Discover Your Flight Gate Early with This Simple Plane Finder Hack | June 24 2025, 22:08

I just found a lifehack on how to determine your departure gate when it’s not yet displayed on the board. Go to planefinder net, enter your flight, and it shows the tail number of the airplane for that specific departure. Click on the link with the tail number, and it shows where the plane is arriving from—the gate it arrives at is known much earlier than the gate from where the new flight departs. So head to this gate, as it’s almost certain to appear on the board by the time someone gets around to updating it.

Yes, everything will go awry if they change the plane. But it’s very unlikely that the airplane will change, as any replacement has to be the same model otherwise it causes chaos with the already assigned seating, and airplanes are not changed often (although it has happened to me several times). Nonetheless, there’s nothing to do at the airport, and playing the game of guessing the gate is interesting.

Preserving History in Metal: The Story of U.S. Historical Markers | June 08 2025, 13:24

A rather useful thing was invented in the USA. How do you make sure that history is preserved for centuries? Books burn, the internet is obviously a temporary phenomenon. Across the entire US territory stand these signs called Historical Markers. There are already over 220,000 of them. They are practically indestructible — these are raised letters on a thick metal plate. Often there’s a quite wordy paragraph on them, and they are placed not only in recreational areas but often in places where you can neither drive up to them nor easily walk up. For example, you’re driving on a highway where you can’t go under 40 miles per hour, and there’s nowhere to stop, and somewhere off the road in the field there’s a marker for deer about some battle. Well, apparently, they believe that when they will be needed, there won’t be a problem in accessing them.