I have also been diagnosed with ADHD, but I am affected by caffeine so maybe that’s a misdiagnosis. I also have huge variation over my life where I can sometimes handle 6+ cups without issue and other times half of a Diet Coke will send me spiraling into anxiety. It seems like it has to do with my stomach or baseline levels of anxiety, definitely worse after some sort of trauma. Maybe just a comorbidity that complicates things
That's pretty cool that they are selling "external mix" plans/kits. Snowmaking (at scale) is incredibly energy intensive and over the last few years many resorts have been moving towards various "low-energy" gun designs, which basically means external mix.
They definitely don't make as good snow at marginal temperatures but it's impressive what they can do given a lot use 1/20th of the compressed air compared to a tradition air/water snowgun.
A tradition air/water gun is just an 1.5" air inlet, a 1.5" water inlet, a mixing chamber and a nozzle. At higher temperatures, they take an incredible amount of air. We had a few guns that could take 300 horsepower worth of an air compressor, each, to run at -2.5 celsius wet bulb. As is gets colder it gets a little more efficient.
There are some designs that are basically the same but incorporate a "baffle" that attempts to cut down the size of the mixing chamber when there's a high air/water mixture to make them more efficient, but those baffles would often get stuck open, making them useless.
A fangun is the style of snowgun that uses a giant electric fan to project the snow out from the gun. There is an onboard electric air compressor hooked up to a few nozzles that spray out a mixture of air and water. The tiny droplets freeze into the "nucleus" (a tiny ice particle), which other droplets from water-only nozzles bind onto and freeze, creating a "snowflake".
An external mix gun is basically a fangun, minus the big electric fan, and suspended 30+ feet in the air on a pole. A small number of nozzles spray out an air/water mix, creating the nucleus, and then water only nozzles spray out droplets that then bind to the nucleus. It works but needs to be a bit colder, and they are much more susceptible to winds (especially cross winds). If winds don't allow the two types of sprays to mix, you get a nice skating rink instead of snow!
That was a great summary of the tech. Your height comment helps explain why my external mix setup didn’t produce as much snow as it did frost. I only had it about 8’ off the ground.
This coming winter I may try increasing the height of the mixer and positioning a fan underneath to help push the mix upward to give it more time to bind to the nucleus crystal.
