log☇︎
642600+ entries in 0.886s
kakobrekla: a yea messerschmitt, i have flown that.
decimation: I guess this is why burt rutan et.al. are so interested in nitrous oxide/kerosene
asciilifeform: until (afaik) the '80s, soviet rockets flew on (asymmetric) dimethylhydrazine
assbot: C-Stoff - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
decimation: the nazis used hypergolics to 'operationalize' their rocket plane: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-Stoff " there were numerous catastrophic explosions of the Messerschmitt Me 163 aircraft that employed this fuel system" not shit
mircea_popescu: maybe the idea was that if you're close enough you're burning anyway.
decimation: how is that going to help? melt your face?
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
decimation: here's an older review in a similar vein: http://www.fourmilab.ch/fourmilog/archives/2012-04/001367.html " in the quest for “exotic fuel” (which the author defines as “It's expensive, it's got boron in it, and it probably doesn't work.”), "
asciilifeform: (peculiar fuel, that was entirely non-flammable under ordinary conditions, but would burn with triethylboron.)
assbot: Reading List: The Green Flame (Fourmilog: None Dare Call It Reason)
mircea_popescu: which is why you believe the burning man is good :)
ben_vulpes: "sex positive" << one of the reasons i spent so much time with 'em
ben_vulpes: plenty of sluts circle the Man
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:
mircea_popescu: <ben_vulpes> someone affiliated with those who attend burning man regularly. << sluts make a much better tribe imo.
decimation: in other words: whatever some white man thought is racsis, he doesn't get a say
ben_vulpes: ""Tribe" is a contested term due to its roots in colonialism."
gribble: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tribes | Tribes. One of the best games in existance. Despite subpar graphics, this game, created by Dynamix and Sierra, is very easily modded (not to mention pirated), ...
decimation: ;;ud tribe
asciilifeform doesn't understand why words must be stretched until they snap. 'tribe' has a well-understood meaning
nubbins`: they're a tribe at band camp
ben_vulpes: if you're expected to provide succor in time of need and can lean on the tribe in turn in your own time of need?
asciilifeform: pygmies, sure. mormons - ok. tuba players? nope
ben_vulpes: what's a tribe in the first place?
asciilifeform: what's a tribe next? chess?
ben_vulpes: the most interesting and network-worthy tend to eschew the actual burn in favor of the smaller regional events and their hometown community.
ben_vulpes: someone affiliated with those who attend burning man regularly.
decimation: asciilifeform: agreed, such things must grow 'organically'
ben_vulpes: 'burner' isn't a bad tribe. needs filtering, but all do anyways.
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
decimation: asciilifeform: you have spoken about the benefits of having a 'tribe' in the past
nubbins`: i just realized i'd been listening to it for 3.5 hours
assbot: Star Trek TNG Ambient Engine Noise (Idling for 24 hrs) - YouTube
ben_vulpes: <nubbins`> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPoqNeR3_UA << i was rocking that this morning before the shop got rowdy
asciilifeform: 'google workers are clean-shaved and obedient. therefore everyone should be conscripted to work for google.'
decimation: I view it as proof of the costs of antinomianism
mircea_popescu: decimation no, but it would manage to reduce mormonism to something below what its critics today perceive of it.
decimation: I suspect that the variance of the "mormon benefit" is lower, given that it hasn't had 1500 years to fracture
decimation: http://www.isegoria.net/2014/08/public-health-benefits-of-culture/ "one could conclude that a mass conversion to Mormonism would reduce social problems more effectively than all welfare spending, academic research, and public health initiatives in the last fifty years."
decimation: such a long way the british have fallen
assbot: Read Them the Riot Act « Isegoria
decimation: http://www.isegoria.net/2014/08/read-them-the-riot-act/ "If the group failed to disperse within one hour, then anyone remaining gathered was guilty of a felony without benefit of clergy, punishable by death."
decimation: re: engineering thinking < taleb makes this point, if you want to learn about reality, ask someone who has tried to get things done, not someone who is a bureaucrat
assbot: Star Trek TNG Ambient Engine Noise (Idling for 24 hrs) - YouTube
ben_vulpes: asciilifeform: surprisingly, i understand the power of leverage and reduced friction in tandem.
decimation: http://www.ips.gov.au/Educational/1/3/5 here's a page with a graph that shows attenuation in different frequency bands
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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'
ben_vulpes: i point out a) those ratings are for highway operation, b) those ratings are so that joe sixpack can haul his 12klb boat up a 30deg ramp c) that generally the operating envelope is entirely different
decimation: the d-layer is up around 60 km above the surface, if the x-rays ionized the air around your head you would have bigger problems
ben_vulpes: this is closely related to a conversation i had today in which someone tried to argue without proof that a toyota tundra with its 10klb rating could *never NEVER* pull the US orbiter
mircea_popescu: ironically, in engineering it usually is the best of thinkings.
mircea_popescu: inasmuch as "i dunno, make it twelve inches thick" is thinking
ben_vulpes: mircea_popescu: i meant the same thing. "i have no idea! better make some thick factors of safety in there."
mircea_popescu: current guys are very tightly oppressed by budgets and there's this overwhelming delusion that "we know shit" making a lot of garbage numbers be accepted .
asciilifeform: the machines had to last.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: they also paid considerably more for launches
The20YearIRCloud: And i also thought that some satellites still utilized lower band stuff for altitude controls
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes no, actually, they just had much less data and better training, so they put slack in.
The20YearIRCloud: And from my understanding it also effected higher band stuff too
asciilifeform: the place where charge moves (in this case, electrons) to generate magnetic field
ben_vulpes: mircea_popescu: older engineers really thought through a lot a lot of potential orbital problems - doesn't really surprise me.
decimation: in the long run, the higher f-layers become ionized too, enabling longer-distance reliable communication on HF
ben_vulpes: not to me - what do you mean by "dynamo"?
asciilifeform: but afaik this is well-known
asciilifeform: van allen belt, incidentally, is what becomes the 'dynamo' for a nuke's emp burst.
ben_vulpes: so a big one will not just wipe out lots of networks, but also totally fuck a lot of orbital planning.
decimation: The20YearIRCloud: that's not quite accurate
ben_vulpes: paha that's intense.
The20YearIRCloud: with all of the flares below X class ones, it just reduces signal range/strength with the benefit being an easier job skipping radio signals
The20YearIRCloud: takes a pretty good hit from a flare to cause significant problems
decimation: asciilifeform: as mircea_popescu said the other night, the sea will be our loving mother long before space embraces humanity
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: there's also a third, very annoying van allen belt (!) that pops up during flares.
mircea_popescu: decimation that's for down on the surface tho.
decimation: the worst effect of a solar flare is the massive plasma cloud that the sun farts when it happens. if it hits the earth just right, it sets up massive moving magnetic fields which generate large currents in long conductors
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform quite. and some people shouldn't be innocent of books, and MORE IMPORTANTLY of the written process of thinking.
mircea_popescu: upper atmosphere is constrained magnetically. disturb the field, it expan\ds/shrinks
mircea_popescu: ben_vulpes atmosphere is mostly constrained by gravity, which makes the heat a major factor. if you heat it it expands.
ben_vulpes: <mircea_popescu> solar flare ? atmosphere expands even 500kms. << see, this is why i read the logs obsessively.
mircea_popescu: i mean, i don't think i yet published an article without a typo or two in it, sure. but there's a difference.
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
mircea_popescu: people really need to figure out this affect/effect ensure/insure business.
mircea_popescu: "But I also know that by not adding my body to the count, I insure nothing will change. "
decimation: wonder how it would work on the magnetic pole
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
decimation: I suspect they charge golden toilet prices though
decimation: asciilifeform: that's pretty cool!
mircea_popescu: generally the masses in the democracy tend to get it nice and hard. which seems fair, if only in a very cold, distant, macro sense.
decimation: well, like Mr. church pointed out earlier, most folk who took it hard were the lowly engineers and techs who were just trying to get by
asciilifeform: re: magnetorquer: saw one in toy store recently! (vendor: http://www.turtletechdesign.com)
mircea_popescu: what do you mean making some bases which you then close is on the whole a net negative, putting the place worse off than it would have been had you minded your own business!
mircea_popescu: decimation earlier terrorist.
mircea_popescu: but no, because nobel-prize-whatshisface said that government spending is beneficial for the economy.