wolframhydroxide

@wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The four horsemen of the apocalypse⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago⁩:

  Well, we need to wait a few years to see if H. cephalosepses individuals are capable of producing viable offspring with H. sapiens, since that would indicate that Cephalosepses is actually a subspecies of H. sapiens, just like H. sapiens boomerensis

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨The four horsemen of the apocalypse⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨hour⁩ ago⁩:

  The person to whom you were responding was trying to make this artifact of the Before-Times relatable to modern Homo Cephalosepses, which cannot comprehend anything from outside its natural environment of TikTok. Unfortunately, speciation has not yet led to a visible difference between the two extant species of the genus Homo, and behavioral differences are currently the only way to differentiate this new species from H. Sapiens, so this person was trying to bridge the divide, in case the original commenter was on the other side of the species divide.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the worst spelling you've seen?⁩ ⁨⁨16⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I would argue that at least 15% of the blame lies with the racist expectation in the US that all names need be anglicized, when we have fucking Unicode. If someone whose second language is English can be expected to be able to pronounce “Rayleigh Monaghan McTavish”, then the least that the anglophone people of the US could do is learn to pronounce things in a few other common languages. There is, quite simply, no excuse for the government of the united States, in which there is no official language (even though a traitor, invalidated by the insurrection clause of the 14th amendment, had some fuckwit draft a document trying to declare it without congressional approval).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What's the worst spelling you've seen?⁩ ⁨⁨18⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  I would like to provide a counterexample. There are plenty of these people in the US intermountain west, but there are at least some cases where there is no one at fault. Next time you see one of these names without context, before judging, consider Nariaw:

  I am a teacher, and one year I found that my roster included a student named “Nariaw”. As a public school, we register your student based on what’s on the birth certificate. I ask all of my students to pronounce their names for me when I first meet them, for the reason we see in the OP and with shit like “abcde”. However, when this came to my class, she said her name was pronounced “Miriam”. I spent a good twenty seconds looking at my roster, and had to ask her to spell it for me. I didn’t ask any rude and impertinent questions at that point, so it wasn’t until a few months later that I got the full story: her mother, an immigrant from Ethiopia, was still unfamiliar with Latin script when her daughter was born here in the US. So when she attempted to write out the name, which she wanted to transliterate as “Mariam”, she ended up writing only half of the first M, and wrote the second one upside-down. Whoever did the data entry for the government records dutifully recorded the child’s name as “Nariaw”. Was the mother at fault for being expected to write a name which, while she knew how to represent it in Amharic, she was forced to write in a language in which she was illiterate?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla Reportedly Has $800 Million Worth of Cybertrucks That Nobody Wants⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  I can, explicitly and unequivocally, state that I derive intense joy from having the privilege of seeing this.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anyone?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨week⁩ ago⁩:

  You can always trust @SatansMaggotyCumFart@lemmy.world to chime in with the wholesome memes.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Liquid Trees⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Gray shit everywhere, concrete fucking everywhere, looming threat of 2-ton steel death machines caving in your head, overheating everywhere, asphalt plowing through everything, soaking up the sun at every step, tough lessons in momentum for kids crossing them, lot of traffic and pollution when there are drivers out.

  You could change half of your words, and keep the meaning the same, and make a compelling case that roads, or any other things, are humanity’s greatest scourge.

  Go touch whatever remaining local flora people like you have allowed to continue to exist, and quit being an imbecilic bellend online.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨xkcd #3084: Unstoppable Force and Immovable Object⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Not relative to the sun, relative to momentum. Changes in the magnitude or direction of velocity are objective, not relative. These translate to real changes in momentum, from any reference frame. A real change in momentum is imparted upon the Earth equal to your momentum at the moment your contact with the Earth ceases.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Cookie cookie cookie⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  We do get cracks. They’re the divergent plate boundaries. Water and ice just flow on time scales far too dissimilar to make an appropriate rate model at the cracks.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What would this list look like for your generation?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  As a teacher, I cannot tell you how much this changed my life. I just spew their random shit right at them, totally straight-faced, with a painful degree of enunciation. They do not say those words again in my presence. Their cringe feeds me. I also find it helpful to try to get them to define each term, in excruciating detail, then I destroy the word for them.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Choose one⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Option 31: Water. Ever seen how much damage an incompressible fluid can do when it cavitates?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla Slumps Below 50% Share of California's Electric Car Market⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  Too true.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Tesla Slumps Below 50% Share of California's Electric Car Market⁩ ⁨⁨4⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  This belongs in uplifting news

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Maybe it's just a human thing.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Not all beliefs are equal. If you hold by a holy text that says that women can (and should) be bought and sold or are otherwise ‘lesser’ than men, or you revere an imbecilic demagogue who claims that all immigrants are rapists, murderers and gang members, then yes, the “culture” of your group will have a higher probability of any given person being an asshole than a group of randomly-selected Humanists, for example. To equivocate that all belief systems are equal from a moral perspective is deeply naive.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨THE CLASS WAR IS BACK, BABY!⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Don’t do my man Schrödinger dirty like that. I’m sure he had a perfectly normal, non-fascist asshole

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Enshittification⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I always appreciate another name to add to the block list. Get thee gone, thou vitriolic waste of bytes, thou fallacy-made-manifest, born of what can only be an unloving and deeply stupid progenitor.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Sooo, where did the blatant Nazism suddenly come from?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Thanks for the obviously disingenuous comment. Always good to have another name for the block list.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why was there a pro-Hitler, Holocaust-denying ad on X?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m sorry, who said Meta was ever the good guy? Implementing too-little-too-late consolation fact-checking for a little bit doesn’t excuse waving the flag as THE vanguard of misinformation-as-internet-discourse in mainstream social media.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨idijt⁩ ⁨⁨3⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Yet another way this is wrong: the primary cause of the adamantine lustre of diamonds is refraction. Any old hunk of metal can reflect light.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Shiny⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Hard disagree: they exhibit 4 perfect octahedral cleavage planes in addition to their adamantine lustre, diamond is one of the most useful materials in existence, and their petrological origins speak to incredibly interesting conditions of formation! In fact, a mineral inclusion within a diamond gave us our first solid evidence of the existence of liquid water at equilibrium with mantle rock, which was previously thought impossible!

  But yeah, fuck De Beers.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon questions our energy sector⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Alright, now we agree: solar isn’t for everywhere, and the gravity storage method won’t work in most places. You need preexisting slope, and my original comment was highly US-normative. As such, yes, we would need huge swathes of solar and wind collection sites, passive wave generators, pumped hydro and, yes, perhaps nuclear. Not everything will be “on” all the time. As far as the energy vs. Electricity numbers, while I vacillated between different terms, I WAS quite careful to only include electricity numbers throughout my stats and, again, none of my points were trying to prove that solar, specifically, is the right answer for the netherlands in exclusion of all else, but only that a significant energy storage problem can be solved with gravitational potential, and that the solution IS scalable if sites are selected carefully, and the fact that this has not been tried at scale anywhere in the world is due to government corruption. Still a US-normative idea, which I’ll grant, but still true, when you have places from morocco to the Gobi, to the outback to the western US, all with significant natural elevation change, significant open areas, and excellent prospects for renewable energy sources of ALL kinds.

  Also, as far as solar panels go, remember that actual diode solar panels are NOT the only way to harvest solar energy (let alone the cheapest). Mirrors can easily be used to boil water, and this plan was nearly attempted throughout egypt a hundred years ago (see Frank Shuman’s solar thermal generators). However, I’m not about to argue that we should put giant solar collectors in one of the countries that is simultaneously the most population-dense AND in a climate where large-scale solar is somewhat inefficient, ESPECIALLY when you have so much available wind power.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon questions our energy sector⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s interesting. For me, I guess it’s a “grass is greener” scenario. I look at the headway various countries in the eurozone have made on topics from socialized medicine, to universal basic income, to free postsecondary education, to the protection of personal data, and even to forcing Apple to change its charging cable to the standard USB-C. That change of policy forced them to change it here, as well. The EU’s stodginess helps people even beyond its borders. My students ALL have iPhones, and It’s unbelievable to witness the ease with which they can access their devices now, vs. when they were all forced to use a specialized cable for connection and charge. America hasn’t even figured out high-speed rail yet. As an american who teaches secondary science to a bunch of naturalized citizens under the age of 18, I don’t think I can stay through the next 4 years. I fear the pogroms, if not for myself, then for my students and their families. I can’t have my tax dollars go towards a repeat of the mistakes of 90 years ago. I’m thinking New Zealand is looking comparatively nice (though apparently there’s a growing nationalist movement there as well).

  In general, I do sense that there is a significantly greater sense of “rugged individualism” in the US, compared to many other countries, but I see the costs of that individualism more acutely because of its proximity. People seem to be largely incapable of consideration here, from anti-vaxx and anti-mask movements to the hesitance to tax the wealthiest individuals due to the thought that “maybe that’ll be me one day”. It’s really quite distressing.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon questions our energy sector⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  And hey, you know what, that’s almost got a point. Firstly, I’m in the US, and I’ll freely admit that my comment was highly US-normative. However, I believe my comment on government corruption stands for the US case, where there is an insane amount of space that is already partly-developed in random bits of desert.

  Now, let’s get into your claims against the Netherlands case, aside from the ad-hominem of your incredibly condescending tone. Let’s do some “basic fucking maths”, thou king of Numenor:

  1. Unless the IEA is very, VERY wrong, your claim that the Netherlands consumes “2600 petajoule per day” is INSANELY high. Every statistic I can find shows electricity consumption being between 113 [2] and 121 [1] Terawatt-hours per annum. Let’s divide that larger value by 365 (assuming uniform seasonal demand), then convert that into joules, and we get 1.19 Petajoules per day. more than a THOUSAND times smaller than your number.
  2. Secondly, this “for a tiny country” bit is spurious, since your “tiny country” is the 33rd-greatest electricity consumer in the world for the 77th highest population [2]
  3. The assumption that you must store an entire day’s worth of energy demand is ludicrous. Let’s be generous and assume that you have to store 50% of the day’s energy demand, despite the fact that the off-hours are during the night, when electricity demands fall off.
  4. Next, let us point out that we don’t need to abandon literally every other method of energy generation. From wind energy to, yes, nuclear, the Netherlands is doing quite well for itself outside of solar. Let’s assume that we need to cover all of the electricity that is currently produced using coal, oil and natural gas. All other sources already have infrastructure supporting them, including the pre-existing solar. This amount comes to about 48% [1], so let’s assume 50%.
  5. Now, we need to cover 50% of 50% of 1.9 petajoules at any one time, or 475 gigajoules, at any one time.
  6. Because I neither want nor need your supposedly-charitable assumptions, let’s use the actual numbers from ARES in Nevada:

  • Their facility’s mass cars total 75000 tons in freedom units, or about 68040000 kg. [3]
  • They claim 90+% efficiency round-trip [4], but let’s assume that your condescending tone has made the train cars sad, so they’re having a bad day, and only run at 80% efficiency, despite the fact that we’ve known how to convert to and from GPE with insane efficiency ever since Huygens invented the fucking pendulum clock.

  7. Now, is this perfect for everywhere? Of course not. Not everywhere has the open space necessary. The ARES site requires a straight shot about 5 miles long, but they managed to find one that, in that distance, drops 2000 feet (~610 m) [5]
  8. Now, let’s do the math together: 475000000000J / 10m/s^2 / 68040000kg / 80% Efficiency = 880m total elevation needed
  9. Thus, unless my math is quite off, we would only need 2 of the little proof-of-concept ARES stations running at 80% efficiency to cover the energy storage needs required for your country to completely divest from fossil fuels and go all-in on solar for the remainder of your needs.

  Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

  [1] www.iea.org/countries/the-netherlands [2] en.wikipedia.org/…/List_of_countries_by_electrici… [3] aresnorthamerica.com/nevada-project/ [4] aresnorthamerica.com/gravityline/ [5] energy.nv.gov/uploadedFiles/…/4 - ARES.pdf

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon questions our energy sector⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Again, a fair point. Assuming that anyone with an idea of the meaning of “potential energy” survives the next ten years, I’d still like to see it more fully explored in the american west, but it is, unfortunately, rather a moot point for at least five years.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon questions our energy sector⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I agree with you on the linearity issue. I just feel like using its size as a criticism is invalid, given that the very source you cited pointed out that the reason it’s so small is because they chose to reuse an already a disturbed site, rather than building it on 100 acres of BLM land, which I’d argue is quite admirable. The colocation point is also fair, though our water resources in the entire american west are severely limited, and will become moreso over the next 50 years. Utah’s declining snowpack and the overdrawn Colorado can only cover so much. I feel like, while the GPE law is linear for both mass and height, the fact that we can scale both is a point in favor of both pumped hydro and rail storage, and rail storage can be stored virtually indefinitely, as long as it doesn’t have time to rust in place. Being able to supplement the off-hours is absolutely doable with rail.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon questions our energy sector⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  A fair point, but given how the best places to build solar infrastructure tend to not have easily accessible large volumes of water, I should think that economies of scale can apply if we were to put actual investment into scaling up the gravitational potential. Sure, it’s not a power law like for kinetic energy, but greater height and greater mass are both trivial quantities to scale in places with large empty areas. I’m simply pointing out that we’ve never invested in that obvious possibility as a civilization.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon questions our energy sector⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I feel like we’re missing the part about “push carts up a hill”, which involves virtually no serious engineering difficulties aside from “which hill” and “let’s make sure the tracks run smoothly”. See: the ARES project in Nevada

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anon questions our energy sector⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Let’s be clear, the only reason grid-level storage for renewables “doesn’t exist” is because of a lack of education about (and especially commitment to) simple, reliable, non-battery energy storage such as gravitational potential, like the ARES project. We’ve been using gravitational potential storage to power our mechanisms since Huygens invented the freaking pendulum clock. There is simply no excuse other than corruption for the fact that we don’t just run a couple trains up a hill when we need to store massive amounts of solar energy.