642700+ entries in 0.448s
mircea_popescu: ll of
the young families who lost
their homes or street after street of boarded up houses abandoned
to
the wealthy loan companies who received government funds
to “shore up”
their windfall. Again, I lost my retirement.
mircea_popescu: Instead I got busy working 100-hour workweeks.
Then came
the L.A. depression of
the early 1990s. Our leaders decided
that
they didn’t need
the all of
those extra Air Force bases
they had in Southern California, so
they were closed; just like
that.
The result was economic devastation in
the region
that rivaled
the widely publicized
Texas S&L fiasco. However, because
the government caused it, no one gave a shit about a
decimation: the most realistic "intergalactic
travel" design
that I'm aware of is
the one
that shits nukes every few minutes
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform well iirc
that
thing was predicated on proton-proton fusion
decimation: la wik recommends
this book: "The Star Flight Handbook" for
the math on
the bussard design
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform well in
teh press. generally "ion engine" => intergallactic
travel.
mircea_popescu: but now... it's all better. so i guess in a few more decades only northeners will be fit
to go on space missions
mircea_popescu: then it became an impossible near uv, far uv, ir etc horror,
to
the degree i couldn't even look at
the daytime sky.
mircea_popescu: and speaking of
the upper atmosphere : i have had
to extreme pleasure
to encounter again
the sun of my youth, down here. for
the first fifteen or so years of my existence on earth,
the sun was
this warm, pleasant, narrow source.
mircea_popescu: this is
the major application for ion engines, not space
travel : mangement of
the upper atmosphere. nobody wants
to say
this, for some reason.
mircea_popescu: at something like 100pa, all you need is
to accelerate one ion in 100
to 100
times
the average brownian speed.
mircea_popescu: * asciilifeform wonders if
this could even be carried out mechanically, with something like a wirbelrohr. << you'd need a good ion engine, actually.
decimation: presumably
this would make
the surface 'rough', and
therefore increase friction. but now we are in
the realm of highly non-linear fluid dynamics
assbot: Bussard ramjet - Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia
decimation: friction opposes
the extra
thrust-mass
decimation: asciilifeform:
the
trouble is
that you would have
to increase surface area, and
therefore drag,
to operate such a collector
assbot: Magnetorquer - Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia
decimation: spending
the $billions on a robot-mining-factory would have had much better roi
than idiots floating in space
decimation: MIR was up for a long
time; also with constant attention
decimation: I was reading antifragile earlier
today.
decimation: indeed.
the mind reels at
the cost/benefit ratio
mircea_popescu: if it had
to carry all its fuel it'd have collapsed years ago.
decimation: except
they have constantly boost
the orbit
assbot: Advanced Extremely High Frequency - Wikipedia,
the free encyclopedia
nubbins`: just printing a proof now on
the inkjet, likely start pre-press in
the next couple days
mircea_popescu: do you see
the difference between some party declaring war (whether
this is entirely in
their own mind and an exercise in pure ridicule) and someone declaring jihad ?
mircea_popescu: and mike ocd is also part of something. whereas
the austin guy clearly is not.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform yes,
the process
through which girls become wives and us citizens usg informants.
mircea_popescu: the only people
that start
throwing
things are
the people in a corner
through a system
they do not wish
to continue in any circumstances.
mircea_popescu: people in a corner by ill fortune get depressed. people in a corner by misdeeds reprogram. people in a corner by having pissed off wrong people
turn sluts.
assbot: here's
the Manifesto of Joseph Stack -- "Mr. Big Brother IRS Man" - RE Austin plane crash - Democratic Underground
mircea_popescu: i guess
the j stack replica in my head flew a plane into part of my memory
mircea_popescu: i never read
that guy, but i will
take
the challenge. show how.
mircea_popescu: "sammy j beats his wife regularly. johnny
told his wife if she doesn't stop dressing like an out of work whore he'll beat her
too. sammy is on
trial for
terrorism nao"
mircea_popescu: i was not seriously proposing
that was what happened. i was merely illustrating
the disproportion between what occurred and
terrorism.
mircea_popescu: re : yes, it is
true, except it wasn't ivan ivanovich but vladimir vladimirovich, it wasn't a bike but a car and it wasn't given but
taken away
mircea_popescu: radio erevan answers! user : is it
true
that ivan ivanovich was given a bike ?
mthreat: He hit
the building with
the IRS investigators
mthreat: I used
to work in
teh building next
to
the one he hit.
mircea_popescu: mthreat some guy got pissed off at irs, flew his radio airplane into a pole across
the street.
mthreat: what's
the 2010 Austin
terrorist attack?
mircea_popescu: "The 2010 Austin
terrorist attack" dude for crying out loud.
assbot: Silicon Valley and
the Rise of
the Disneypreneur | Michael O. Church
assbot: I've written about it at length already and don't choose
to relive it in detail,... | Hacker News
[]bot: Bet placed: 10 BTC for Yes on "BTC Difficulty over 31Bn before October"
http://bitbet.us/bet/1028/ Odds: 78(Y):22(N) by coin, 78(Y):22(N) by weight.
Total bet: 27.48720202 BTC. Current weight: 97,227.
assbot: Year Of No Light -
Tocsin [Full Album] [HQ] - YouTube
ben_vulpes: i'll clear
that up. been noodling on good wording, have yet
to come up with anything
that feels *right*
ben_vulpes: it's a little wonky right now as i've yet
to collect seven days of statistics