Fondots

@Fondots@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  By 18, somewhere along the line you’ve hopefully had some kind of science/biology class where they talked about dominant and recessive genes, Punnett squares, and all of that

  But in case you didn’t, or it’s slipped your mind (honestly, given your age there’s a good chance they may have covered this while you were learning from home during the pandemic, so kind of understandable if you don’t remember) here’s a quick refresher

  You get one copy of each gene from both parents. Sometimes you get the same version of them from each parent, sometimes you get a different version.

  Let’s imagine there’s a single gene that determines if you’re going to be tall. There’s a tall version of that gene, that we’ll call “T” and a short version that we’ll call “t”

  We’ll say that “T” is the dominant version, and “t” is recessive.

  What that means is that if you carry the “T” gene, it will always be expressed. You’ll be tall as long as you have at least one copy of it.

  Remember, you get one copy of this gene from each parent. They each also have 2 copies of this gene.

  Your dad is tall, so he must be carrying at least one copy of the T gene. He might have one, or he might have two.

  Your mom is short, so she doesn’t have the T gene, she has 2 copies of the t gene.

  So if your dad has 2 copies, all of his children will be tall, because they’re all going to get a T from him.

  But if he only has 1, he could have short children if he passes along his t gene instead, and since your mom doesn’t have a T to pass on, she can only pass on the t gene

  We can illustrate this in something called a Punnett Square, which looks something like this (apologies for the lazy ASCII layout)

  _ | T | T
  t | Tt | Tt
  t | Tt | Tt

  or

  _ | T | t
  t | Tt | tt
  t | Tt | tt

  The top rows represent your father’s genes, with 1 or 2 copies of the T gene, and the column on the left represents your mothers with only the t gene

  And the rest of the squares represent the possible combination of genes you can have.

  So in this hypothetical, if your dad is a “Tt” and your mom is a “tt” you have a 50/50 shot of being tall.

  This is a very simplified version of it. In reality, there’s not just one gene that determines height, there’s actually about 10,000 genetic factors that have some impact on your height.

  And for shits and giggles, let’s imagine that both of your parents were tall so the punnet squares look like this

  _ | T | T
  T | TT | TT
  T | TT | TT

  Or

  _ | T | t
  T | TT | Tt
  t | Tt | tt

  In the first example, both your parents are tall, and all of their children will be tall. In the second example both parents are tall, both parents are tall, but there’s a 1 in 4 chance that their child will inherit the t gene from each of them and be short.

  And not all genes are purely dominant/recessive, some are incompletely dominant, so Tt might sort of split the difference in height between a TT and a tt person. Some genes kind of play off of other genes, so maybe in order for the “T” gene to make you tall you may also need to be carrying a “U” gene, for example.

  And on top of that, there’s environmental factors, nutrition, illness, injuries, etc. can have an impact on how tall you can be. People today are, on average, taller than people in the past because overall we’re better able to meet our nutritional needs and treat health issues than they were back then.

  And, while it’s unlikely that you’ll grow another foot to catch up with your dad’s height, at 18 you may still have a little bit of growing to do, some men continue to grow a little into their early 20s.

  So there’s a lot that goes into this.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If I stood on a precision scale and farted, would I get lighter or heavier?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Well your guts and skin and other tissues do have some elasticity, I suppose it is possible that a large gas bubble might be able to expand your abdomen slightly.

  We’re very much into spherical cows in a vacuum territory here. I don’t think there’s any way this would be realistically measurable,just fun to think about.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If I stood on a precision scale and farted, would I get lighter or heavier?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I think that, theoretically, if someone’s flatus contained an abnormally high amount of lighter-than-air gases, like hydrogen and methane, they might get very slightly heavier. Having a gas like that inside of you would, I think, provide a bit of a buoyant force lifting you away from the scale that would make your weight read lower, and releasing that gas would sort of drop your full weight onto the scale.

  In practice, methane and hydrogen are only part of a fart, and other gases and such in the mix are heavier than air, so at best you might break even.

  Probably a few caveats to that about temperature and pressure and such, and it’s doubtful that anyone’s gut produces enough of the right kinds of gas for that to happen.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why aren't there many controllers with the ability to physically swap out the ABXY layout between Xbox/PC and Nintendo layout?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s basically what I had in mind. Steam has this as an option for the big picture mode UI and I like it a lot.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why aren't there many controllers with the ability to physically swap out the ABXY layout between Xbox/PC and Nintendo layout?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Personally, I’d prefer if games and such would use universal face button glyphs on-screen.

  I’ve switched back and forth between Xbox, Nintendo, and PlayStation controllers so much that I really don’t have a mental map of which button is which, and in game I’m usually not looking at my controller to be able to tell.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Yeah, how much OP actually complains about this is kind of a big factor here.

  I run up against something similar with a few of my friends. They spend a lot of time complaining that they’re bored and lonely, but no matter how many invites you throw their way, they never seem to make any effort to follow through with any plans. They say they’re interested, but they never let you know when they’re available, or they don’t show up, or they come up with flimsy excuses, etc.

  And there are times I really wish I could force some of them to just show up to something so they’d stop complaining.

  Having a social life is hard, I get it, we all only have so much time, energy, money, etc. shit comes up, we have other obligations, we all like to just veg out on the couch sometimes

  But if you’re not willing to put forth even a little effort to follow through on plans, rearrange some things, inconvenience yourself a little, at some point you kind of lose the right to complain.

  And it’s not that you’re not allowed to complain about it once in a while. But at some point, it’s just not fair to the people you’re complaining to if you’re not actually making an effort to do something about it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Protest footage blocked as online safety act comes into force⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  Not that I really support cops confiscating orbeez guns as a general rule

  But I work in 911 dispatch in a different area where orbeez guns aren’t illegal, and they’ve been kind of a problem this year.

  I think some of our local delinquents have taken to freezing the balls or modifying their guns to shoot faster or something, because we have had a few injuries and broken windows and such linked to orbeez guns this year.

  Even without that, they’re a pretty significant nuisance that have started a lot of fights because no one likes being pelted with orbeez.

  And of course there’s the problem that exists with all toy guns where if you paint them black or are running around with them in the dark it can be hard to tell them apart from a real gun which is asking for trouble.

  And the countless calls I’ve gotten from neighborhood karens who “don’t think it’s safe” or “that they shouldn’t be doing that here” is getting kind of old.

  And not for nothing, orbeez can be really slow to break down in the environment and I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re contributing to our microplastics problem.

  If there is a way to twist the interpretation of a law to say that orbeez guns are illegal, I’m not at all surprised to hear about cops doing just that. Not that I generally support that, but if you caught me on a bad day after I took a bunch of calls about kids with them, I might be tempted to sign a petition to get them banned.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Protest footage blocked as online safety act comes into force⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  As someone who has regularly carried a variety of knives and multi tools almost every day of my life, I also can’t say I’m a fan of their knife laws.

  That said, as-written, I don’t find them to be quite as bad as a lot of people make them out to be (how the police choose to interpret and enforce those laws is sort of a different matter)

  It’s not the sort of knife I normally choose to carry, but all of the reasons I normally carry and use a knife for can be done perfectly safely and effectively with something like a regular Swiss army knife with a 2.5inch non-locking blade which should generally be ok to carry for no particular reason.

  It should be noted that I do not carry a knife for any self-defense purposes. I feel very little need to defend myself, and even if I did a knife would be just about my last choice after pretty much any other object in arm’s reach. Even though where I am, I could pretty much walk around town carrying a halberd for self defense if I really wanted to and it would be legal, I actually do tend to choose my EDC knives to be pretty inoffensive-looking free of any unnecessary point/stabby bits and if possible.

  And cases that really require more knife than that aren’t exactly part of my usual everyday carry scenario, and the appropriate knives for those occasions should be covered under the lawful justification and reasonable use exemptions (again, how the police actually apply those laws can leave something to be desired, but that’s often a problem here too)

  Again, not a fan of their knife laws, but in the grand scheme, I’m not nearly as outraged by them as a lot of people are.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨DissolvPCB enables fully recyclable 3D-printed circuit boards with liquid metal conductors⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You are correct, should have-checked that the two PVAs referred to the same thing.

  I think the rest of my comment still pretty much stands though, PVA glue isn’t quite water soluble but the cleanup for it isn’t much more involved and doesn’t involve any exotic solvents or anything

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨DissolvPCB enables fully recyclable 3D-printed circuit boards with liquid metal conductors⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s around $40 for a spool, I’m not sure what that works out to per square meter of printed board, and I’m far too lazy to work that out.

  It also seems to me like it could be a more efficient use of board space since it could be printed closer to the shape of the traces than you’d probably want to trim a board to by hand so you can save on material a bit that way. A bunch of cut corners and notches cut out of a few boards could add up over a few prints.

  I’m just spitballing some thoughts, I don’t do nearly enough circuit designing to have a horse in this race, nor the desire to really work out the economics of it but especially for someone who already owns a 3d printer and maybe is already using PVA filament this seems like something that could fit well into their existing workflows.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Protest footage blocked as online safety act comes into force⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It could just be the parts of the internet I inhabit, but I don’t think it’s really a recent thing, I think it’s just hitting a point where the masses are really starting to take notice of it.

  I’m pretty sure I remember seeing memes about CCTV cameras and such in the UK about 20 years ago now, and I don’t think it’s an accident that things like 1984 and V for Vendetta were written by British authors and set there.

  As an outsider, it’s certainly looked to me like the UK has been kind of a nanny state for a long time, and it’s not a long walk from there to the kind of bullshit we’re seeing more of now.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨DissolvPCB enables fully recyclable 3D-printed circuit boards with liquid metal conductors⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  It’s arguably easier, but I think it depends on your use case.

  Etching usually requires a couple chemicals that not everyone has the space to store properly, like if they live in a small apartment and have kids, and even if you go with safer alternatives like vinegar over ferric chloride, after use the etching solution should still be considered poisonous and needs to be handled and disposed of with some care.

  Also worth considering is that this method is solder-free, so in addition to not needing to solder anything, it’s easier to recover components, no desoldering needed, just warm it up a bit and pull out the components for reuse.

  Just thinking back to different points in my life, I used to live in a small apartment with my wife and a roommate. I wouldn’t have wanted to keep acetone around there, anytime I used it it would have stunk up the whole place. And I didn’t really want to do any soldering there, our ventilation wasn’t great and our smoke detectors were on a hair trigger, and I lived in fear of losing my security deposit from dropping a stray blob of solder burning a hole in the carpet or something. PVA printing is pretty innocuous as far as fumes go, and I wouldn’t have needed much equipment beyond an electric kettle (other than a printer) to play around with this there.

  Really though, I see this being most useful for a situation where you want to prototype a few iterations that you’ll want to field test. I wouldn’t want to etch a dozen prototype boards that can’t really be reused and have to desolder to recover all the components, but I could see printing out a dozen prototypes this way and refusing the liquid metal and such.

  I’d probably still want my final board to be etched, but this gives you a good way to workshop a bunch of revisions without throwing out a bunch of etched boards.

  Also I don’t know how the cost of PVA filament stacks up against copper clad boards, but just kind of guestimating from my limited knowledge of 3d printing, it seems like the cost of boards vs filament is probably about the same or maybe even better. Sure, there’s the startup costs of getting the metal and a printer, but I feel like a lot of the people who would want to do this probably already have a printer or were looking for an excuse to get one anyway, and the metal is reusable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨DissolvPCB enables fully recyclable 3D-printed circuit boards with liquid metal conductors⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  I skimmed through the paper, and I agree that it looks pretty damn digestible for the average tinkerer to understand and implement themselves if they so choose

  But just kind of a quick summary for people who still won’t read the article

  You basically 3d print a circuit board out of P A (which is basically the same material as regular white elders school glue, so non toxic and water soluble) with hollow channels instead of circuit traces.

  Then you fill those hollow tubes with the gallium/indium mix, which has a very low melting point, like “glass of warm water” low.

  Insert any components you need and secure them into place with a drop of glue, and BOOM you’ve got a circuit board.

  And when you’re done, just dump it in a glass of water. The PVA dissolves and you can fish out the metal to reuse in a different project.

  Like you said, the only “specialized” equipment you need is a 3d printer that can handle PVA filament.

  Not necessarily something that’s going to be useful for any industrial production applications, but this could be huge for hobbyists and even prototyping for businesses. Most traditional methods for making a PCB call for some kind of nasty chemicals and they’re not really reusable, especially not for the home-gamer, this could make for a nice step-up for the people who don’t want to deal with this and want something a little more polished than a breadboard or a mess of soldered wires

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you were reincarnated, wouldn't it be elsewhere in the universe?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Just pointing out some assumptions you’re making and shoehorning in a couple of my own thoughts on the matter.

  1. We’re assuming that there is life elsewhere in the universe. (I personally tend to believe there is something, somewhere out there that could check the boxes to be considered “life” but it’s not exactly a sure thing)

  2. We’re assuming that whatever life exists out there possesses a soul (If I did believe in souls, which I personally do not, I don’t think that every living thing necessarily would have a soul- bacteria, fungus, plants, etc. I wouldn’t think have souls, nor necessarily all animals, I don’t think I’d say that things like placozoans, sea sponges, coral, and jellyfish have souls for example.)

  3. We’re assuming that those souls operate in a similar manner to our own and are compatible with us. As far as we can tell all life on earth evolved from a common ancestor, so all souls have at least have somewhat similar biological “hardware” (wetware? Squishyware?) to run on. Would our souls be compatible with life elsewhere in the universe that might be based around totally different chemistry?

  4. Even if they’re technically compatible, would our souls even be part of the same system as the souls of aliens? I think that in most belief systems that involve reincarnation, the point of reincarnation is to somehow build upon the souls’ prior experiences on earth, to make up for or be punished for things you did wrong, to settle unfinished business, to inch closer to enlightenment with new experiences and knowledge, etc. Can you do that effectively if your soul reincarnates on an entirely different planet? Could, for example, the Dalai Lama, be an effective spiritual leader for the Tibetan people if he reincarnated somewhere near Betelgeuse? And if we are currently operating in 2 different “soul-ar” systems (couldn’t resist the pun) what happens if first contact is made? Do our two soul cycles merge into one since our two civilizations would be able to have an impact on one another? Does it happen evenly across the entire human race? Would a member of, for example, the Sentinelese people, who would probably remain unaware of and have no impact on the affairs of aliens, be part of that merged system, or would their souls remain largely in their own bubble?

  5. How fast can souls travel? Are they bound by the light speed limit that everything else in the universe seems to be, or can they go faster than that? If they can, does this open up some sort of back-door to FTL travel or communication where all we need to do is off somebody and let them reincarnate across the universe to awaken their latent memories of past lives? Can we encode information on a soul somehow and transmit it that way?

  Sort of tangential to parts 2, 3, and 4, the Catholic Church, while not believing in reincarnation, has actually given some thought to the idea of alien souls, and determined that it’s possible, even likely, that if there is intelligent life out there somewhere, that they may not be in need of Jesus’ salvation in the same way humans are. Since they’re not descended from Adam & Eve like they believe all humans are, they may not be burdened with original sin. So there’s at least one religion that thinks alien souls may be, in some way, fundamentally different from our own.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If everyone spontaneously became the same race the world would realize that the rich are the real problem⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Kind of depends on how you define “race” (it’s pretty much scientifically meaningless, so define it however the hell you like)

  But we have several currently ongoing attempts at genocide happening around the world, that to me tells me that a hell of a lot of people out there care a whole lot about race.

  American racism is particularly odd to me due to how broadly we categorize race, trying to lump people into a black/white/Hispanic/Asian/etc. category based on not much more than skin color. And we’re also unusuallly open about the fact that racism is a thing here. A lot of the world kind of keeps it more on the down-low.

  But if you go with narrower definitions of race, you’ll see the same kind of things happening around the world as in America. I’ve seen people from the UK talk about Polish immigrants in much the same way people here talk about Mexicans, and that’s not even going into the cluster fuck of how much of Europe treats Romani people. A whole lot of people in Asian countries have issues with other people from other Asian countries, or even different ethnic groups within their own countries (like Uyghurs in china.) Parts of Africa are patchworks of different ethnic groups that are often at each other’s throats, and of course South Africa is still a long way from having its shit fully sorted out. A lot of white Australians have pretty significant biases against Aboriginal people.

  I could go on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  There’s a small part of me that has kind of wished that this kind of pseudo age verification was a thing for a while (even though there’s a much bigger part that doesn’t want any corporation to know a damn thing about me.)

  I remember swinging through Walmart once to pick up a couple things.

  My cart had, IIRC, some deodorant (old spice classic,) masking tape, a can of spray paint, some plumbing parts, a few fishing lures, socks, and a couple of snacks.

  I had one of those “I’ve become my dad” moments looking at my cart. I feel like that shopping list is practically a distillation of every suburban dad who’s ever existed.

  But of course, I rang up the spray paint, and an employee had to come over to confirm that I was in fact some boring suburban white dude and not a teenager who was going to use it for mischief or huff it to get high.

  Maybe I’m giving the juvenile delinquents of today too little credit, or maybe my fellow grown-ups too much, but I feel like the venn diagram of people buying fishing lures, a new toilet flapper, and socks, has basically no overlap with vandals and paint-sniffers.

  So I kind of felt like maybe the almighty algorithm could have picked up on that and let me skip having the underpaid giving me a quick looking-at before punching his code into the self-checkout.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If you manage the funds for someone saving up to buy a hedge, does that make you a Hedge Fund Manager?⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  At work I once received a call from someone who worked at a tree service company, trimming trees, tree removal, relocating them, etc.

  She identified herself as the branch manager.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The Age-Checked Internet Has Arrived⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We’re at or reaching a tipping point where I’m not sure that’s true anymore.

  Most people with kids now are (roughly) in their 20s-40s. At the older end of that range, you have some gen-xers who might have missed the boat on computer literacy, but by and large we’re talking about millennials and older gen-z at this point. Kids who grew up with the internet, probably very clearly remember their family getting their first computer if they didn’t already have one when they were born, had computer classes in school, etc.

  And we’re running into an issue where younger Gen z and alpha in many cases are less computer literate in many ways. A lot of them aren’t really learning to use a computer so much as they are smartphones and tablets, and I’m not knocking how useful those devices can be, I do damn-near everything I need to do on my phone, but they are limited compared to a PC and don’t really offer as much of an opportunity to learn how computers work.

  There’s a ton of exceptions to that of course, some of my millennial friends are still clueless about how to do basic things on a computer, and some children today are of course learning how to do anything and everything on a computer or even on a phone.

  But overall, I don’t think there’s as much disparity in technological literacy between the children and parents of today as there was in previous generations, and in some ways that trend may have even reversed.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to get a new line in a post, but not two?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Two spaces at the end of the line
  Will give you what you’re looking for

  • Markdown also supports
  • Using asterisks followed by a space at the beginning of the line
  • To create bullet points like this

  1. Or numbered lists
  2. Like this one
  3. Which is pretty much just what-you-see-is-what-you-get
• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨‘If I switch it off, my girlfriend might think I’m cheating’: inside the rise of couples location sharing⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  My wife and I work different schedules. on the rare day off that were both home, she’s often out of the house when I wake up. She’s not great at replying to texts. I never know when she’s going to be home, and usually have no clue what she’s out doing or where.

  But I know who she’s doing while she’s gone- no one. Because I trust my wife. I know who she is as a person, I know what our relationship is like.

  I have no particular desire to know her location at all times. I’m sure if I asked, she’d share it with me, and I’d do the same for her. I might occasionally do that when I’m off hiking or something in case there’s an emergency, but half the time I wouldn’t have a signal anyway.

  We are two humans with our own lives. Those lives are very intertwined, but we’re both allowed to go off and have our own adventures, occasionally some secrets, and we don’t need to know where each other is 24/7

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨we must protect them from exotics⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  If you were able to target it properly to the right species, depending on where you are in the world, there’s a good chance that the rats and sparrows you’re thinking of are invasive.

  I know around me in the US I see a whole lot more house sparrows (native to Europe, Asia, and some parts of North Africa) than I do any native Sparrows.

  And the two most known rat species- the black and brown rats, originated in different parts of Asia and more-or-less spread around the world with human trade and migration.

  So getting rid of those would probably be a good thing to reduce competition for native animals.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How active is too active while being on lemmy?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think it depends a lot on the community and what you’re posting.

  But in general, you’re posting good quality, relevant content and not just spamming with every article you come across, engaging with people in the comments, not x-posting things to a bunch of different communities, and of course not being a dick, I don’t think there’s an issue.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Repairing Broken Sofa?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I think we’re going to need some details on how your couch is constructed and how it broke to really answer this

  Since you mention unscrewing the other legs, could you just go out to home Depot (or local equivalent big hardware store) and purchase 4 of something like this and replace them?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Gen A(lpha) or Gen AI?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks to ambiguous sans-serif fonts, we don’t really have to choose

  Gen AIpha Gen Alpha

  Il

  At least on my phone, those look damn-near identical.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  “Stop trying to make fetch happen”

  Everyone has their own verbal idiosyncrasies- local dialects, accents, words and phrases you picked up somewhere that have a nice ring to them, in-jokes with your friends and family, etc.

  You’ll come by them organically, no need to force it.

  Inevitably, when you try to force them, at best people just won’t notice, or more likely they will notice and think you’re a weirdo, or a pretentious asshole, and at worse they might actually have a hard time understanding you which kind of defeats the purpose of speaking in the first place.

  Seek out new experiences, acquire knowledge at every opportunity, meet people, go places, do things. Without even trying your speech will acquire plenty of interesting character and you won’t have to expend any effort to do so.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Birkeland–Eyde, yes, but that’s even more inefficient than the Haber process.

  Ostwald is something else though, that’s basically the next step after the Haber process to turn the ammonia into nitric acid.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨[deleted]⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m sure there is a relatively simple way to get from liquid nitrogen to nitrogen compounds

  These days we do have the means to do it, though I don’t know how achievable they are to the home-gamer

  But historically this was actually a huge chemistry problem

  I’m not a chemist, so I gotta gloss over some stuff I don’t fully understand

  But nitrogen tends to form bonds with itself and makes an N~2~ molecule. That’s what the nitrogen in the air is, that’s what liquid nitrogen is.

  And unfortunately for us (for chemistry purposes) that molecule is very stable, it doesn’t like to react with much, for most practical purposes it can basically be considered inert.

  However, nitrogen is of course part of a whole lot of other chemicals as well, very important chemicals that plants and animals need. You probably heard about the nitrogen cycle in middle or high school science class at one point, and how nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the soil can convert atmospheric nitrogen into stuff that plants can use, and then animals eat the plants, and their waste also contains nitrogen compounds that can feed plants, etc.

  But for us to do that through chemical processes isn’t easy. We can’t just pour some liquid nitrogen into a beaker and mix in some other stuff and it reacts to make ammonia or whatever other nitrogen compound you desire.

  Until around 100 years ago, we basically couldn’t turn atmospheric nitrogen into anything else, at least not at any kind of scale and not in any commercially viable way. Which was a huge problem as the world’s population was growing and growing enough food to feed everyone was hard without being able to make synthetic fertilizers. The US actually has a law saying that they’re allowed to just claim uninhabited islands that are covered in bird shit because that guano was rich in ammonia and other nitrogen compounds and so immensely valuable as a fertilizer.

  Then along comes Fritz Haber, who comes up with the Haber process to turn atmospheric nitrogen into ammonia. This was a huge deal and he won a Nobel Prize in chemistry for it. I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that if you’ve eaten pretty much anything grown on a farm you owe it to the Haber process.

  And it’s still a huge deal to this day, the haber process is responsible for around 2% of the world’s energy consumption, and about the same amount of our greenhouse gas emissions.

  If you’ve got a quick and easy way to turn pure nitrogen into something else, there’s probably another Nobel Prize waiting for you.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I finished my 3D Printable screw design! Excellent print ability, reliable for simple use, though the head is prone to strip... can't win them all.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Lag bolts are more like a big wood screw, what you call coach bolts seem to be what we call carriage bolts

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I finished my 3D Printable screw design! Excellent print ability, reliable for simple use, though the head is prone to strip... can't win them all.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not sure if the wire gauge thing is right, unless you’re talking about a different system than I’m familiar with, because with wire gauge smaller number=bigger wire, and with screw sizes smaller number=smaller screw

  Also just my 2¢ on “machine screw” vs “bolt” as a casual tinkerer with various things held together by different types of threaded fasteners.

  Generally speaking if it’s got a hex head or nut that I’m using a wrench to tighten, it’s a bolt

  If it’s got some sort of hole (or God forbid a slot) that I’m going to use some sort of a driver (for the purposes of this, an Allen “wrench” is a driver) to tighten, it’s a screw.

  And of course everything gets really murky when we start talking about things like sheet metal screws, lag bolts/screws, masonry screws, etc.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I finished my 3D Printable screw design! Excellent print ability, reliable for simple use, though the head is prone to strip... can't win them all.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Just an FYI if you’re not familiar with American screw sizes, calling this a 10-32 equivalent is probably going to confuse come people.

  The naming convention used for screws in America includes the shank diameter and the pitch of the thread in threads per inch (TPI)

  So a 10-32 in a #10 diameter screw with 32 threads per inch

  Below about ¼ inch diameter, the American system usually uses that numbered system, a #10 screw is .190 inches or roughly 3/16

  For larger diameter screws they usually just use the nearest fractional equivalent instead of the screw number, so a ¼-20 is roughly ¼ inch (actually .242in/ or #14) diameter and has 20 TPI

  Most sizes have a standard coarse and fine thread, for #10 32TPI is the fine thread, and 20TPI is the coarse thread