The Associated Worlds - random

The Associated Worlds

Offtopic / random

Irrelevant whatever.

yeah, and most would say that

eh it's still homework in lower-division classes

I guess? I jumped past those, as did most of my friends

I literally said I went to a reletavely expensive school

And?

It could easily be a private secondary school

16:46

from the context of your exasperation I'm guessing you mean tertiary, but no, it wasn't obvious from what you said

We only have primary and secondary.

is there such a thing as quaternary school?

Any idea why someone would make a debit card with a tungsten core?

because tungsten

Because if they throw it hard enough it'll go through armour?

so you can charge a bunch of fees for the prestige

@Unknown you realize that middle and high school are secondary education and college/university are tertiary, right?

17:38

@Zarpaulek not by that name, but they’re distinguished under the ISCED classification used by UNESCO

I just got these guys' new debit card and it's heavy as heck https://www.acorns.com/

Acorns - Invite

You are invited to try Acorns.

@MarcusAurelius nope but aol

What does America Online have to do with this?

17:42

@Unknown aol?

Aok Even

Standard English please, we seem to have highly divergent slang

Okay.

Ah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciUNG-ajDro

GERMANY'S COLOSSAL TANK P. 1000 RATTE ( War Thunder P.1000 Ratte G...

random fact of the evening: it would take approximately 1.2million mosquitos to drain the average human's blood

buys 1.21 million mosquitos

That scene in one punch man was unrealistic then

Eh, they might have a supervillain mosquito?

i dunno that One Punch Man's primary goal is "realism"

Somehow taking the GPU out of my computer and putting it back in fixed it. I also found out about my horrific dust buildup.

Well maybe that was the problem.

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15:52

I'm on your side

trust Friend Computer (edited)

There is basically no chance of Brexit working out in a way that more than 10% of people actually want.

the basic problem is that the UK want's to have their cake and eat it to, as it were. They want EU economy benefits without submitting to EU authority along with it. They want a hard border with the EU without having a militant border with Ireland south. They want a peaceful border with Ireland south without having to cut North Ireland from the UK's customs wall.

16:27

CGP Grey has a much more eloquent summary of the situation up.

We could at least get a less-awful solution, but the MPs said no, so yaaaay.

16:28

Less awful than hard brexit I mean.

Every possible compromise has sacrifices in it that parliament is unwilling to make (usually differing chunks of parliament, but enough to collectively sink all proposable deals)

16:29

They don't want a hard brexit either, but that's the default if no other agreements can be reached

I think they voted to not have one, but I don't know how that's actually meant to work.

or, possibly, some sort of 'perpetually asking for extensions' situation.

16:31

oh yes, that's right. A. Parliament has voted to prohibit a no deal brexit. B. Parliament refuses to accept a deal for brexit. C. Parliament somehow expects both A and B to both continue to be true.

This is a new level of craziness. An Australian prime minister claimed that their laws were more important than the laws of mathematics, but they're trying to beat simple logic.

16:33

I mean, if that 3 month extension thing goes through, it might be workable, at least.

and then in 3 months ask for another extension, ad naseum

16:34

which, tbh, isn't even the worst solution

It would be good, but someone will inevitably kill it a few electoral terms down the line.

at which point it's someone elses hot potato

Assuming that they get the extension

Impossible trinity... man, UK leadership really are caught in the worst possible situation

16:51

Don’t want to obey the people but can’t disobey the people but can’t look weak in front of the EU

I think it's in the EU's interest to grant the extension

"can’t look weak in front of the EU" a little late for that one

On the contrary, I think letting the uk drive right onto the edge of the cliff is in the best interest of the eu

17:28

1) it shows that if you do want to leave, you have a lot of work to do and a lot of ducks to get lined up

17:28

2) it also shows that the eu takes its own regs and requirements seriously

The true joy of Brexit is being a Grand Political Issue of the Day about which I need, and indeed can, give precisely no fucks whatsoever.

17:48

Everyone involved is terrible. Pass the popcorn.

I often see a criticism along the lines of "Most of the work missed the point of its own metaseries, but there was this one scene/mission/moment that was fantastic and actually brought back the zeitgeist that made the originals so fun. If the entire work had been like this, it would have been much better."

several of the modern Sonic games come to mind on that front

that's an odd outlook on Brexit, Bizarro

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA

(seriously man you need to introduce new topics instead of just opining out of nowhere)

@0111narwhalz yeah yeah okay XP

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15:35

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Oooh, poster art? somethign that's supposed to go ina board game?

@Xveers but it's bad for the UK. And I'm in the UK. So it's bad.

Cataclysm: Dark Days Ahead is an awesome game! you can be a normal citizen, a police officer, a hobo, bionic junkie, military recruit or even a full blown cyborg solider! (edited)

you also die really fast

That's because it's a Fun game.

Note to self: Bionic monster gameplay is HARD

So New Zealand is doing the mandatory buyback thing

Such a beautifully Orwellian term.

Yeah. It's just confiscation with a token cash prize. (edited)

12:01

I don't recall how it worked with the NFA. Was the reward the same or did it depend on the gun?

12:02

paging morgrim

Good

@Enderminion what's good

12:06

I mean I'm 96% certain what you think is so good but just wanted to be sure

getting guns off the street

12:07

nobody really needs guns anyway

I have a fairly large list of things that "nobody really needs" that, in the unlikely event of becoming World Dictator, I plan to use liberally to beat that argument to death.

nobody really needs paintings

12:08

nobody really needs lawns

12:08

nobody really needs juice

12:08

etc etc

12:08

ad nauseam

Also, if you're a 90 lb. woman in an alley facing three big guys intent on mayhem, then, sorry, but you need a fucking gun .

That applies if you're a 120 lb. man as well

12:09

apparently I'm pretty twiggish

12:10

'this isn't the wild west we need police'

ok, who even goes into an alley anyway?

they will say when push inevitable comes to shove

12:10

@Enderminion a lot of people you know where there's a back or side entrance

"When seconds count, the police are only minutes away."

Yep.

Less trafficked street, then.

And when the police do arrive, they might just decide to cover it up and ignore you anyway.

That's a serious edge case and opens the door to the three big guys intent on mayhem getting the drop on the lady with their own guns

No shit.

12:12

Still a better scenario.

getting shot reaching for your gun is worse than possibly surviving less your wallet?

Also, 'edge case' lol

12:13

Tell that to anyone in an inner city

12:13

Or any part of a city

12:13

@Enderminion They may want to take more than just her money. hint hint.

Regardless of whether having guns is a good idea or not, it's still a bit stupid to set government policy based on the latest terror attack.

They don't need to. They have the advantage already. Guns are equalizers in defense. Taking them away doesn't render people harmless, it just tilts the balance of power towards the physically biggest and strongest: coincidentally , all young males in the habit of routine violence. This sucks for everyone else. But in any case, "need" is irrelevant, my desire to issue people who argue based on need one shared shed, water, and gruel each and that alone by way of demonstrating the point. In anything resembling a free society, you can do anything not malum in se . (edited)

1

perportionally, that terrorist attack was worse than 9/11 for NZ

It's nearly impossible to argue with a bawling mother who just lost her child

Which is also a bad thing to base government policy on. (edited)

@Overmind Winchell Chung argues that 'guns aren't equalizers, the best gunman still can push you around!!'

Still no excuse for knee-jerking, and even less excuse for imposing restrictions upon the liberties of the approximately 4.7 million people who DIDN'T do it.

Which indicates the fact he's never been in a gunfight for my part (edited)

far more likey than not, neither have you

Since you appear, er, not dead.

@BizarroLand ♀ The smart gunman knows that you don't go looking for a firefight the same way the meatwad might go looking for a fist-fight, because you stand a much higher change of becoming corpsified.

Bingo.

12:17

Violence is always dangerous regardless of your talent at it

12:19

And Chung seriously seems to think Wild West quick drawing is still in vogue

12:19

Newsflash: that doesn't work with a lot of modern holsters (edited)

Among people with similar capacities for it, certainly. And it's a lot easier to have similar capacities when you lower the barrier for entry, which is the true magic of the gun for a tool-using species. Suddenly the official and unofficial warrior castes don't get to dominate everyone else.

America an't the wild west, you are going to die as quickly as you would in the real world Wild West

The key is not to become completely protected

12:20

The key is to make the action of pugilating against you riskier (edited)

12:21

Even a significantly higher chance of winding up with a bullet wound will deter a lot of potential attackers

And, not to put too fine a point on it, if the only way you, as a government, can imagine fulfilling your notional responsibility to protect your citizens is to preemptively render them harmless, helpless, and hopeless before anyone who doesn't obey you, then you are grossly incompetent and should be replaced by one that can , or is at least willing to try .

1

I guess I just live in a low crime area, the recent major crime was some guy getting caught in his truck in public... doing stuff... not drugs

I live in the kind of low-crime area where you don't even need to lock your doors most of the time, and yet. As a matter of principle, and all that, and the Gospel of Edgar Friendly.

... I also live next to the Rich Person Neighbour hood, and are still in the Middle class area

I live in the sketchy Medium To High Crime area

What's living in America like?

https://www.reddit.com/r/dgu/

1

Awesome, except for all the would-be non-americans shakes fist

Living in the U.S.? Not as free as I'd been led to believe, unfortunately.

Oh, and fun fact: It took 38 minutes for the police to respond

"We responded really slowly to a terrorist attack, what shall we do?! The public will be angry at us!" "Arrest people who have the video of us failing to respond and do something big which sounds like it'll kind of help to distract everyone." "We could try actually improving..." "No."

@gollark Unfortunately, voters tend to respond more to shocking images of women crying and emotional appeals from teenagers than substantive reasoning.

I actually considered building up enough ships (~32,000) to trigger an integer overflow and face off with a game-crashing antiship fleet, but this playthrough is already silly enough.

Using a signed int16 for ship count?

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…What's a negative ship count?

16:24

Signage is totally overrated sometimes V:

Thank you Luna https://m.imgur.com/gallery/sShnGd3

belated response: for the aussie buyback, it was a variable payment based on the type of weapon and how many of the 'dangerous' features it had. So an automatic pistol got more than a semi automatic, iirc (I was a kid when it happened)

19:42

Personally, I don't think those sort of weapons can be classified as 'self defence' weapons, because they're absolutely terrible at it. They're designed for killing large numbers of people and forcing the rest into cover via lots of bullets aimed fairly indiscriminately. They can't disable an attacker. Which means you can't afford to be wrong - if you think someone is an aggressor but it's a false positive you are a murderer. If you have a false negative you've drastically increased the likely violence about to be committed on your person. If you're caught be surprise they're too slow to make ready. And even if you are shooting at a genuine Bad Person for very good reasons, the potential for bullets ricocheting /through and though/missing and hitting an innocent bystander is very high. The only thing WORSE as a defensive weapon would be an explosive. So it would be really nice if people having gun debates stopped using 'self defence' as an argument and picked something workable, because it makes them look like they're itching to kill people and that's unhelpful all around.

19:43

(I mean, if you're likely to be facing hordes of monsters charging your fortified shelter, then maybe. But that can be solved with allowing anchored machine gun emplacements instead of mobile automatic weapons.)

Also, you're unlikely to be carrying anything big enough to sustain automatic fire with current technology.

19:46

The thing though, is that many 2nd Amendment advocates think it was intended to enable the people to overthrow the government if it went bad.

I will admit I'm a bit shaky on the distinctions between auto and semiauto on an engineering scale. (All the guns I've handled have been bolt action rifles.)

Despite Washington's response to the Whiskey Rebellion

Er, no? It was to defend against the English coming for round 2, because they didn't have the resources for a standing army

19:47

I mean, weren't Washington's letters really clear on that?

They were also ideologically opposed to the concept of a standing army.

19:48

Of course, when round 2 against the English did happen it became clear they were going to need to reorganize the national defense

the whole "as part of a well regulated militia" shows it wasn't for overthrowing the government

People here don't think of militias as being organized by the government.

...

19:50

out of morbid curiosity, what DO they think is the difference between a militia and an armed mob?

19:53

I'm used to the european perspective, I guess, where historically militia were the civillians trained to fight to bulk out the army or in modern times as the last ditch local defence. Like how people where trained to fight against invading nazis with sharpened gardening tools

Persistence I suppose.

19:54

"Mob" is kind of synonomous with "riot" or even "protest" these days.

if you're fighting the government you are, kinda by definition, a riot

While here militia tends to mean "right wing militia fanatics"

19:55

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RightWingMilitiaFanatic

Right-Wing Militia Fanatic - TV Tropes

The Right-Wing Militia Fanatic trope as used in popular culture. These people are members of an underground militia which holds suspicion that The Government …

and also a protest, but I tend to reserve that for less violence or "violence isn't the point"

Sigh. There is a lot of history y'all apparantly don't know. Not your fault, even schools in the US don't cover early United Statesian history well. (edited)

(As in, a sadly significant percentage of protests turn violent, but you can have non-violent protests and the point of a protest is not violence. Wheras the point of the riot IS violence)

19:56

Yeah, I'm aussie; 90% of my US Independence War knowledge is from Carmen Sandiego.

19:57

The rest is from my habit of collecting weird war stories.

I drop in for a moment to refer you here: http://www2.law.ucla.edu/volokh/common.htm

Excellent...I has looking for that.

And also to the rest of Prof. Volokh’s articles on the subject, obtainable via Google.

/reads

20:01

~~I kinda want to donate some minimal CSS to this guy to make this page easier to read~~

20:05

huh. I didn't know that slavery was expressedly forbidden. It makes a lot of sense, given the significant slavery of the irish that was taking place at the time. Now I'm curious what changes were made to explicitly exclude cotton slavery

"From anecdotes and observational research, scientists have known for a while that red-bellied piranhas make bark-like noises when caught by fishermen. Upon further examination, a team of Belgian scientists found that they make three distinctive types of vocalization in different situations." Fish. Can BARK?!

next they're gonna tell us that barking spiders are real

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGv1LiFZUWI it's less bark and more boof, but this is apparently a warning sound, "don't mess with me"

Stefano Di Criscio

Piranha War Cries 1 - Utter rapid calls

21:05

done while staring the other fish down

oh, like vibrating cichlids

21:05

(sometimes my mouse buttons make that sound)

then there is a sort of sharp click sound done while circling.

21:06

and final threat posture is the fish gnashing their teeth at each other

21:07

the first two are made by twanging their swim bladder

@Morgrim Moon The reference to slavery being forbidden comes from the Vermont constitution. A state where cotton farming was impractical

ah

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/22/uri-geller-promises-to-stop-brexit-using-telepathy #NotTheOnion (edited)

Uri Geller promises to stop Brexit using telepathy

Illusionist has told Theresa May he will ‘not allow’ her to lead Britain out of the EU

bwahahahahaha

He couldn't bend a paperclip with a hydraulic press

https://medium.com/@BambouClub/which-city-has-the-best-climate-in-the-world-355e013e9e95

Which city has the best climate in the world?

The 400 Cities Digital Nomad Index answers the question: Which cities globally are Cheap, Safe, and have the best Climate? A proprietary…

16:28

The Greek climate is the best in the world apparently.

It depends how you define "best".

@gollark I know, I know, subjective preference etc

Greece is way too hot for me.

But this is a fairly objective comparison of life quality, amount of cities etc

It seems like the other (non-climate) data is actually from the "400 cities" index.

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16:40

We evolved in Tanzania didn't we

16:40

So logically that should be the best climate

Kenya, but most of us have had 10,000+ years to adapt to other environments

Aw (Tropical Savannah) seems to be the best climate

16:41

Huh

16:41

Do 10,000 years give time to adapt?

It gave time for skin color to striate, at the very least.

(gazes at pale skin) fair point

16:45

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16:45

Thus compare to this map of world pop density

16:45

Seems like Humans enjoy Cfa climates the most!

Anyone know of a good linkage / lever simulator? Something imple where I can just drop some pieces and anchors and push them around.

I feel I should point out that white skin isn't actually a baseline human trait at all. It's a Neanderthal trait that some groups in europe and northern asia got from interbreeding. That's why the innuit - who would also benefit from white skin in an evolutionary sense, and show some of the highest levels of pure-evolutionary adaption - are more a pale tan.

19:18

There's some interesting research suggesting the blonde and red hair mutations were pretty widespread in europe while all the humans there had dark skin. ~~and it's pretty funny exposing some white supremacists to this and watching their brains break~~

isn't actually a baseline human trait at all Insert obligatory "speak for yourself, Cro-Magnon" here.

Well, maybe I'm using 'baseline' incorrectly. In my mind, a baseline trait is one that all humans have, or have the mechanical potential to have.

Or maybe I'm just failing to be funny. Yeah, that's probably it.

So the Himalayan hyper-efficient oxygen carrying is not, that's Denarian. An- ah. Okay, sorry, I haven't had enough sleep or any tea yet.

#browridgepride

https://twitter.com/Rainmaker1973/status/1109553462260445184?s=09

Massimo (@Rainmaker1973)

Iterated function systems (IFSs) are a method of constructing fractals, which are more related to set theory than fractal geometry https://t.co/JbsYAjlzDI Tamas Melykuti is a graphic programmer who realizes kaleidoscopic 3D versions of IFS fractals https://t.co/UUQyVGz6RI ...

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https://apenwarr.ca/log/20190318

Programmer migration patterns

I made a little flow chart of mainstream programming languages and how programmers seem to move from one to another. There's a more common...

https://twitter.com/Yakitate_aggai/status/1109824173851828225?s=09

やきたてあっがい (@Yakitate_aggai)

自律二足歩行野外水具七号

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hey guys i was gone over the weekend because I moved houses

NASA might send a nuclear-powered flying robot to Titan

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I STILL CRY EVERY TIEM

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<3

Fun fact: Voyager 2 has also left the heliosphere

14:48

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Random bit of future shock: I grew up with Media using dates in the 2010s and 2020s often enough that it's kind of weird to almost be in the year 2020

I feel like now should be more futurey.

The 21st century is well shaping up to be quite different from what anyone imagined

There seems to be a bunch of stuff which could have been cool but never got polished enough/people disliked it. Like Google Glass.

I remember a guy who managed to procure a GGlass prototype three? years ago.

16:55

That was the shit.

You could probably make a bootleg version with a cheap transparent screen (these must surely exist) and a small computer and battery attached to a hat or something.

So a microcomputer running Fedora attached to a fedora?

17:02

Glass flopped because people were ripping them off wearer’s faces.

Perhaps we need some way to get people to not do that...

wearable computers have just gotta be the most stupidest techcorp idea i have ever heard as an american (edited)

17:15

what if y'fall into water

Then you would have other problems.

17:17

And if you fall into water, your phone will also break.

it became super taboo to push people into pools because of that

18:11

used to be silly get someone sopping wet, not "destroy 700$ worth of their property"

also people who wear spex tend to look kind of douchey

18:51

This may be because of my odd upbringing, but I never really saw the logic behind the xenophilia trope

18:52

and 'Xeno' as in 'an alien ecology'

18:52

because of the probable psychological and biochemical barriers etc

Well, yeah, but what percentage of people look at these projects and start nitpicking? Tough SF is a niche, I think.

18:54

And I will admit I find them interesting as worldbuilding.

I was brought up watching popscience shows where they pointed out how unrealistic most tropes were

18:55

Only got into fandom later

It’s the exotic orient, IN SPESS

@MarcusAurelius fair

Also I still cant see how fashion would change

21:21

I like the look and exoticism of a piece of latex wear in an ensemble

21:22

But the rubberized does not breathe at all and it’s a female dog to clean

21:22

Barring nanomemes or apocalypse what materials may get popular

Like we said before, “fashion” and “practical” are rarely in the same universe

Okay, then streetwear

21:24

I’m just kinda dense

I'd agree that less flowy clothing would be preferable on zero or low g habs

21:24

but most pants, shorts, and even some types of skirts fit that

functionwise? Jumpsuits might get popular in places where extraveh activity is common

Jumpsuits as in the skintight latex numbers old SF had, or modern style coveralls?

both

I'd say the latter is more likely

eh

easier to fit, requires less sizing, easier to make out of durable and breathable fabrics, can wear underlayers, etc

@MarcusAurelius maybe an anti g suit?

21:40

If torches are common

21:40

https://images.app.goo.gl/sKHrmPvPyRFPEfkp9

21:40

the F35 ensemble

not how even that isn't that body hugging though

21:42

it's mostly made out of loose fitting fabric, with the bladders only tightening under acceleration

Youd have to be in liquid breathing tanks to survive high G maneuveres

21:44

So it fits

I doubt that would be common enough to have a serious influence on popular clothing

and even if it were, you'd want to get out of the tanksuits once in a while

I think moderate amounts of flowy garments will be common in microgravity, because one of the reason longcoats are popular and capes are cool is the swishiness. And with a bit of practice you learn to move with the cloak and not wrap it around your legs. Microgravity seems ripe for the same but cooler.

true, but you won't have gravity to help resettle them so they'll be constantly moving. Maybe more of full sleeves and short skirts over leggings/pants (edited)

small magnets and metal studs in the hem of the coat and thighs of the pants so they generally stay in place

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ielx5/5/6021970/06021978.pdf Some actual reasonable arguments against nuclear power.

I remain unimpressed. On point one, we need to find locations away from dense population zones for reasons which amount to... nucleophobia, and that would be it. An industry that has racked up mere thousands of fatalities in its entire history is one that anyone sane should be happy to live next to. A damn sight safer than a coal plant, for a start, not to mention much cleaner. As for copious supplies of cooling water, how many miles of coastline do we have again? On point the second: "decommissioning by entombment" is stupid for the reasons I'll get to next, and in any case, you only need to entomb the core . You can then reuse all the other land safely unless you're suffering from Nonexistent Free Neutrons Make Baby Jesus Cry Syndrome.

Now, the location s that are stable and not prone to certain natural disasters bit makes a lot of sense

On the third: the only reason nuclear embrittlement forces decommissioning in that timeframe is because we insist on designing plants like idiots . The only parts of the plant that suffer from meaningful neutron embrittlement are the core and some components of the primary coolant loop. If this causes you to, at the end of those components' lifetime, throw away THE ENTIRE REST OF THE PLANT, that's not physics's fault, that's your lamentable lack of engineering foresight in not designing a REPLACEABLE CORE, ffs.

03:39

(And since we could roll a fully fueled Saturn V weighing 6.5 million lbs around the place in 1967, don't give me any of that "too big, heavy, and dangerous" bullshit, 'kay?) (edited)

03:41

Four: I repeat: REPLACEABLE CORE.

03:45

Five: the nuclear waste problem is settled, it's just that people don't like the solution. High-level waste is called fuel . This is what reprocessing and breeder reactors, and all the other parts of the nuclear fuel cycle are for that, coincidentally, enable us to extract all the juicy energetic goodness from the uranium, including the otherwise useless U-238. The only reason we don't do this is because people are scared of big bad plutonium and people getting their hands on nuclear material. Well, kids, since Kim Jong Un and his pariah nation can build a bomb without benefit of stealing the plutonium we aren't making, I'm gonna rule that the cat's out of the bag and the national security justification from throwing away 92% unburnt fuel rods is, finally, definitively and empirically, bollocks.

03:46

Low level waste, on the other hand, is a trivial problem that goes away by itself in decades, not 50 kiloyears. At that rate, you could stuff it into shipping containers, stack it in Death Valley, and put a fence around it with a sarcastic warning sign and still be pretty certain that it wouldn't even kill hardy illiterates with a trash fetish.

03:48

Six: accidents which didn't kill anyone, and which with one incredibly badly-designed and operated exception left you with a bunch or corium in a bottle where it couldn't harm anyone. Most large industries pray to have more accidents like that.

03:49

Seven: Proliferation, schmoliferation. See above.

03:50

Eight, nine, and ten: All of which would be substantially less of a problem if we weren't throwing away most of the energy in every fuel rod, like a bunch of chucklefucks.

03:51

....urgh. I can't go on.

03:54

But suffice it to say that this depends on the unmentioned elephant in the room, which is that we run the nuclear power industry like someone who buys a new car, drives it until the fuel gauge shows one-tenth empty, then throws the car away and buys a new one. This is moronic on a level that makes the economics of the US healthcare system look like a work of fucking millennial genius, and anything that doesn't acknowledge that all the current data we have is gathered from doing things in the stupidest manner imaginable is thus, indubitably, poppycock.

My big issue with nuclear power is that our current uranium mining methods are an environmental catastrophe. Conveniently breeder reactors go a long way to solving this too

@Morgrim Moon do you know if thorium mining is significantly cleaner, or is it just as bad?

I'm doing a quick read and it looks like there isn't any large scale thorium mining, so it's ambiguous

09:14

but it'd probably be closer to sand mining given where and how its found, so yes that would be at least a magnitude easier and better for the environment

09:15

For those that don't know: current uranium mining practices are injecting huge volumes of acid into the water table, dissolving the ore, pumping it out, filtering out the uranium, and dumping the remaining fluid into settlement ponds. Obviously this does pretty catastrophic things to your water table and anything that was previously alive in the area.

09:17

thorium extraction also uses acid, but you take the ore out of the ground first

People don't like the solutions because that was never the point. Premise is stuffing the nuclear genie back in the bottle, everything else must support that.

Way to bet on the mining side of things is that uranium is still better because you need so much less of it per GJ

See, I'm very unsure about that

09:30

mostly because thorium is a byproduct of mining multiple other useful things, and currently treated as waste. While uranium must be mined specifically.

09:31

so you're exerting so much less energy on getting it that it may well compensate for getting less out of it

meant uranium vs coal

oh, then hugely yes

also

09:46

Solar thermal? What about, you know, island nations, countries with no deserts, instability of most of the countries that do have deserts...

09:48

My home country, Puerto Rico, already has every reservoir well dammed and half of our days get rain

Hey, Australia's 90% desert

Solar thermal is worse than PV at handling sunlight reduction

And less efficient

you can hammer together a solar thermal engine out of bronze if you need to though

It’d be hideously inefficient though

minecraft intensifies

https://www.google.com/amp/s/qz.com/1295679/why-the-solar-revolution-is-in-grave-danger-and-how-it-can-be-saved/amp/

The solar revolution is in grave danger, but we can save it

The world is facing two futures: let the solar revolution sputter out and face ruin or harness solar power to help reign in climate change.

If renewables were actually profitable and better than fossil fuels you could not keep nations from using themes

they are better tho (edited)

10:26

for the environment

given the strength of the coal lobby in the swing state that pretty much dictates the federal leader in australia, the fact that politicians are trying to get more coal plants built despite the bulk of aussies and every non-elected government group saying no they're more expensive than solar isn't a surprise.

10:27

Supremely irritating, but not a surprise.

10:28

Fact is, here solar is better than coal. Whether it's better than natural gas is currently debatable.

nuclear looks on with a smirk at people learning about coal lobbying

Nuclear is better than coal in the long term, is it not?

Most things are.

General solution to the "Which energy source is better?" question: The better one has the higher energy density

What about hamster wheels? /s

@Ian Bruene antimatter intensifies

Better as in lower ecological/environmental impact.

Nuclear also has a MUCH higher energy density

@Tassadar yes, better on that scale too. You need to harvest a whole lot more for a lower density source

Wait, would nuclear be considered higher or lower density?

Antimatter's not really an energy source.

multiple orders of magnitude higher

11:08

do I need to pull the xkcd out?

11:08

https://xkcd.com/1162/

xkcd: Log Scale

11:10

http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=521 (battery tech has gotten better since this was written, but the general point stands)

Why Alternative Energy Isn't

As oil prices recede from all-time dollar highs and some of the hot air gets let out of energy policy debates, it's a good time to remember that here's a key concept missing from almost every popul...

why must applying for a home loan be so frustrating?!

hey guys

Hï.

building on our mars sample return discussion a while ago, i've been thinking about a sample return mission

12:31

To Pluto

12:31

12:33

no seriously

12:38

If you can actually land, Pluto's pretty much perfect for a sample return

if you don't mind waiting 30 years or using very energetic propulsion systems

Its low orbital speed means you only need to expend a few km/s of Delta-V to just drop towards Earth after leaving Pluto SOI, and it's covered in frozen water, nitrogen and methane, meaning you have abundant carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen to synthesize pretty much every currently used rocket fuel (edited)

12:42

You see, my constraints are not money and time, but Delta-V and mass!

Beware kerbalthink.

shush you

12:43

i'm already drawing blueprints

12:46

i'm thinking a fission reactor for power

12:46

And we can gravity brake off of Charon

12:46

Any suggestions?

This thing isn't going to be small

13:07

might as well go all the way and give it an NTR for the extra deltaV

Yes, already planned on it

13:08

An NTR will be mounted to the actual interplanetary bus and will be used for interplanetary flight

13:09

The Pluto lander will use chemical propulsion and use its ISRU to both refuel itself and deliver significant quantities of hydrogen to the interplanetary transfer orbiter's tanks, as well as returning samples

I doubt the ISRU set up would be that much lighter than just taking slightly larger tanks

slightly, he says

13:18

it's another 10 km/s of Delta-V

13:19

(this is mostly because I want the lander to hop over to Charon and take more samples before coming back to Pluto orbit. If you neglect Charon, no ISRU is needed.)

13:19

BECAUSE MAXIMUM SAMPLES

The left accuses the right of all being Nazis because there are a handful of Nazis on the right.

The right accuses the left of all being Communists because there are a handful of Communists on the left.

The middle shakes their heads and watches the whole country spiral down the toilet as extremists on both sides destroy everything.

The libertarians accuse both sides of being assholes, because that's bloody obvious to anyone paying attention.

The people who know stuff facepalm at the Bothsame arguments

No-one's saying that they're the same assholes.

13:37

Assholes come in many forms.

13:40

See, it's like being offered the choice of live maggots or arsenic-infused pigshit for lunch. Each is a horrible option in its own highly distinctive way and likely to lead to equally unique digestive upset, but it is not denying this to say, "Well, fuck off then, I'm having the salad."

13:41

(Assuming, that is, they're facepalming in good faith and not simply dressing up a false dichotomy for a night out in Twitterville, that is.)

Actually arsenic is probably the worse option

13:43

Heavy metal poisoning wreaks havoc on organs for pretty much the rest of your life

13:44

Especially the invaluable nerve matter

This does not change that they are both shitty options .

Exactly

Of course, this is usually where someone brings up that "you've gotta vote for the lesser evil" canard.

‘Live maggots are gross but they won’t poison you if cleaned lol’

At which point it is ethically obligatory to smack them upside the head and remind them that that's exactly how we've got all this fucking evil around the place, belike, and it's their damn fault .

"Choosing the lesser evil" makes sense when you either are forced into a truly limited options scenario, or you need to halt something right now, and the lesser evil buys you enough time to then do the non-evil option.

13:55

Naturally the lesser evil meme is usually not one of these

https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2019/03/20/andrew-yangs-basic-income-is-stealth-welfare-reform/

Benjamin Studebaker

Andrew Yang’s Basic Income is Stealth Welfare Reform

When I first heard Andrew Yang was running on a UBI platform, I thought he was running to popularise universal basic income as a policy option for the future. It has become increasingly clear, howe…

14:23

https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2019/03/21/have-the-ubi-people-turned-to-the-dark-side/

Benjamin Studebaker

Have the UBI People Turned to the Dark Side?

Yesterday, I wrote a post highlighting the regressive effects of Andrew Yang’s UBI proposal, especially its impact on our poorest and most vulnerable. Yang promises to pay for his UBI (of jus…

14:24

The continuous, almost buzzword like use of the string 'poor people' and the lack of details doesn't impress me much

14:25

Also, this writer admits even the conservative 1000USD a month wage would bankrupt America

14:25

$3T a year

Annual budget is about $3.8T Including .6T on military alone https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-budget-101/spending/

Federal Spending: Where Does the Money Go

In fiscal year 2014, the federal government will spend around $3.8 trillion. These trillions of dollars make up a considerable chunk - around 22 percent - of the US. economy, as measured by Gross Domestic Product (GDP). That means that federal government spending makes up a s...

This is government though

15:58

So good luck cutting anything

[1:19 PM] KAL_9000: (this is mostly because I want the lander to hop over to Charon and take more samples before coming back to Pluto orbit. If you neglect Charon, no ISRU is needed.)

Just bring two landers, one for pluto and one for Charon (edited)

@BizarroLand ♀ Well, the largest chunk is mandatory spending on the programs UBI-preachers claim it would replace

Image attachment

"Calicheamicin displays unbiased toxicity to bacteria, fungi, viruses, and eukaryotic cells and organisms, which raises questions as to how the calicheamicin-producing Micromonospora manages not to poison itself."

Very carefully

I am hoping to buy my own place in a few weeks. So since I could do stuff like install things, I am looking at various smart home devices.

05:57

I REALLY WISH there was more stuff that was NOT intimately linked to voice recognition! I hate voice recognition!

05:57

I don't want to tell Siri/Alexa/whatever to do something, I want a touchscreen I can touch to make it do the thing.

I think Google has a “Home” device with a screen now

hm. I'm not having luck finding it

Hm. I think I mostly want a home media server that can also control a small number of devices, like maybe a couple of lights.

https://i.imgur.com/S638BBh.gifv <- Guys, this is really cool. Saw it on r/astronomy and had to share it.

08:48

Timelapse of four super-Jupiters orbiting the star HR 8799. The central star is obscured by a coronagraph.

Is this direct imaging?

09:18

Or some simulation

Direct imaging

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DiXIVxRU8AA5trm.jpg https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DeFYr4DV0AEaGtL.jpg

Embedded image

Embedded image

@NHO MEGA CURSED

brilliant

Not sure where but I read a study or article once that said how Britain and Japan tried really really hard to make spent fuel reprocessing economical but couldn't. (edited)

snort

18:35

1. Much as it pains me to admit the French seem to have made it work 2. Anything is uneconomical if you fuck with it enough (and nuclear anything gets hit with this one harder than just about anything else) 3. Somehow it was possible to process the initial fuel, but it isn't economical to get the other 90%. [X] Doubt

For the past month or so this podcast has been exploring an "environmental disaster" future, and the most recent one actually brings up the stifling effects of regulation https://www.flashforwardpod.com/2019/03/26/earth-the-cement-ban/

EARTH: The Cement Ban

Today we travel to a future where we try to break up with cement. Can it be done? How did cement because so ubiquitous? And what’s so bad about cement…

when you start poking at some of the regulatory messes, Rand's use of the term "Parasite" begins to take on a viscerally horrible truth

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=5iV_hB08Uns

Handle Robot Reimagined for Logistics

Personally I prefer text when learning, since it lets me absorb information much much faster

I also find that when watching videos I'm really easily distracted.

17:05

I mean, that happens with text, but there's no intrinsic passing of time in text to cause problems with that.

Trying to get the modpack to work with MultiMC

17:07

Right now it says the archive doesn't recognize a modpack type

17:07

Are you running 13.2

1.12.2.

17:11

Just open the mods folder and extract mods.zip into it.

17:11

Also make sure to install the latest version of Forge.

client or server?

MultiMC has a built in forge install button.

17:12

Edit Instance → Version → Install Forge

i did that now what

So, open the mods folder, copy all of the stuff in mods.zip into that.

17:17

Then open the game.

copy, not extract, right

Well, either works, just get the jars into your mods folder.

what about the opensecurity and railcraft folders

Those are autogenned, ignore them.

Image attachment

20:05

Image attachment

20:05

Kevyn really has died a lot.

Such is the (reinstated) life of a Mad Scientist

Elf has died though

this is slowly but surely becoming the discord for the minecraft sever

When did Elf die?

22:46

@Unknown I muted the Minecraft channel

In the Alt timeline IIRC

23:02

or reduced to head in a jar status

Everybody died in that timeline.

23:04

If Tagon’s not counting the “Diamond Beetle” incident against his death score I’d say head in a jar isn’t dying

Why can't they just blast the Pa'ans with a dose of teraport radiation? (edited)

03:34

Or build a huge barrier around their galaxy?

03:37

"Eat teraport radiation, you invisible space-expanding bastards!" (edited)

I haven't read the source material, but presumably because radiation tends to be really hard to generate in place

Also haven't read the source material, but presumably galaxy-spanning structures are rather difficult to build as well.

Or make a gravity bomb that car compacts them?

03:41

Or just invent something that dosent use teraport energy?

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Gravity bombs are no expection

"we have this huge problem" "oh why don't you just invent something to fix it?"

Innovation, my good sir

Presumably in canon they ARE trying.

"no no it's a perfect solution" "there are no perfect solutions" "then why don't you just make a perfect solution?"

Or just tell the Pa'ans to go somewhere else

03:43

"go somewhere else"

Most folks aren't at the level of sophistication in their ontotechnology where they can describe something that vaguely and get something out of it :V

"OK, WE WILL GO SOMEWHERE ELSE"

03:48

Wait, how were they even able to build things in the first place? they are gigantic dark matter beings!

very carefully

Well how are they supposed to build something like a neutron star buster on any reasonable time scale whatsoever?

by defining "reasonable" on their own terms

Trillenia

that sounds like a long time scale to build a universe in

03:53

like

The pa'anuri would have ended their war long before they could build anything (edited)

why bother busting stars at all

Dark energy hm

06:44

Have they found out what dark matter is yet

In Schlock Mercenary, you mean?

Yes

I would assume so, but they never mentioned it.

if they figure out what dark whatever is, will they still call it "dark?"

Well, yes, because it's dark as in "doesn't interact with light".

Wonder if there will be future physicists that will go "ugh, no, it's not dark, it's just far" or something like with the "dark side" of the moon.

Reminder that physicists named quarks "up down charm strange top bottom"

06:51

dopey names are par for the course

06:52

and possibly a shibolith

:V okay you have a point

06:54

also: Quantum chromodynamics has nothing to do with color in the conventional sense, so does spin—a quantum number—have anything to do with angular momentum in the conventional sense?

they're not linked directly, but it's a pretty solid simile?

hm

WIMPS GIMPS n MACHOS

A movie from Suspiciously Pornographic Productions.

physicists are also pervy people ;o

Apparently somebody's making an Official Altered Carbon RPG https://www.facebook.com/HuntersEntertainment/photos/a.2023510671007567/2865785390113420?type=3&sfns=mo

Hunters Entertainment

Hunters Entertainment

It’s official. Hunters Entertainment is teaming up with Skydance to produce tabletop role-playing games set within the stunning sci-fi universe of the hit Netflix series, Altered Carbon. Coming 2020.

Shiny.

10:17

Today, my distraction is figuring out neural net software so I can do this --

10:17

http://aiweirdness.com/post/183611932422/sky-shark-sun-princess-windsprite-sandy

Letting neural networks be weird

H.M.S. Neural Net One of my favorite things to do with machine learning algorithms is to get them to name things. Give a neural network (a type of machine learning algorithm) enough examples, and it will do an often decent (sometimes howlingly bad) imitation of their letter...

10:17

-- but with Culture ship names.

I'm sure they will have the appropriate gravitas.

All Culture ships have artificial gravitas, it's fine.

INCORRECT USE OF GRAMMAR DETECTED!!!!!!!!!!!

These days we use paragravitas.

That's completely valid English.

GRAVITAS IS A MODUS OPERANDI OF SPEECH, NOT A PHYSICS FUNCTION (edited)

The grammar is totally fine.

12:33

Like this, can I write, should you it prefer.

Yikes, please no.

As if English isn't designed for words to leap the grammar boundaries the moment it becomes useful.

Yesly, indeedful.

Talking about blood: Could a series of micropumps be used in place of a single heart?

Some of the larger veins have muscles to help bring blood back to the heart.

14:15

But, coordinating that kind of mess would be a problem if it was the primary mover of blood

Such a system would be more redundant than a single pumping organ

There are some species with multiple hearts, but they tend to have fairly decentralized nervous systems too.

There is nothing stopping you from having 20 or so microhearts

Or at least are less dependent on their brain.

14:18

Like octopi have three slow-beating simple hearts

14:18

The two secondary ones are specifically for moving blood through the gill systems though

14:19

Of course their hemocyanin blood is also really thick so it needs three hearts

Would a symbiotic fungal lifeform give a lifeforms blood a blue colour?

Is the symbiotic fungal lifeform blue?

most fungi are white

They don't really need much pigment, most of them are underground

it is April Fools day and I mod multiple servers and a forum. /cracks knuckles and readies the hammer

its 834

19:34

pm on march 31 herre

19:35

yes I know most people here are sadly in the past

Someone thought it would be funny to set the digital thermometer to Fahrenheit. Boss disagrees and is on the warpath

laughs in Rankine

Multiple targeted beams out of one phased array?

it's hard to take Rankine as a unit of measurement when it's the name of a submarine I was on

Believe nothing you see or read today

Already got trolled once

Herpaderp

saw something saying that the Hughes Amendment had been declared unconstitutional HOORAY!!! shit I forgot the date

https://youtu.be/olLjXYKfUYA

Forgotten Weapons

Municion L.M.P. 1889: Paris Commune to Spanish Civil War

3

I don't always upvote Forgotten Weapons. But when I do it's because I saw something from them.

Have anti-vaxxers gone too far yet? https://eurojewcong.org/news/news-and-views/auschwitz-museum-blasts-anti-vaxxers-for-donning-yellow-stars-in-protest/

Auschwitz Museum blasts anti-vaxxers for donning yellow stars in p...

"Instrumentalising the fate of Jews who were persecuted by hateful antisemitic ideology and murdered in extermination camps like Auschwitz with poisonous gas in order to argue against vaccination that saves human lives is a symptom of intellectual and moral degeneration," twe...

Wow. Just.... Wow.

Does it count if you self-genocide?

Playing the victim, fail

Banks are stupid and frustrating and in what world is "You save too much money" a BAD thing?!

one driven by consumerist capitalism, I guess?

one where they have to pay a practically nonzero interest rate?

00:18

(for values of "bad" defined from their view)

I think this is because I'd pay the loan off 'early' and they'd get less interest out of me

oh, that makes more sense

Yes but now they don't get ANY interest because I have to go to a different bank and how is that sensible business practice?

I'm guessing most people just roll over and take their advice

"Dubstep music found to protect against mosquitos". The worst bit about April 1st is that this looks like solid science but I can't tell if it's a prank or an Ig Nobel candidate, and being aussie means the fact it was posted April 2nd for me isn't much proof either way

you could always conduct a study of your own

06:15

See if you can reproduce their results :V

admittedly tempting. I'm one of the poor sods who is apparently very tasty to mosquitos

06:16

and the study isn't great. It needs to compare more types of music to smooth out the variables

I'd make a joke about other music making them bite more, but I don't know what genre would make the most sense :V

Eh, test a couple of very different genres, see if there is a difference, then joke accordingly

I AM BAAACK

08:05

from the weekend stuff

08:05

still helping move stuff over

08:05

Oh, I live close to DC, so we also went to the Natural History Museum there.

08:06

@0111narwhalz they had a whole exhibit on your kind

https://twitter.com/FLICTERIA/status/1112620757635530752?s=09

... (@FLICTERIA)

https://t.co/xcJZarJPBt

Retweets

8889

Likes

25796

This story has shown me a significant linguistic difference between America and parliamentary countries https://www.politico.eu/article/finlands-government-collapses-over-failed-health-care-reform/

Finland’s government collapses over failed health care reform

PM Juha Sipilä resigns.

I already knew

12:10

In parliamentary systems governments refer to dominating coalitions

While Americans mean the incorporated bureaucracy when they refer to "government".

^

As such a lot of people I've seen seem to think Finland is in a state of Somalian anarchy

What about China? He doesn't like China.

Eastern Mexico.

https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/b8gtn9/nasa_says_400_pieces_of_debris_in_orbit_indias/ fuck

r/space - NASA says 400 pieces of debris in orbit, India’s ASAT ...

19,598 votes and 1,711 comments so far on Reddit

motion to keep KAL rage in #dank

12:33

so that it can be muted

I was sharing some space news

12:34

I think everyone here likes hearing space news

KAL_9000Today at 1:14 PM
How Trump sees the world (if he doesn't think it's flat, that is)

12:35

right

But the spnews is fine.

Spnews is cool and good.

I rage because I am 14 and cannot actually go out into the world and help change the bad things

12:36

But yes

12:36

I will tone down the reee

and, no offense meant here, you're 14 and a little less emotional stable than the rest of us. A few years of seeing crap like this and you get more or less immunized. It tones down the rage quite a bit

alright thanks

12:41

Puberty's a bitch

Yup

12:42

it has a lot of upsides, but I got out relatively lightly

I mean, I'm two weeks from 16 and life is shit. But I don't really like venting. It's too negative.

12:43

Whatever floats your boat, though.

16 was a nice turning point in my adolescence at least, because for American teenagers the added freedom allows you to counter a lot of the angst

I avoid rage because I'm 43, and y'know what, that shit don't change. Still can't fix the Bad Stuff. On the other hand, it has granted me a certain realization. Namely, that politics, to pick a major source of rage, is best looked at like wildfires, earthquakes, tornadoes, and other such things. Namely, it's a disaster that strikes at random, and the only useful things you can do is take some basic precautions, try to stay out from under, and pick up the shit afterwards. No sense in wasting time, energy, or emotion on sacrificing to the Storm Gods - it didn't work for the ancient whoevers, and it ain't gonna work for us.

12:46

Bonus: this attitude drives people who see politics otherwise absolutely mink-fucking nuts , and you don't even have to lift a finger.

3

Almighty Ivpiter: (edited)

Image attachment

Jove, Barbarum conspecto

Ita vero

What other freedoms are granted upon turning 16? I'm not well versed in US law.

drive a car

Driving, mostly

And I live on dorm so whatever freedoms that are granted might be negated.

12:47

Ah, yes.

which means de facto independence in daily life from your parents and/or older siblings

My transit to other places is really only dependent on Uber/Lyft.

12:48

Given that my commute is 2 minutes by walking.

true. It would've taken me about 2 to 3 hours to walk to my high school

12:52

And in general that’s around the age kids get more leeway from their parents

I’m a 19 year old shutin and smother dearest over here is quite the apt description

14:51

The only time I get to really be alone is school time

What happened to the "informal poll" thing?

I baleeted it (edited)

16:05

Was going to ask: what climate yalls prefer

←would probably complain the same in any case

16:07

but if I could get a nice even dry 80°F that'd be lovely

16:08

(well, substantially cooler at night)

@0111narwhalz we have reasonably nights here

16:09

It stays at 75F+ anyway

16:09

Not sure about humidity

About the same, that’s a milder version of what I grew up in

17:02

I like snowy winters, but they’re not a deal breaker

Digital Nomads claims that Csa (the warm Mediterranean climate of Italy and Greece) is the perfect one

disagrees

I grew up in Cfb but have since moved to both Cfa and Cwa climates.

18:30

I am particularly fond of Cfa.

@TotallyNotHuman FYI I have lived in Af/Am weather all my life

18:57

Maybe Aw, since the southern coast of Puerto Rico is noticeably more arid

oooh, yikes

I have spent a few months total in the US, though

18:57

Notably Georgia, Florida, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada

Csa may be the one that is agreeable to the most people though

19:40

mild summers and winters, not that much precipitation, etc

19:40

It may not be everyone's favorite, but it probably makes everyone's top 3

the fact it can't kill you is a plus

oh yeah. Usually no serious predators, extremely hard to die of exposure, it even tends to have milder storms and abundant food

19:42

not to mention the diet fostered by it may be one of the healthiest on earth

I wouldn't call 'no serious predators' an intrinsic trait. Originally there were a LOT. We've just exterminated them

Point taken. I forgot about the lions and such

and european wolves would opportunistically hunt isolated humans, unlike north american wolves

@MarcusAurelius Hey, some people hate it 'cause of the humidity

20:20

But I can't knock Af/Am/Aw when the sun isn't shining too strongly

20:21

Out on the bike paths I find cloudy but not rainy weather the most comfortable

20:21

And they call it paradise for a reason

true, but many people can

20:23

't tolerate it for very long, and have trouble sleeping in the summers without air conditioning

what's air conditioning

20:44

no seriously i grew up only using fans to cool down

AC isn't in the building code for residences, but it's pretty much necessary here all the same.

'here'?

Southern California.

20:47

Not actually in the Mojave, but still fairly arid.

well most people make due without AC in every room

20:47

it's humid and an island so that may have something to do

Since it's dry, my house has a single evaporative cooler in the living room that blows through the entire house if you open the doors.

can't handly dryness

20:49

I spent time in the southwest and chapping was a constant

@BizarroLand ♀ I meant for non-residents

fair

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/stellarcolony.php#nocossack

21:50

Just as a heads-up, I still think this is by far the worst part of Atomic Rockets

Patrolling the Mojave almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.

Having visited the real, unapocalyptic Southwest, I long much more for chapstick that actually works

And yes, it is. I have endeavored to send in some corrective material, and we’ll see if anything comes of it.

And that RocketCat character is exactly what Chung claims to not want... loud, condescending, unpleasant

The southwest is tolerable if you're from a climate close enough to it

So with a new router, we're getting the bandwidth we're paying for.

00:14

(though I suspect the issue was actually solved by the reset of the fiber box)

https://www.vox.com/business-and-finance/2019/3/29/18281270/737-max-faa-scandal-explained

The emerging 737 Max scandal, explained

It’s more than bad software.

ISSkylab

Image attachment

08:35

(I didn't make this)

https://nasa.tumblr.com/post/183899080814/robotic-bees-are-about-to-join-astronauts-in

Robotic “Bees” Are About to Join Astronauts in Space

There are some things only humans can do in space. The rest can be left to robots. To free up valuable time for astronauts living and working aboard the International Space Station, we’re sending...

...those are ridiculously adorable. Extra credit to the UI designer who gave them expressive eyes.

https://twitter.com/g_awd/status/1112473455650172929 I'm not exactly sure why this is dystopian, it looks pretty cool. ~~I say, while being the person who doesn't actually buy from Amazon because I dislike them as a company, but hey, still cool~~

This right here is borderline dystopian https://t.co/otXBLShtdd

Retweets

22105

Likes

69840

Evidently someone can't figure out how to spell "awesome".

giant floating warehouses stocked by smaller airships and using drone delivery? My steampunk heart is aflutter

Hell, yes!

And if it works well for Amazon others will start doing it too and I will gleefully buy from them! Everyone wins!

09:46

(Even better: when you're working at large scales and small margins, minor cost cutting can be a big thing. So in suitable areas airships with sails become the optimal thing! Kinda like how sailing ships were still economical in the age of steam for bulky unspoilable cargo like wool bales, because if you don't mind waiting a little longer you get to slash the fuel costs)

(A few technical problems with that if you need to move any direction other than downwind, but still.)

yeah, tacking a blimp would be a pest, they'd have a horrible windlass angle.

A bit more fundamental than that - you can't generate lift forces with sails in an airship, because it doesn't have a draggier medium (the water) to "push" against. So you're stuck with only going downwind.

I'm thinking more lightweight, easily retractable sails alongside a normal propeller. If the wind's in the right direction, sail, it's faster than puttering along. In the wrong direction, reef the sails and putt putt. At an angle? Angle the sails for drive and use the propeller for your sideways drift.

Exception: airships over the ocean have worked around this by dropping a sea anchor.

Ooh yeah, true.

Mm, maybe. Or you could shift altitudes to take advantage of different prevailing wind directions, but you'd need really good meteorologists.

Maybe not. You've got DRONES. Have a windsock drone go up and down the air column every [interval]

In-'verse, I have airships commonly powered by making the envelope largely out of solar foil, and using the resulting electricity to run ducted fans. (And charge up accumulators for nighttime cruising, of course.)

Airships are reasonably well suited to solar collection. Now we just need better lifting gases than hydrogen and helium.

09:53

Or possibly an acceptance of using hydrogen + not being so stupid with it

Only way to better hydrogen is to use vacuum. (edited)

Well, where 'better' = more practical

Which is hard to do with a light envelope.

I would say hydrogen is still more practical than vacuum by a hefty margin

Yeah, at least until we find the materials science to handle vacuum without taking on enough mass to obviate the gains. And on the other hand: hydrogen really has a ridiculously unfair rep. Just don't coat the envelope in thermite and strap gallons of gasoline to the gondola, and it'll be just fine.

Or fly it into a thunderstorm

09:58

even if Hitler has ordered you to be on time Or Else

Even that wouldn't have been a problem if not for the first two factors, (Although flying an airship into a storm is not a good idea for lots of other reasons, mostly involving structural stress.)

From what I've read the lightning strikes probably still would have broken something, but at least they may have managed a controlled landing (or an elegant crash with a fixable airship)

But, hell, energy density of 0.01 MJ/L in a substance that is inclined to head directly for the upper atmosphere unless you go to a great deal of trouble to prevent it? You have to work hard to turn that into any kind of serious fire hazard. It's the gasoline and diesel than tends to kill.

10:11

Depends on the design. We've got a lot better at building in lightning protection - the modern airliner's built to shrug off lightning strikes as routine.

while the Hindenburg was a spectacular fireball, most crashes from 'hydrogen gone wrong' was of the form of "the lifting gas is either water now or has exited the vessel and gravity is a harsh mistress"

(Data: Last lightning-attributed crash was in '67, and statistically, every commercial plane suffers at least one lightning strike per year.)

10:13

The interesting thing with those crashes is how in many cases the majority of the fatalities were from people who jumped from the airship, and the majority of the survivors were people who waited for it to settle close to the ground before making their exit.

yeah, I never quite got that. I understand 'fire is scary' and 'burning wreckage falling on me is scary' but at least close to the ground you have a chance to RUN

10:15

unless it's like some people in the Twin Towers who jumped not because they thought it'd save them but because fast death going splat was preferable to slow death by heat and toxic smoke

I mean, that's the best thing about airships vs. airplanes: they don't want to fall out of the sky.

As a side note, I have always wondered how fabric-coated aircraft (be they ships or planes) took off as a concept, given that - on the list of doping agents for the fabric - the first one mentioned and used is nitrocellulose .

10:40

"So, to make the plane weatherproof, we're going to paint it with this notoriously sensitive, flammable, fairly potent explosive --" "Yeah, let me stop you there."

I recall the similar sort of mix was being used for tents and military balloons, so it has precident as a material they were used to and knew would work as long as you don't set it on fire.

10:43

I mean, yes, it's frisky if you mishandle it. But mix it with enough resin and it's basically a really nice plasticiser that's still used in specialised applications today

10:44

Huh. Most modern nail polish is nitrocullulose

10:45

and it's what holds strips of staples together before you put them in the stapler

My favorite application is still the nitrocellulose billiard balls. Try not to play too rough.

the way of making those was fun too

ObQuote: "An owner of a billiard saloon in Colorado wrote to Hyatt about the explosive tendencies, saying that he did not mind very much personally but for the fact that every man in his saloon immediately pulled a gun at the sound."

"let's exploit vapour pressure in interesting and novel ways!"

10:48

You know, I can see certain of your races - kaeth come to mind - deliberately playing with potentially explosive balls to "liven the game up". And tactical applications where you have a high risk/high reward strategy of trying to blow up your opposition's balls

2

1

" trying to blow up your opposition's balls" I read that in a different way...

@Morgrim Moon I hereby declare that canon.

Hey, guys, the Amazon blimp isn't real

11:12

Someone made it with CGI

11:12

And people took it out of context

They do have a patent on the concept, though.

yes

And so one day, one day, we will SEE THE GLORY OF THE COMING OF THE DRONES.

rage

Image attachment

11:17

https://www.villagevoice.com/2016/08/10/after-the-nypd-opened-fire-on-an-unarmed-mentally-ill-man-in-times-square-who-gets-the-blame/

After the NYPD Opened Fire on an Unarmed, Mentally Ill Man in Time...

The night of September 14, 2013, began about as unremarkably as it could for Sahar Khoshakhlagh. She had some family in town — two cousins...

A nice quote I saw that sums up a lot of US politics:

09:16

These bigots fear becoming a minority because they've seen the fates of Africans and American Indians. (edited)

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