Nuke

not to say there arent lots of places where you can put solar panels which would otherwise be unused space. over canals, pools, parking lots, roads, roofs. if you are cutting down trees to install solar you are doing it wrong.

im wary of renewable energy that requires vast amounts of land to be converted to energy farms. just build nuclear reactors and let the critters have their habitats.

of course cheaper space flight means more space telescopes.

its amazing what you will say when someone hands you a briefcase full of money.

thats a dirty boy.

musk is just one of those people who others channel their disdain for the world into, all for the crime of being more successful than they were.

i saw a starlink terminal at a local residence,. as i understood it there would be no starlink north of 60 degrees. upon looking it up, we are only at 56 degrees. so at least i have that option.

im very resistant to pushed updates. cable company has been bugging me for 2 months to replace my cable modem with their new wifi router. except i already own an expensive router with some high throughput, well tuned security settings, and about half a dozen server apps running in the background. meanwhile the cable company wont pony up the specs of the new device. i dont even know if the damn thing has ethernet. frankly its not their job to manage my network, just to provide internet access, and the existing modem gives me more speed than i need. as for software id be more ok with updates if they didnt also push a bunch of features i dont need and which hog resources from the stuff i do. sometimes i feel like updates are pushed more to install more surveillance crap than to update the actual security. you know how many devices are bricked due to old certificates? yet they will update the os until the cows come home. you cant claim to upgrade my security while simultaneously poking more holes in my security.

protip: you can use low value resistors in a pinch to light your model rocket motors.

thats fine for indicators but when you have large arrays of leds that resister turns into a heater. at some point a cc driver is more efficient.

leds like to fail closed. which is usually the first step in a cascade failure. one led goes, the others in the chain get more current, so their lives get shortened. one fails, the others et even more current, and so on. you could give every led a resistor (usually with a constant voltage supply) but that results in waste heat and less efficiency. so you are supposed to use constant current drivers, usually in conjunction with series strings (single leds exist with several series strings connected in parallel). you might be able to get current supplies that can detect led failures (eg by measuring voltage drop and drive current) and change their regulation parameters on the fly. but led bulbs are built to cost and such advanced features are not included. you can always leave some brightness on the table in an effort to keep the leds in spec, but then a competitor can jack up its current and claim that their bulbs are brighter. regardless a defect in one is a defect in all. that said usually the current drivers fail before than the leds (salvaged so many off of dead bulbs).

i like electronics with interesting failure modes.

youtube videos are rife with this kind of nonsense. conflating anything that ticks their confirmation bias way out of proportion. ive never seen so many people "destroyed" by some cherry picked thing some disconnected personality said. i guess its a working formula that makes excellent clickbait. and whats with all the destructive language? they make it sound like they are in a fight but its always some cowardly jab from behind the curtain of anonymity. the comment section is just as bad, usually its an echo chamber and people still get into hissing fit over their flavor of agreement. posts from the other side of the argument get deleted.

some people just want to watch the world burn. i'l get the marshmallows.

problem with lunacrete is where do you get the water? will concrete even cure if its in a vacuum?

i was a lot more excited about this than the eclipse. but i havent had a good look at the sky in weeks. so im not exactly sure how to find it. i guess just look for the giant dot in the sky.

regolith removal will be essential for most moon bases. i imagine giant leaf blowers being used. but since there is no air, you will need a rocket or some other compressed gas source. then you will have issue with low gravity, so you will need to steak everything down during operation. the reverse vacuum cleaner approach, where you use a gas stream to blow dust into machinery that can remove it mechanically. of course its going to eat that machinery alive. best approach ive seen is a rover with a giant magnifying glass that will slowly glassily the surface into bricks, which you can later use in construction or as rad shielding. you could do the same with lasers i guess, much faster, if you have the power. or just get a bunch of guys in space suits with shovels to scoop it into your lunar regolith 3d printer. i imagine a system of interlocking bricks with perforations that allow cables to be passed through. you can then form brick rings, and tighten the cables. these could be interlocked in sections and capped off with other printed elements. cinch all the cables to be as air tight as possible, then coat the interior with resin, and perhaps glass fiber made form regolith (think cotton candy machine from hell). you could then pile on regolith bricks until the internal pressure is equivalent to the pressure of compression from the external material. the result is a pressure holding volueme for lunar habs. though it might be easier to just bring a hab sized printer.

you just need to bring chemicals that have a highly exothermic reaction when combined with the alien atmosphere. we can call this fuel. eg for gas giants, its probably going to be oxygen you bring. it might not even be fire in the earthly sense though. not sure what kind of exothermic reactions you can cause with co2 atmos though. ive seem more than one video about ammonia engines.

ducted fans are well tuned systems which can be well optimized. but that optimization usually comes at the cost of a vary narrow operational envelope. laminar flow wings have a similar problem. fan design in general is a deceptively complex problem.

they react to any kind of food packaging that cat food/treats/nip are packed in. bags, cans, pull taps, those little zipper pouches. sometimes i open a bag of chips and then the cats guilt trip me for not giving them any treats. i usually either give in and get them some treats or, if i dont have any, hide from them because i dont want to see their sad eyes while i eat my chips.

my mom desperately wants to move, but that's a lot of expense and effort and i will have to throw away a third of my stuff to stand a chance of affording the logistics. its mostly junk really, parts for projects im either working on or i thought it might be useful somewhere down the line. moving would be hard on everyone, mom the cats. another small town just getting furniture will be a nightmare going without a chair for a week while amazon drags its knuckles is not my idea of fun, and mom cant even get off the floor without a call to the fire department. and i would have to deal with moving all our possessions without funds, vehicles, or the ability to make friends with strangers. when i ask why its always something like "the people here hate me" but i dont see it. they paid for two of her mobility scooters, they always ask how she is doing. maybe if she left the house more she would interact with them more. her own sour and entitled behavior probably is part of why no one comes to visit. moving isnt going to change that. wherever you go there you are. it goes beyond simple wanderlust. i figure the woman 2 doors down is the other side of that. running from something inescapable to something ambiguous and undefined. and my mom's own behavior is similar. we moved so many times growing up i never developed relationships. all because of some mental pathology that makes one run away from everything they know. someone ought to write a paper on this.

the lady 2 doors down is crazy, clearly bipolar. making enemies left and right. shes one of those down southers who watched all the alaska reality shows, fell in love with the fantasy alaska and is disturbed that its just another town like any other. i was sitting on my deck, playing with one of the cats and reading the local paper (a good way to blow 5 minutes), watching the 5 or 6 eagles circling around overhead. after having a fight with her neighbor's daughter over an unused parking space, and leaving in a huff, she looked up at me and said "i dont know how you like living here". not sure if she was talking about the state, the town, or the apartment. frankly its an old building and has too many floors, the appliances are trash and the place is drafty. but its better than some of the apartments ive seen/lived in around our state. and way better than some of the ones i lived in while in phoenix (5 kinds of roach motel with a pool that is safe to swim in sometimes). still the town is as close to mayberry as you can get in 2024.

i figure there is a lot of free memory left as a lot of the devices that would consume most of it (like image buffers) are no longer needed/dont work/no longer have enough power.

i was pretty much raised on horror. even going back to kindergarten staying up to 3 am to watch the slasher flick of the month. im so desensitized to such things now, i thought that saw was a comedy. cracking up while the other movie goers were hiding behind their popcorn. these days i avoid them because they are usually cinematic drivel.

slept mostly, got out of bed around 9:30 pm.