I can give you a description of the bit and my opinion.

A Tom Thumb bit is jointed in the middle and has shanks for leverage. So it has a dual action. When light pressure is used it works on the gums and corners of the mouth. When the reigns are pulled harder the jaw is squeezed while the shanks multiply the force and the center joint folds upward to apply pressure to the roof of the mouth. It's kind of like the volume going from 1 to 11.

Uses:
In theory it should act like a traditional Western bit with the added advantage of rotating the shanks independently...so you can make pressure changes on each side of the mouth independently. In actual practice, it pinches the horses lip in this situation and horses tend to react by tossing their head up or holding their head in an unnaturally high position. With a strong pull it becomes extremely severe. Using it requires a very light hand.

I have used a Tom Thumb successfully with a well trained horse that required no head control but had developed a bad habit of testing his rider by picking up his gate and then bolting. The bit allowed me to ride with no hand but when the horse stretched his neck to take control he ran into the bit. When he relaxed back to the correct position, the pressure was gone. Eventually he didn't want to cause his own discomfort and once he'd broken his bad habits the bit wasn't necessary.

In my opinion, the Tom Thumb appears to check a lot of boxes but in reality it does few of them well. It can work for the right horse, with the right rider, in the right circumstances.

Roy is clearly an inexperienced rider and his personality demands that he assert control, even when he's out of his depth. He's riding a gaited horse (I think it's a Tennessee Walker but my daughter disagrees) and he seems to be trying to make it move like a Quarter Horse. My guess is he's trying to ride in like a cowboy but the horse naturally moves like pretty princess horse. Chaos ensues.

I hope that makes sense. I tried to avoid horse-people terms. If something's unclear or if anyone feels I'm wrong, then I welcome comments.

I did qualify it in my part of the description! The Benz Patent Motor car was still pretty early, predating volume production of either electric or steam cars (in the modern sense of passenger vehicles) which both took off in the 1890s.

I think the exact opposite and assume most others do too. That you would think others would knowingly violate anyone that way speaks volumes about who you are and how you think.

For those wondering how she gets back down from such a situation, here's a longer video of her doing the trick (different place). Small warning, it is a bit loud, and there appears to be no volume on Instagram videos... https://www.instagram.com/p/BSzMisgFLcg/?taken-by=violalovescycling
I saw her initially in GIF form on UNBGBBIIVCHIDCTIICBG "Upvoted Not Because Girl, But Because It Is Very Cool; However, I Do Concede That I Initially Clicked Because Girl"
https://www.reddit.com/r/UNBGBBIIVCHIDCTIICBG/

Hadn't heard of that, but I get the concept. Cool idea.

Off the top of my head, I'm concerned about pump and generator efficiency. You're going to use some amount more energy to pump a volume of water up to the high basin than you will get back by gravity feeding it through generators. To be fair, efficiency is a problem with using and recharging chemical batteries as well, but the limited amount that I remember from college engineering courses tells me that efficiency in the electrical / solid state world tends to be more easily obtained than in the mechanical world.

And as another "to be fair", efficiency is a bigger concern for things like fossil fuels, where burning one unit of fuel produces a set amount of energy and you have to improve efficiency to get the most value out of that energy. With things like solar and wind being "free" energy when active but requiring storage for when the source is inactive (night / calm winds), efficiency still certainly matters, but not as much as with a scarce / non-renewable source of energy.

Anyway, I'd like to see concrete numbers comparing the utility and efficiency (in various metrics) of your hydro storage vs battery storage.

That is what I thought the fade out was for, it allowed better overlap of going from song A to song B on the radio. I also figured it might have to do with physical records, making it easier to go from song A to song B, but couldn't figure out a really reasonable reason on why they'd have to do that, so figured most of it was for radio reasons.

It does sound very odd to have a hard stop and start to a song, and without the fade out, you manually have to move the volume of the songs on the mixer... of course most sons on the radio are done via digital methods, so they can setup an automatic fade, and automatic gain if needed. That or you add a second of silence between tracks.

Does this video embed shitty in the new VS. version as it does for me? Is it just me?
Here it is in the old version of the sift working just fine.
https://videosift.com/unsifted?vs6=optout

@lucky760 anyway of fixing this for me. Doesn't fit the page and starts muted. Can't get to the volume control due to it not fitting the page

(edit) Weird if i zoom out with my browser it fits. If i have it at 100% it does not fit.

I'm almost never in Sift Talk, but I noticed this too. Used to be that to make the top 15 a video would have to get well over the 10-vote generic "sifted" status, but recently I've seen several occasions when there aren't enough videos with 10+ votes to even fill out the top 15 completely.

I'm not an extremely long-time sifter, I've had an account here for 8 years and lurked for probably a couple before that. But in general, the main reasons that I actually joined the community here when I rarely do anything more than lurk (no facebook / reddit / whatever for me) still apply:

Standard YouTube isn't a community, it is a toxic wasteland. Trolls are the rule, not the exception. By far.

On the Sift, I rarely participate by actually posting videos, but the comments sections on videos here are a massive breath of fresh air compared to other sites (particularly YouTube). That's what drew me here and has kept me here.


That being said, I think we've been losing some of the openness to different opinions that has been a real strength of the sift community. With such a divisive US President, I'm sure some of that is inevitable. But, while we've always been better about that than elsewhere on the internet, I think we're losing some of that advantage.

I think the sift leans left -- not extreme, but noticeably. I used to lean moderately right, although generally more in the middle on social issues. My time on the sift (and also NOT living in the US) has pushed me more to the left, again particularly on social issues, but even on the meat-and-potatoes stuff that I think actually belongs in the realm of government. I'm still to the right of sift average, but closer than I was. Credit for that shift in my viewpoints is definitely in part due to the sane, open-minded, and accommodating debates in comments here.

I recognize that it is hard to be accommodating to some of the sifters that are further to the right than I ever was. A certain basketball coach comes to mind. But even when viewpoints from sources like that veer into territory that we find intolerable, I think we here at the sift used to be better about rationally but firmly voicing disagreement without sort of ... picking a fight. If that makes sense.

Just speaking for myself, I think I've probably been upvoting videos less because a higher percentage of what is being sifted is political, and I get fatigued with the volume of that. That's very much tied in to the current situation and media environment, so there isn't necessarily anything to be done about it, but I'd wager that is partially responsible for the lower traffic beyond just myself.

If true, how did they find him later? (Can't hear the video you posted, even at full volume, so I don't know if they said)
Since they went to his home later that day, they identified him somehow. How?

Your video, Oats Studios - Volume 1 - Zygote, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Your video, Oats Studios - Volume 1 - Firebase, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Wow. I didn't realize the difference in prison populations since the 70's was so large. That is completely insane.
I think it speaks volumes that GW sells his paintings for charity and gives the money to the Carter Center. Carter is the only president in my lifetime that I have respect for or feel was honestly working in America's best interests rather than his own. Had we followed his policies instead of scrapping them with Regan, I believe our country would be in incredibly better shape, as would much of the rest of the planet.

Your video, Oats Studios - Volume 1 - Rakka, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

The first teaser is *related=https://videosift.com/video/Oats-Studios-Volume-1-Teaser-Trailer

Oats Studios "Volume 1" - Official Full Trailer has been added as a related post - related requested by RFlagg on that post.