asciilifeform: aha, where sometimes landed, but pilot dissolved.

asciilifeform: b2h6 is a beauty. reacts with pretty much everything, including fluorocarbon extinguisher agents, e.g. halon.

asciilifeform: 'the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.' << famous

asciilifeform: (peculiar fuel, that was entirely non-flammable under ordinary conditions, but would burn with triethylboron.)

asciilifeform: and 'kelly's lighter fluid.'

asciilifeform: sr-71 'blackbird.'

asciilifeform: ('химия и жизнь', 1991, forget which month)

asciilifeform: 'The smell of diborane is known to a few experimenters, but they cannot tell us what it is.' ☟︎☟︎

asciilifeform: orc science quote of the day:

asciilifeform: lol

asciilifeform doesn't understand why words must be stretched until they snap. 'tribe' has a well-understood meaning

asciilifeform: pygmies, sure. mormons - ok. tuba players? nope

asciilifeform: what's a tribe next? chess?

asciilifeform: burner ?

asciilifeform: mr mold once wrote, if i recall, that his greatest wish is that he were a mormon or moslem

asciilifeform: doesn't mean you can engineer this retroactively

asciilifeform: decimation: sure.

asciilifeform: ^ similarly idiotic and equivalent modest proposal

asciilifeform: 'google workers are clean-shaved and obedient. therefore everyone should be conscripted to work for google.'

asciilifeform: (the usual favourite prescription of similar pontificators)

asciilifeform: decimation: wonder why he suggests mormonism, vs. islam.

asciilifeform: 'pour la canaille la mitraille.'

asciilifeform: http://www.rotaryjailmuseum.org

asciilifeform: jailer turned the entire building on a pivot - with hand crank.

asciilifeform: ben_vulpes: never pull? have them visit one of the 19th c. 'rotating prisons'

asciilifeform: the machines had to last.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: they also paid considerably more for launches

asciilifeform: the place where charge moves (in this case, electrons) to generate magnetic field

asciilifeform: but afaik this is well-known

asciilifeform: van allen belt, incidentally, is what becomes the 'dynamo' for a nuke's emp burst.

asciilifeform: (recently documented)

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: there's also a third, very annoying van allen belt (!) that pops up during flares.

asciilifeform: homophone malapropisms are a kind of leper's bell for people who learned english (or whichever language) by hearing, and are innocent of books

asciilifeform recently walked past a marble wall, thanking various donors to xxx that 'insured a bright future for this establishment'

asciilifeform apparently is not the only one annoyed by the word abuse

asciilifeform: lol

asciilifeform: (so long as the room is lit)

asciilifeform: just sits there and turns.

asciilifeform: decimation: it was a toy. somewhere north of 100 usd, i think

asciilifeform: re: magnetorquer: saw one in toy store recently! (vendor: http://www.turtletechdesign.com)

asciilifeform is not awake

asciilifeform: opposite, ideally

asciilifeform: (depends where you want to go)

asciilifeform: n

asciilifeform: or rather, in same directio

asciilifeform: in principle, if you can piss atoms out, in direction opposite where they came from, with greater v - you move.

asciilifeform inherited the little book from a job as student, where he had approximately the same relationship to ion engines as a farting cow has to the 'greenhouse effect'

asciilifeform: at any rate, w&l pedantically list every basic gyrostabilization gizmo, including the magnetic one, but nothing bussard-esque.

asciilifeform: the difference between profit and orbital garbage

asciilifeform: it's a fscking commercial product

asciilifeform: lol

asciilifeform: only place such engines are ever found

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: nobody wants to say this, for some reason << what? this is a schoolbook fact

asciilifeform blows dust of 'reducing space mission cost' (wertzel & larson)

asciilifeform: just make sure that all exposed surfaces are scoops.

asciilifeform: not strictly necessary to increase surface area.

asciilifeform guesses wrong before, however.

asciilifeform guesses that someone whose arse depends on the outcome crunched the numbers

asciilifeform wonders if this could even be carried out mechanically, with something like a wirbelrohr.

asciilifeform: by no means a 'maxwell daemon', given as there is a power source (officially - photovoltaics; in practice - mini-reactor)

asciilifeform wonders if any of these machines were fitted with scoops. snarf up atmospheric gas, piss it out the accelerator tube (earthwise.) no need for on-board tank.

asciilifeform: (long gone, incidentally. they got a new pr team.)

asciilifeform: like the old u.s. army ad, 'be an army of one.'

asciilifeform: there's a palpable 'if not you then who, if not now then when' flavour to the latter.

asciilifeform: be

asciilifeform: what gives the picture that he's part of something? and, what might this something e

asciilifeform: this other picture, is that of a feral dog, who knows that the next stop is the soap boiler and carries on accordingly

asciilifeform: especially if his handler isn't quite finished with him

asciilifeform: even the lowest stoolie is still, at least in his mind, 'part of something'

asciilifeform: yes. that'd be it.

asciilifeform: turn sluts ?

asciilifeform: similar in that both attested to being 'in a corner' - whether by ill fortune, having pissed off wrong people, or some genuine misdeeds of whatever kind

asciilifeform: ;;google joseph stack manifesto

asciilifeform: lol

asciilifeform: !s joseph stack

asciilifeform: pretty sure we autopsied herr stack here

asciilifeform: stack? or church

asciilifeform: at any rate, they have the flavour of the work of a man who doesn't intend to live particularly long.

asciilifeform: his writings are inescapably reminiscent of j. stack's

asciilifeform: merely because he has not flown his plane yet ?

asciilifeform: but - how do we know that herr church is a coward?

asciilifeform: aha

asciilifeform: in alternate hypothesis of radio-plane-into-pole, what'd he fill it with? octanitrocubane?

asciilifeform: ahaha

asciilifeform: everybody knows that one.

asciilifeform: lol

asciilifeform: 'not a bike, but a wheelbarrow, and not given, but deprived of'

asciilifeform wasn't there, didn't fill it

asciilifeform: The20YearIRCloud: according to the official story - it was.

asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: radio airplane << ordinary airplane, with him in

asciilifeform: 'Один раз в жизни и швабра стреляет'

asciilifeform: 'the broom shoots once.'

asciilifeform: sure they do.

asciilifeform: wonder what kind of kinetic energy delivery system he'll pick.

asciilifeform: probably a good candidate for a future 'joseph stack' incident.

asciilifeform: seems like he's just pining for gasenwagen and yearns to hasten it

asciilifeform: http://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/06/09/silicon-valley-and-the-rise-of-the-disneypreneur << basically factual afaik

asciilifeform doesn't know this fellow, can't say for certain

asciilifeform: or perhaps not in sv proper, but in related bezzlatron elsewhere

asciilifeform: now he's a living 'tilt mode' and campaigns for... unionizing programmers ?