j9461701

6 ms·

1.
by j9461701 2y ago
> Alexander has a lot of failings, and we’re going to get to them. But he was unnaturally composed and at least when it came to doing violence (and getting others to do violence effectively) he was highly competent, almost absurdly so. I
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by j9461701 2y ago
I find myself in an odd position - I am pro-Anthropocene but I find this reasoning suspect: > But the Anthropocene’s future as an informal time period is assured. It’s too apt—and too important—a term to be abandoned. As Paul Crutzen poi
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by j9461701 3y ago
That's actually one of my issues with atomic rockets, some of its conclusions are a bit....massaged to ensure the end result it wants in terms of space combat even if it doesn't super make sense. As an example, even as an undergra
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by j9461701 3y ago
Something that blew my mind long ago was learning the scottish highlands used to be a massive forest. Ancient humans clear cut the entire landscape and it still hasn't recovered. That sort of broke the illusion of there being some forg
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by j9461701 3y ago
This was a fun rabbit hole to go down. Magnesium does not seem to be present in radioactive fallout, there is more Manganese than magnesium from the data I was able to find online. Further NOX, the chemical combination of oxygen and nitroge
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by j9461701 3y ago
> McCarthy shares none of these inclinations. His characters ride aimlessly through the desert and kill for what seems like no reason at all. Blood Meridian is a book that reflects a particular moment in history, but his characters have
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by j9461701 4y ago
A nuclear chain reaction takes place roughly over a single microsecond. To travel the ~11 inches of a bomb, in ideal circumstances, a high explosive needs roughly 200 microseconds. It is not impossible that the exact right stuff could happe
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by j9461701 4y ago
A sympathetic detonation is very unlikely for a nuclear weapon. They have to detonate in an extremely specific way, such that the explosion compresses the fissile material from all sides at once. A random off-center explosion hitting a nu
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by j9461701 5y ago
> People who raise hell with OSHA because the CEO is a heavy smoker: jerks. That doesn't seem jerkish. Second hand smoke in the work place is bad for everyone.
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by j9461701 5y ago
what about dogs? They can cover nearly 1,000 miles of rough winter terrain in under 2 weeks, as seen in the iditarod. Or if we're looking at long distance travel in hot environments what about camels? I think this "humans can run
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by j9461701 5y ago
> You could tell them that disease is caused by tiny animals, and that the earth is a sphere that orbits the sun, but getting them to believe you is a another thing. I can find a cholera outbreak, and tell whoever will listen to stop dri
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by j9461701 5y ago
I feel like the pendulum has swing too far in the other direction on this topic, actually. Yes people in the past weren't dumb, and shouldn't be under-estimated, but even a normal person could provide huge gains to any pre-modern
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by j9461701 5y ago
The medical field could really use an overall authority that can force them to adopt safe practices. We treat truckers getting enough sleep as a higher priority, as a society, than surgeons. Another thing is hospitals adopting air industry
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by j9461701 5y ago
In Starcraft, you get a curious phenomena with regards to how good people think they are based on the league they're in: Bronze league players (lowest) know they're bad and that they don't understand the game. Silver and Gold
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by j9461701 5y ago
Here is an article on this topic that goes heavily in depth on the topic: http://toughsf.blogspot.com/2018/04/permanent-and-perfect-st... Note that this is for strategic level stealth, which is to say your enemy d
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by j9461701 6y ago
The person who wrote the Star Trek TNG Technical Manual mentioned this, and how - as described in the show - it's probably killing you and building a clone with your memories instead of transporting you. He thought about tweaking the l
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by j9461701 6y ago
I know personally, if I had the opportunity, I would gladly spent time bringing someone frozen back to life. I don't gain anything, but I also don't gain anything when I donate to charity either. The simple chance to do something
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by j9461701 6y ago
If it was such an obvious boondoggle why did Russia steal the design and make their own? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buran_(spacecraft) In retrospect I think it's pretty obvious the actual point of the space shu
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by j9461701 6y ago
You're totally correct. It was 4 reactor buildings feeding one turbine house , but the house contained two turbo generators. Thanks for the correction!
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by j9461701 6y ago
Achieving fusion would be a god-send, but aneutronic fusion - which is generally considered 'the next step' - would be utterly spectacular. First, it would save you having to build very expense and complex steam turbines. Like Che
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by j9461701 6y ago
The physical theories that prevent the EmDrive (conservation of momentum) are centuries old, and utterly fundamental to our university of reality on every scale from black holes merging to atoms radiating. A violation of this principle woul
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by j9461701 6y ago
>Wouldn't most GEV be able to temporarily "jump" out of ground effect for emergencies like that, or at least wouldn't require much change to gain that capability? But that ability wouldn't really make a differenc
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by j9461701 6y ago
Theoretically you could fly over most waves, as some designs allow fleet height equal to 1/2 wingspan - so dozens of meters of height. The issues with ground effect vehicles are several: A plane takes advantage of the much thinner atmo
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by j9461701 6y ago
I'm reminded of the novel The Golden Globe, by john varley. In that novel very powerful AI handle most day to day operations of society, and it is mentioned by one of them that - technologically speaking - they could create the single
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by j9461701 6y ago
It's also the fact that you're in a new sleeping enviroment. People tend not to sleep well in novel environments, called the 'first night effect', until they become comfortable to their new surroundings. So even if the
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by j9461701 6y ago
There is a Star Trek voyager episode based on this premise. "Distant Origin", in which an intelligent race of hardrosaurs survived the asteroid impact and eventually evolved into a space faring civilization.
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by j9461701 6y ago
I'm not someone who has a problem with older games - I've gone back and had a blast with System Shock 2, Baldur's Gate, Mechwarriors 2/3/4, Thief, Planescape Torment, etc. relatively recently. But Deus Ex is one of
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by j9461701 7y ago
Which is, in turn, merely an abstraction over the actual quantum physics that governs what's really happening on the silicon. And quantum physics might itself one day may be found to be a higher level abstraction of what's really
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by j9461701 7y ago
>Sure, but an equivalent conventional high explosive would have likely killed all those 1,000 people, wouldn't it have? Looking it up on wikipedia, most suicide bomber vests weigh roughly as much (5 kg) or up to 4 times as much (20
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by j9461701 7y ago
I find myself mostly agreeing with this article, although I think it over-states its case slightly and this section highlights why. Chemical weapons are not very useful on a tactical level, and modernly nuclear weapons are superior on the s

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