CarbonIceDragon

CarbonIceDragon , 1 day ago

Presumably there must be something physically different about the weaker titanium, like a different structure of all the crystals in it or something? Is there any way to measure that?

CarbonIceDragon , 1 day ago

I’m aware that it can analyze chemical composition (I work in a factory that relates to such devices), but I’m unaware of them being able to detect things like weaknesses in a grain structure, the devices I’m familiar with at least would just tell you if a piece of titanium has other elements contaminating it. Unless there’s more that can be done with them than I’ve had explained to me, which is possible

CarbonIceDragon OP , 2 days ago

Unfortunately the games I need the edge of the screen for don’t appear to capture the cursor, not sure why. After a couple more hours of googling didn’t find me a way to do exactly what I was hoping, the solution ive ultimately found, though it is pretty janky and more clicks than I’d prefer to get set up, is to use some software called dual monitor tools that lets one make a hotkey that locks the cursor to the current display or unlocks it, set to lock when the program is opened, set the program to run on startup, set my tablet to extend the display so that I can rotate it as needed, and then whenever I want to actually use my drawing app, I unlock the cursor, get the app set up on the tablet display, set up OBS on my main display, make OBS capture a stream of my tablet display and then fullscreen preview that stream on my main display, and then move the mouse to the tablet display and use the hotkey to lock it there. I was hoping to find something a bit more convenient, and I have to imagine this is probably somewhat inefficient with my computer’s resources to stream itself to itself, but it does at least seem to get the effect I was going for.

CarbonIceDragon OP , 2 days ago

Annnd now I feel stupid, because apparently the tablet itself has a firmware option to rotate the display, I just didnt see it mentioned in any of the guides I found on it on the maker’s website (they said to flip it in windows), and didnt see it when checking through the display options before.

CarbonIceDragon , 9 days ago

1442? surprised its not 1444

CarbonIceDragon , 8 days ago

Tsar Sherman

CarbonIceDragon , 13 days ago

For this particular case, he couldn’t pardon himself because the president can pardon federal crimes, but in this case the crime is in the New York state court system, so the governor of New York would have to pardon him to my understanding.

CarbonIceDragon , 14 days ago

Maybe we have the radio equivalent of a Boltzmann brain

CarbonIceDragon , 14 days ago

Eh, since going vegetarian in the past year or so, I’ve found that a lot of the meat substitutes actually are pretty good, depending on how you use them. It’s not usually so perfect that one cannot truly tell, sure, unless it’s a dish where the meat flavor is heavily affected by spices and similar like with chili, but I’ve definitely found types of substitute bacon, or burgers, or ground meat that taste quite good. Though in my experience it’s usually been the cheaper or simpler ones, like black bean burgers or tempeh bacon, that taste best. Not the same, but similar enough to be tasty in broadly similar ways.

CarbonIceDragon , 14 days ago

I have a suspicion that we might see some interesting hybridization of the plant based and lab grown meats at some point. Tissue culture is expensive, and while Im sure the price can be reduced, Im doubtful that it will get cheaper than plant protein is. However, it can potentially taste more like real meat than plants, seeing as, well, it is real meat, just assembled differently. Potentially then, one can probably mix in some percentage of plant protein (or possibly mycoprotein as well) in with the meat in ground meat type products like burgers, without the flavor changing too noticeably, and get something mostly the same with a lower cost.

CarbonIceDragon , 18 days ago

This does bring the question up in my mind of what a restaurant that wasn’t a luxury would look like, ie, something that sells ready to eat food at prices that make it competitive with cooking at home, and which is healthy enough to eat on a daily basis without ill effect. My guess is that it would be largely a matter of having to carefully choose recipes that both use ingredients that are cheap in bulk, and able to be at least partially automated to keep staff costs low, but which are still nutritious and rely on minimal processed ingredients. Probably soups and chili and the like I’d imagine.

CarbonIceDragon , 18 days ago

I’ve heard of them before, but my assumption was that whatever factor about fast food had killed them off, probably would still be in play to prevent them returning unless optimized even further somehow

CarbonIceDragon , 19 days ago

From the light’s point of view, that distance should get reduced to zero due to length contraction anyway if I’m remembering correctly?

CarbonIceDragon , 24 days ago

A Toyota Hilux that’s up on cinder blocks because the wheels have all been removed.

CarbonIceDragon , 25 days ago

I mean, in an actual fight, that one movie notwithstanding, King Kong shouldnt exactly be an equivalent to Godzilla, he managed to get himself killed by being shot up by some aircraft mounted guns and falling off a building, while Godzilla can tank a nuke and fire radioactive plasma from his mouth

CarbonIceDragon , 27 days ago

In theory you can launch humans magnetically if you have a really long acceleration track, though I don’t think “gun” is really a very good description of such a facility since it’s more like a maglev (or hyperloop style vacuum tube train) that gradually rises miles into the air with one end open. Technically possible, but given the costs and difficulty with getting a tall enough structure I’d be fairly skeptical that China actually intends to seriously build one.

CarbonIceDragon , 27 days ago

Thats what I was thinking of, you still have to deal with building a hugely tall structure though, because the exit must be above the thickest part of the atmosphere

CarbonIceDragon , 29 days ago

Dont we see other galaxy groups though? Im no astronomer, but I do recall the universe having some degree of structure above the scale of individual galaxies, with groups and clusters of them forming larger groups or filaments surrounding voids of space with fewer galaxies in them.

Edit: quick search in wikipedia brings up a list of a few groups and clusters known, of which the local group is merely one: en.wikipedia.org/…/List_of_galaxy_groups_and_clus…

CarbonIceDragon , 29 days ago

I imagine any explanation of the expansion of the universe for people that are not themselves studying astronomy is going to be simplified in a way that gives the average person the basic idea but not the complete picture to avoid confusion when explaining the concept. Ive not studied astronomy, but I did get most of the way through a physics degree, and know that at least there, a lot ideas are explained in that sort of way to people without much knowledge of the subject, especially the more confusing concepts. I wouldnt be surprised if thats the case for most fields of science. For a different example as an analogy, its common knowledge that you cant move faster than light (ignoring the whole expanding spacetime stuff), but it isnt always explained why this is the case, leading to questions from some people like “what happens if I fly a spaceship to the speed of light, and then turn on the rockets to try to go faster?” which have easy answers or just dont make sense as a question if one has had the behavior of objects at high speed explained, but which seem reasonable enough questions to ask if all youve been told is that the speed of light is just some cosmic speed limit. People cant reasonably blame you for finding an incomplete explanation you’ve been given, well, incomplete, and then asking questions that come to mind as a result.

CarbonIceDragon , 29 days ago

If you’re actually curious, or someone else reading this is, you never can get a rocket, or anything with mass, to the speed of light either, not just faster than it, but you can get arbitrarily close. However, you never notice anything stopping you going faster than your current speed, there’s no point where your rockets stop working or anything, rather, time and space stretch and squeeze such that neither you nor anybody else see you going faster than light. If you have a magic rocket that somehow has infinite fuel and can fire forever, you can actually get anywhere as fast as you want, from your perspective.

Alpha centauri is famously about 4 light years away, but you can get there in 2 seconds, from your perspective, if you go fast enough. But, everyone on earth will see slightly over that roughly 4 years go by in the time that for you is just 2 seconds. (You’ll see them move slowly too at first, since they’re moving relative to you just as fast as your ship is moving to them, but when you slow down, you’ll see them seem to speed up until you’ll have seen them do 4 years worth of stuff by the time you stop). Meanwhile on your ship, you don’t see yourself crossing that 4 light year distance in less than the allowed time either, because space itself is squished kinda, so that the distance to alpha centauri is shortened to the point that if you’re getting there in 2 seconds, it’s now less than 2 light seconds away, from your perspective, and you’re not moving faster than light to cross that distance in that time. People outside will also see your ship compressed like this too.

This isn’t just a regular optical illusion either, space and time really are different for the people on and off the ship (and indeed very slightly different for everyone anywhere). Nobody has the “correct” view of the universe, because everyone’s perspective is equally valid.

CarbonIceDragon , 29 days ago

As someone who doesnt really know a whole lot about military stuff, does layering ERA actually do anything useful? Id be worried that detonating explosives right against other explosives like that might be counterproductive, but I dont really know anything about the proper use of ERA

CarbonIceDragon , 30 days ago

It’s not even implicit slavery, the amendment that makes slavery unconstitutional explicitly makes an exception for criminal punishment.

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

Space.

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

Ah, sounds like someone going for the herostratus approach to fame

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

Something I’ve wondered about myself if having a laser communication system on the drone and controller on mounts that always turn to point at eachother, so that jamming the signal isn’t doable because it’s highly directional. Probably want a repeater drone that flies at high altitude above trees and terrain to give it line of sight on all the other drones

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Hey, it’s not Mars’s fault that Saturn destroyed it’s robot by burning it with it’s atmosphere…

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

Cassini (misread your comment as “what are you talking about”)

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

sounds like Bolo

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago (edited 1 month ago)

Israel is not Judaism and criticism of it is not criticism of Jewish people as a whole. To hold otherwise is to hold an entire people responsible for the actions of a few (those in the Israeli government), that those people often have no or only limited influence over, which would be an inherently bigoted position to take because it robs those people of their agency. If anything, the Israeli government itself is being antisemitic in a sense by pushing such a narrative in order to use Jewish people as a whole as a shield against criticism of their actions.

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

Last time one of these threads popped up, I saw someone suggest that it might have been a holder for some of those bottles with pointed bottoms the Romans had, don’t remember the name. I’m not sure if this is a hypothesis with any level of acceptance, but it feels like it could be plausible just from looking at the thing, having different sized holes would allow different sizes of bottle to fit, and you’d want feet for each possible side that it could be resting on, which would explain the prongs.

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

As I understand it, “real communism” is supposed to be some kind of stateless society. As the GDR was, well, a state, it clearly did not achieve that. Nor would it ever have been likely to, as actually doing what was ideologically promised would have required those with power within that system to relinquish that power, which is incredibly rare as it conflicts with human nature.

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

In what sense is this semantics or bad faith? I meant this sincerely.

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

I think you have an unrealistic estimation of how much most people understand the topic of communism, if you think not labelling different types of communism as the same ideology is living under a rock. More than half the country doesn’t even realize that socialism and communism aren’t complete synonyms, and a good fraction think paradoxically that center right liberalism is somehow communist.

Basically, I think you’re doing this: imgs.xkcd.com/comics/average_familiarity_2x.png

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

I’m guessing you misread the title as animals instead of mammals, and then didn’t read the actual post text

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

If theres anything that I took away from my 3 years of trying to get a physics degree before burning out on it around covid hit, its that like half of physics seems to be just figuring out what approximations you can safely make to turn something infeasibly complicated into something that can actually be worked out

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

I didnt really pivot to anything, I was very unsure what I wanted to do at that point, and being quite bad at learning virtually, which of course most everything had temporarily pivoted to at that time, I took an opportunity to move in with a family member in a different state that I liked better. Ive not gone back to school since as Ive been worried about spending a lot of time and effort and money on something that I cant see through to completion again or wont like using. Ive ended up working a low volume manufacturing type job at a company that makes measuring equipment (microscopes and spectroscopy devices and such like that), which Ive found tolerable enough as the work has some amount of variation, isn’t too physically or socially demanding, and at least has some scientific relevance (it doesn’t involve doing any science, but scientists cant do their work without the right equipment, so making some of that equipment still feels helpful in some small way). Ive thought about going back at some point if I can come up with something Im sure I’ll prefer doing, but so far have not and have no immediate plans.

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

Isn’t a lot of engineering basically applied physics though anyway? Just reversed, such that rather than studying or predicting how a physical system should behave, you’re trying to take what has been learned over time and use it to work backwards to create a system that exhibits desired behavior

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

Not sure why nobody would expect an italian inquisition of food, they literally have a unit in one of their law enforcement agencies trained to do things like find fake extra-virgin olive oil. Ive seen people jokingly call it “the italian food police” even. If anybody was going to run a food inquisition, itd be the italians

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

Innocent in the eyes of the criminal justice system does not require the rest of society to ignore the evidence against them, it just means they don’t face criminal punishment

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

Something to remember I think is that just because people on both sides of an issue talk the same way about the other side, does not inherently mean that both or neither have a point.

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

The issue I have with stances like this is that, well, politics are not inconsequential. Its not like being on different sides of a game, where everyone is equally in the right and one side winning or losing changes little. The consequences to political policy are far reaching, nuanced, and can literally be life and death to some, even if the policy seems boring or inconsequential. Some stances therefore are going to seem so heinous to someone with an opposing stance that there really cant simply be an “agree to disagree”, its more a “we work together on this, or we work against eachother”. And if youre working against someone in a matter that can be life and death, that someone is almost definitionally your enemy, regardless of genetic similarity. Humans only have so much capacity in their lives for close relationships with other people. If you cant stand someone, it therefore makes sense to use that capacity to maintain ties with someone you do get along with. Being born around a certain person is not an obligation to stay with them.

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

Gotta bait them with something…

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

Is it just me, or does that discussion of the various ways to counter drones, kinda miss the obvious of just shooting them with a conventional gun?

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

If you can target them with a laser though, why would a gun be much different? I know there’s dramatically more travel time, but bullets are still extremely fast, and even if one shot misses, something like a machinegun with a computerized control system seems like it ought to hit the thing before too long? Maybe the risk of missed shots causing harm might be too high for populated areas?

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

I didn’t really think human operated, I was imagining something pretty much exactly like phalanx, but with a much smaller caliber and turret size owing to the small size of drones. Like a phalanx type software controller mounted to a small turret with a small caliber machinegun or automatic shotgun type weapon.

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

Admittedly not, no. I was making the assumption, possibly a naive one, that a computer should be capable of understanding the physics behind bullet trajectories well enough to shoot accurately even if the target is mobile.

CarbonIceDragon , 1 month ago

Stargate is the best “star-” franchise imho.