Don Sheldon 🌱
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donsheldon.bsky.social
Don Sheldon 🌱
@donsheldon.bsky.social
250 followers 190 following 4.5K posts
My family revitalizes abandoned homes, maintains them, and rents them fairly. I'm very proud of our work.

We also play games of all descriptions, especially on a table.

I like math and science most, but am interested in everything.

He/Him/His
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donsheldon.bsky.social
A gift, if you ever have need.
Elden Ring-like accomplishment that reads "Joke Explained."
December 6, 2025 at 8:57 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
Minus dog drool and cat fur, this is now everyone's favorite spot in the house. Actually... I guess that makes the point even stronger.
A comfy blue loveseat with a dark wood coffee table in front of it set in a perfectly sized nook with dark wood floors, calm green walls, dark curtains, a funky bare bulb hanging ceiling fixture, and two big, leaded pane windows, one of which is stained glass. There is a "Busy Book" full of educational velcro activities and a small pile of mismatched used crayons on the table.
December 3, 2025 at 3:31 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
Oh! Can I play too?
(I screen-capped this in September for what I can only assume was a similar reason.)
Drive: 10 min Bus etc.: 1 hr 46 Walk: 1 hr 35 Bike: 37 min
December 3, 2025 at 1:07 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
You just died, the sixth picture in your camera roll is what killed you.

I guess I trip on it or something?
A concrete step in need of repair; the edge has a chunk missing that's three inches deep and more than a foot wide. I'm the one who's supposed to repair it.
November 28, 2025 at 4:27 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
Smoke still goes to the chimney👍
A fancy fully enclosed fireplace with a single log burning excellently.
November 26, 2025 at 5:52 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
I had to look it up and figured others might need to as well. Hope I got the right one.
A lovely brass(?) on blue metal plaque affixed to a brick wall reads: LOYALTY TO THE CONSTITUTION THE UNITED STATES BOLDLY BROKE WITH THE ANCIENT MILITARY CUSTOM OF SWEARING LOYALTY TO A LEADER. ARTICLE VI REQUIRED THAT AMERICAN OFFICERS THEREAFTER SWEAR LOYALTY TO OUR BASIC LAW, THE CONSTITUTION. WHILE MANY OTHER NATIONS HAVE SUFFERED MILITARY COUPS, THE UNITED STATES NEVER HAS. OUR AMERICAN CODE OF MILITARY OBEDIENCE REQUIRES THAT, SHOULD ORDERS AND THE LAW EVER CONFLICT, OUR OFFICERS MUST OBEY THE LAW. MANY OTHER NATIONS HAVE ADOPTED OUR PRINCIPLE OF LOYALTY TO THE BASIC LAW. THIS NATION MUST HAVE MILITARY LEADERS OF PRINCIPLE AND INTEGRITY SO STRONG THAT THEIR OATHS TO SUPPORT AND DEFEND THE CONSTITUTION WILL UNFAILINGLY GOVERN THEIR ACTIONS. THE PURPOSE OF THE UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY IS TO PROVIDE SUCH LEADERS OF CHARACTER.
November 25, 2025 at 2:06 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
Spooky dark room, or less spooky single light in the corner room?
The dining room we've been on-and-off working on for seven months; new floor, new walls, new lights, new curtains, repaired windows, windows moved from other rooms in the house, rebuilt built-in shelves (not seen). It is mostly dark, the only illumination is from street lights and neighbor's houses across the street. One of the leaded pane windows casts a cool shadow. The same room, but this fun, orb-like hanging light fixture in the far alcove is on. It illuminates the room to show the pale green walls, dark stained hardwood floor, and the stained glass window. The main chandelier remains unlit.
November 25, 2025 at 7:10 AM
donsheldon.bsky.social
My father in law told me to change an electrical outlet in the rental next door. When I said I didn't know how he tossed me a Time Life how-to book (this one, I think). I'm not an electrician, I do general property maintenance and repair for our rental company.
A book cover, Time Life's The Complete Guide to Home Wiring (brought to you by Black & Decker). There is a switch with wires attached and some similar inset pictures that I can't make out at this resolution.
November 23, 2025 at 1:58 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
That'll do. This part took a week because we've been tag-teaming illness through the house, but it's also the end of a project that started in April. Now for the rest of Thanksgiving prep.
The same floor with dark stain and very shiny finish from almost the same weird angle.
November 23, 2025 at 1:31 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
Not bad for an hour of work using whatever I had around the house. (Plus three hours of dragging wood up from the driveway.) Not sure why I have so many 2x6s but hardly any 2x4s.
A passable wood rack full of about a quarter cord of firewood.
November 20, 2025 at 12:19 AM
donsheldon.bsky.social
Hello bad brain time, normally just one of these is enough to get rid of you.
Not one but two origami irises (as in the flower). One red, one yellow, with no stems, resting on a faux-wood table surface with weirdly strong shadows.
November 18, 2025 at 8:14 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
Last look before the point of no return. Here comes the stain. This is only the second time I've done this to a floor, wish me luck.
Weird angle of a very smoothly sanded hardwood floor.
November 16, 2025 at 8:10 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
Cat-proofing a winter home for the porch plants with an old shelf and the screens from the porch, since we're not using them.
Plants. On a shelf. With removable porch screens attached.
November 10, 2025 at 5:32 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
A silly picture I drew with my kids' Crayola markers that says "Party Like It's 1793" in the shape of a guillotine. (The year the French actually beheaded the royalty after imprisoning them for some time.)
November 8, 2025 at 6:58 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
This is the true, not at all sarcastic galaxy brain.
From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar", every "supreme leader", every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
November 7, 2025 at 9:59 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
So "the ghetto" is appalachia, the southeast coast, and the pacific northwest?
A map of SNAP beneficiaries as percentage of population.
October 27, 2025 at 12:54 AM
donsheldon.bsky.social
Because that's what we call the thing that frickin happens for roughly 19 million people. The effect. Ripples. What are you stuck on? Also, your 1% statistic is flat out wrong to start with.

www.brookings.edu/articles/the...
Although relatively few workers report wages exactly equal to (or below) the minimum wage, a much larger share of workers in the United States earns wages near the minimum wage. This holds true in the states that comply with the federal minimum wage, in addition to those states that have instituted their own higher minimum wage levels. An increase in the minimum wage tends to have a “ripple effect” on other workers earning wages near that threshold. This ripple effect occurs when a raise in the minimum wage increases the wage received by workers earning slightly above the minimum wage.
October 25, 2025 at 11:05 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
Among the quotes from respected scientists and beloved philosophers there is also one (the best) comedian.
Civ7 tech upgrade for Heraldry, "Yes, but... do you have a flag?" (Technically that's vexillology, but I suppose they are related.)
October 21, 2025 at 12:25 AM
donsheldon.bsky.social
🌍👨‍🚀🔫👨‍🚀
"always has been" astronaut meme with no text
October 20, 2025 at 1:06 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
For comparison, a mathematically determinative method that divides the state's population with the shortest possible lines. Look at how normal those district shapes are!
"Shortest split line" districts of NC.
October 16, 2025 at 9:19 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
A gift, if you have need of it.
Souls-like quest completion screen reads "Joke Explained."
October 16, 2025 at 3:36 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
Examples
Three examples of ICE agents dressed like an eclectic XCom 2 team. (Images taken from abc news.)
October 15, 2025 at 8:32 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
A different but related graph.
A line graph titled "The history of left-handedness\ Rate of left-handedness among Americans, by year of birth." It shows a low dip from 1880 to 1910 bottoming out at 3%, then a steady climb through 1960 to 12% where it has stayed ever since because that's how many people are actually left-handed when you don't literally beat it out of them.
October 15, 2025 at 2:57 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
Violence and intimidation... to control the behavior of a civilian population... where have I read about that...?
terrorism • /'terərizəm/ the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.
October 14, 2025 at 1:54 PM
donsheldon.bsky.social
Protip: don't use a cheap awl to mark steel pipes.
In the background is two lengths of half inch steel pipe and a hammer. In the foreground is a cheap awl with the last quarter inch of its tip bent 90°.
October 13, 2025 at 2:45 PM