wolframhydroxide

@wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Smells Great⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  So, when you get to the scale of “a laser that can destroy objects”, it turns out that the reflectance of natural materials is just utterly insufficient. Consider the following: suppose that a mirror finish reflects 90% of the light from a laser in the range you’re looking at (a fair assumption, from what I’ve read). Now, let’s do some basic back-of-the-napkin math: we’ll use a 30 kW laser, which is apparently standard for current destructive laser weapons. Let’s further assume that the laser light is spread over a surface area of 0.04 m^2 (because a spot 20 cm on a side seems to me a fairly high estimate for the spread on a precision laser, even on a moving target, if it’s motion-tracked, I should think). Let us be generous and assume that this reflective paint coating is 0.5mm (0.0005m) thick. Given the paint’s approximate specific heat of 2.302 J/gK (polyethylene) and density of 1400000 g/m^3 (PVC), and let’s also assume the breakdown temp of the reflectance is near the boiling point of PVA (spray paint), which is 112C.

  So, the mass of paint absorbing the energy is 0.04*0.0005*1400000=28 g.

  To heat the entirety of these 28 g of this material by about 90C (from 22 to 112), completely destroying the protective layer, we would need 2.302*28*90 = 5801J

  Now we know that we have 30000*0.93= 3000J/s, so it would take about 2 seconds of lancing to completely destroy the protection. Given that it already takes 2-5 seconds to destroy things with the laser, and it doesn’t actually have to destroy the entire area for the reflectance to deteriorate and let the laser through, this would only be adding another second of work. I think that, no matter what you do, the laser’s gonna win.

  I can give sources for any of these estimates.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Smells Great⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Honestly, I memorised the band once in orgo, and never looked at them again, so you’re more likely to know than I.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Smells Great⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I think that wouldn’t necessarily work once you get to the right wavelengths for it to start interacting with the organic bases of the paints. There’s only so much you can do when someone shoots an infrared laser at the resonant frequency of a C=C double bond.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨egg time⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I believe that, nowadays, it is generally accepted that dinosaurs, crocodilians and birds are all “archosaurs”.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Load bearing Tupperware⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The problem is not that any outage occurred. This still happens often. Things just refuse to work sometimes. The issue is that SO MANY eggs were in ONE basket.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨wax on⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They do, but in order for them to _re_gurgitate, they first must gorge upon it. They eat it, chew it up and spit it out in the shapes necessary (planar, cylindrical, or otherwise).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Amen⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Until a Cartesian Solipsist points out that your senses are inherently fallible, it is impossible to prove that you are not a Boltzmann Brain, and the only thing it is possible to know with certainty is that you exist, in your present moment of experience.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨cox-zucker⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Oh man, pre-FNAF? Thats the deep magic.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨PRAISE HIM⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, there’s gas, liquid, bose-einstein condensate, and plasma at the least.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Google is blocking AI searches for Trump and dementia⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  In this case, I believe this article was written for those of us who are smart enough to realise that AI is all bullshit, and who understand that most people aren’t smart enough to figure out that first bit.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should Neutron Stars be Added to the Periodic Table?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  That sounds like more of an ESA/JAXA joint venture. The only stuff NASA is going to be doing for the foreseeable future is ensuring the rapid exhort of Space Fascism™

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should Neutron Stars be Added to the Periodic Table?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, we can’t call them atoms, which are defined by the presence of an electron cloud surrounding a nucleus.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should Neutron Stars be Added to the Periodic Table?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I would argue that, since they lack an electron cloud and are comprised of a collection of free-floating nuclei, they are actually a plasma.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Should you copy a person's accent when pronouncing their name?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  As a classroom teacher for students who are >80% immigrants from non-anglophone countries, I can actually speak with some authority on the subject. I have many students who have traditional names in other languages, as well as students whose parents 100% just made up something they thought sounded nice. I am one of the few teachers who emphasises correctly pronouncing students’ names. If they put stress on the second syllable, I put stress on the second syllable. I work very hard to make sure I’m pronouncing their names exactly how they do.

  I have had three students in the last month alone remark on how I am the only teacher they’ve ever had who pronounced their name “right”. I have a student named Djibril who had extremely poor relationships with most of the teachers in the building, but who always does my work, and he straight up told me last year that it was because I am the only person in the entire school who actually pronounces his name correctly. Everyone else just calls him “juh-BRILL”, when he says it should be pronounced closer to “JEE-breel” (with a lilted r).

  Making sure you pronounce someone’s name how they pronounce their name can be extremely important to social relationships, and having an anglicised name attached to them against their will is often mentioned among memoirs of immigrants as one of the first and most alienating things to happen to them when they enter an anglophone country. It’s not about expecting others to cater to your weird name. It’s about people having a basic modicum of respect for the humanity of non-dominant cultures.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If sexuality is a spectrum, does that mean one person is the gayest?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ll take “Risky Clicks” for 800, Alex.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If sexuality is a spectrum, does that mean one person is the gayest?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Good for him?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If sexuality is a spectrum, does that mean one person is the gayest?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Colours are a spectrum. That doesn’t stop two things from being the same hue/wavelength

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨If sexuality is a spectrum, does that mean one person is the gayest?⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Grant is bi…

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dinner is ready! ⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Worse, they bundled it with the worse half of the USA.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dinner is ready! ⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This gate keeping of cuisine is ridiculous. It would logically follow that you have to throw out anything that’s made with something originally from a different zone. So no potatoes, tomatoes, corn or other new world crops… Well, anywhere but one of these sections. Anything that comes from cultural exchange is, apparently, right out. So good luck with whatever the fuck they were eating in mesopotamia and the India river valley civilisation. I hope you like your beer to be bread.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Dinner is ready! ⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Also, D even gets the entire bay of Naples.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Beware, another "wonderful" conservative instance to "free us" has appeared ⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m so glad we can always rely on Satan’s Maggoty Cum Fart for honest and reasonable assessments of situations.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I’d agree with your comment, if it were posted ten years ago. We are already there. I cannot get any of the materials I need as a science teacher without going through fucking Amazon. There isn’t a single laboratory supply store I can find in the metro area I live in with a population of 5-million+. I can’t purchase anything without going online. Every utility is run by a corporation actively grifting the citizens, because it has complete control over whether they live or die. Every single thing I do requires either completely cutting myself off from another aspect of society or capitulating to a corpofascist monopoly or cabal of pedophilic oligarchs.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3144: Phase Changes⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Also, it only freezes if enough heat is removed from it to allow for the phase change to occur.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Somebody call a doctor!⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, you have to include other possibilities, such as the likelihood that you are hallucinating, dreaming, or that your entire subjective experience is the result of a Brain-In-A-Vat scenario

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3142: -Style Pizza⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  I disagree with the claim that they are, as a rule, universally applicable, though I certainly do not disagree that this is highly US-normative. There is a significant subset of comics specifically about US issues, stretching back all the way to the very beginning. I can, upon request, provide examples.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3142: -Style Pizza⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  1:

  known mostly for [Citation Fucking Needed]. You clearly are not a regular reader if you haven’t seen his near-constant references to US politics, electoral systems and why the US’ sucks, or literally one of the first and most oft-quoted XKCD comics of all time, which only makes sense from the perspective of a country where, even in the 2000’s, literalist interpretations of religious texts and anti-science narratives are not just ever-present, but were already one of the primary voting issues for the entire country

  2: You are not entitled to an excuse for Randall Munroe daring, nay, displaying the absolute temerity to make a comic about pizza. For someone supposedly calling out US-Normativity, you certainly seem awfully clueless about the implicit assumptions you make.

  3: I’m sorry that you feel entitled to an apology for an american comic artist drawing a comic about something quintessentially american. I am more sorry, however, for whoever failed to teach you that expecting other people to conform to your normative beliefs when they do something for themselves is a bad thing. He never once said that he would make it non-“US centric”. The only promise he has ever made about it is that it is “A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language.” This comic is both sarcastic and related to the semantics of language. That you feel it is too “US-Centric” is your own concern. As a resident of Ameristan, I can say with confidence that you making that normative expectation is the most american thing you could do. Unless, of course, you were eating a weird slice of “pizza” while doing it.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3142: -Style Pizza⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  To be fair, the comic artist is from Boston. This comic strip had been around for almost 20 years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨IF YOU TAKE ENOUGH YOU CAN SEE *THE PATTERN* BRO⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Here, you want a mind fuck? I’ll let you have it for free:

  Bell’s Theorem: The universe is not locally real (either the speed of light is violable or properties of things do not exist until observed) Light simultaneously takes all paths, and so does everything else if given the right conditions. We just perceive “Location” as a property things have because of probability. “Everything” literally is “Everywhere, All At Once”. The world that we perceive is nothing more or less than a vast ocean of waves within overlapping fields. The interference between the waves, the troughs and crests, are the objects we perceive. Nothing is truly as you see it, even yourself. Also, gravity doesn’t exist. Time just passes slower near massive objects.

  That’s the best I can do for ya. First hit’s free.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨tall tails⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks for the fascinating read! It seems like it’s still far from certain, by the study authors’ own admission, but I look forward to seeing validation studies by others! Do you know of any? I wasn’t able to find any from a cursory glance around the internet.