Watching a guy at the Portland library try to delete his old social media account and fail completely flipped my view on giving companies our info.

He spent over an hour on the phone with customer service, getting bounced around, and they finally told him the 'historical archive' of his posts and likes was 'integral to their service model' and couldn't be removed, which made me realize we never really own the digital trails we leave, we just rent space for them on corporate servers. Has anyone actually managed to fully scrub their old data from a big platform?

Just hit 500 miles on the same pair of trail runners, which I was told was impossible for the Teton Crest Trail.

Had to choose between telling my boss about the lights over Phoenix or keeping my job quiet. I picked quiet, but man, that was a weird Tuesday.

I saw a creek in my hometown go from a muddy ditch to full of fish in about 5 years after they planted native trees along the banks.

The city stopped mowing the grass right to the edge and let a local group put in willows and dogwoods, and now the water is clear enough to see trout again, so what's a small change you've seen make a big difference where you live?

Am I the only one who thinks people are way too quick to call any light in the sky a 'satellite'?

I was out last night in my backyard in Phoenix, just looking up, and a guy next to me pointed at a steady light moving fast and said 'cool satellite.' Thing is, it was clearly an airplane. The steady light had that faint red blink if you watched long enough, and the path was all wrong for a polar orbit. People see any moving dot and just guess. It matters because it muddies the water for actual satellite spotting, like when the Starlink train goes over. I've been tracking passes for about six months now with the Heavens-Above app, and you learn the real paths and speeds. A real satellite doesn't blink, and it fades out when it hits the Earth's shadow. How do you all tell the difference when you're just looking with your eyes?

Bought a cheap fitness tracker from Amazon and it actually works

I was sure the $25 'FitBand 2' would be junk, but after wearing it for a month, its step count matches my phone's almost exactly. The sleep tracking seems weirdly accurate too, based on when I know I woke up. Has anyone else had a surprisingly good experience with a no-name gadget?

Hot take: I tried a 50/50 mix of water and vinegar for cleaning a boiler tube bundle and it went really wrong.

I was on a shutdown job in Cleveland last month and a guy on the crew swore by it for light scale, so I gave it a shot on a small section. The mix ate through the scale way too fast and left a weird, almost sticky film that took twice as long to scrub off with a wire brush. Has anyone else had a bad result with a homebrew cleaner like that, or did I just mess up the mix?

My $8 silicone face shield from the hardware store is the best thing for keeping bleach off a client's skin during foils

I was tired of using cotton and petroleum jelly, so I cut a small painter's face shield to fit the hairline and it creates a perfect barrier without smearing the base color, has anyone else tried something like this for color services?