SunlitZelkova

In English Electric’s defence I’m pretty sure PR indicates it was for photoreconnaissance, meaning this was designed to go as fast as possible at high altitude on a single, precalculated route. This guy probably just had to push some buttons to activate the cameras when a buzzer, triggered by the pilot, rang, indicating they were over the target area. Reading about the Canberra a little just now I have to say, what bad luck it and other early Cold War jet bombers built around WW2 era specifications had. It was supposed to be the jet powered replacement for the Mosquito, a legendary aircraft. But by the time it came on the scene, the Soviets already had a horde of MiG-15s with the GSFG- ironically powered by reverse engineered British engines- and had war broken out would probably not have had the spectacular record its prop ancestor had.

Yeah, the idea of it never going away is a total joke when you think about the aridification going on around the world and the amount of water needed to cool data centers. It’s not a bad thing at all though. I get that it can be cool to scroll back through your email and see correspondences from X years ago, but realistically there’s so much that should be thrown away. There’s a reason people tend to keep a couple old love letters from their youth rather than a dedicated shed of them with its own insulation, AC and lighting.

I read Galactic Pot-Healer by Philip K. Dick for the first time. There’s a monetary unit in it called a crumble, and I thought PKD was just being silly because he uses random words like that sometimes. The AI supercomputer in The Divine Invasion is called Big Noodle, for example. But I found out at the end that this has a little more meaning than some of his other choices. A character lists two currencies, one being a crumble and the other a… ruble. So PKD basically just took the last three letters of the Romanization of рубль and found an English word with the same ending. In fact “ruble” is inside “crumble.” The mind of a published SF author is truly something else.

Finally, a shirt maker who appreciates the complexities of aerodynamics research conducted by NASA and the relationship between the Western and Russian tech sectors+MICs. Can’t wait for my Toshiba hoodie to come with a Pr.671RTM nuclear attack submarine on it. (Half joking because I’m extrapolating from one news report about electronics in the Kh-101 and attaching it to the Su-57 and am also assuming there’s a line that can be drawn between 60s NASA aerodynamic research, fourth gen fighters, and finally fifth gen fighter design) But on the other hand, I’d actually love a Toshiba hoodie with a Pr.671RTM class SSN on it, now that I think about it!

I’m convinced logic is an illusion. You can come up with a hundred logical reasons for doing X and a hundred logical reasons for not doing X. All that matters is which you believe in. Thus I argue instead of searching for reasons why we should do things, we should decide whether we want to do them ourselves. “Do, don’t think.” Because we can do whatever we want to if we put our minds to it. Put our minds to things in that glorious, arbitrary, utterly human way. Instead we lie to ourselves with “justifications.” If we accepted we’re all just making this stuff up there’d be so much less antagonism and more understanding, IMO. We laugh at toddlers for trying to set rules for their games and arguing about them and crying as each tries to usurp the other through ever more complex logic, but that’s exactly how adults bring about such great suffering upon each other in the “real world.”

As long as you can afford it, I’d say go for it. Especially since it sounds likes you have a solid idea for the expanse and focus of your layout, it’s a good investment that will provide hours of fun. Those prices aren’t bad at all. That’s pretty much what you’d have to pay for N scale new. Are the HO listings new too? Just be careful before you buy online. If you can, contact the seller and ask about the shipping method. If there are reviews, read them and make sure they have a high approval rate. Note that depending on the site there are caveats. Reviews can be faked and such. That’s a great choice! There’s a lot of HO 1950s vehicles out there, as well as era-agnostic structures and figures. I was buying vehicles for my N scale layout the other day and I literally had 2 choices for 1950s cars. I browsed HO for the heck of it and there were 10+. This was on Walther’s, the online market for train stuff. I’m sure other sites have great selection too! If the seller seems trustworthy I’d say go for the online order. A lot of model train shops are very “analog” businesses that prefer to do business face to face and thus don’t post their listings online. Especially if the online option is exactly what you want, I’d say go for it. You wouldn’t want to find yourself disappointed after traveling to the physical train store. Hopefully the online market has buyer’s protection. Worst case scenario you’ll be repacking the box it came in, dropping it off at the post office, and getting your money back in a couple business days. I just mention this because I actually went to my local hobby shop to buy an NP diesel locomotive in July and brought it home to find out when I raised the throttle the lights came on but it didn’t move. I had the option to return but instead planned to take it to the (local) proper train shop and have it repaired. Moral of the story is there are options depending on how much money you’re willing or able to spend. One last piece of advice: don’t worry about getting it done right away. I didn’t actually have money to repair that NP diesel before leaving for Japan to attend college, and thus I won’t be seeing it run for four years or more. But I don’t consider it a waste because I bought it in otherwise good condition for a decent price ($139.99) and it’s such a rare paint scheme to see produced + one that I dreamed of owning in some form since I was a child that I consider it to be worth it. The choice is yours though! Good luck and have fun, purchasing it and getting excited for it to arrive is part of the experience, especially if you’re like me and dreamed of having an electric train layout as a kid but, being a kid, never had the wherewithal to make the dream come true.

Unless you’re buying a ready to run set, online is not the best choice to order products. Do you know if there are any hobby shops or model train stories in your area? What brand would be best depends on what gauge you’re interested in. What gauge you choose will also affect the availability of certain items. For example, there’s a wide selection of items for HO gauge, but with N gauge there’s a lot more limitations, especially when it comes to accessories. What size layout are you thinking? Or were you thinking more of just setting it up on the floor or table from time to time? As far as cost goes, it depends on what types of engines you want to run and at what gauge. N gauge steam locomotives are notoriously expensive in the US. Diesel F units would be less expensive. Another factor is how many trains you want to run. If you’re trying to run multiple on a single mass of track, you’ll need DCC equipment, which can double costs of locomotives at times. Note there are other ways to have multiple trains running. Simply setting up one line of track and having another disconnected will require two controllers/transformers but would be cheaper than DCC likely. Another factor in regards to cost is whether you’re willing to buy used or not. I visited Spokane to see my grandparents in July and was surprised at how good quality and cheap a lot of the rolling stock was at the local train store. Used of course, but it didn’t look bad at all. Contrast this with when I went to my hometown hobby shop a couple days later. Similar freight cars cost about double. Whether you’ll get a good deal though really depends on the shop though. Some shops don’t sell used items, only new ones. If you’re not sure about what gauge to choose, here’s some info. HO is in the middle ground between O and N. It’s still quite big, and thus engines can be more expensive at times. However, freight cars can often be about the same cost when bought new (24-30$). Engine prices will vary a bit, IIRC DC (analog control) ones can actually sometimes be the same price as N gauge ones (there was an HO Great Northern SW2 at my local hobby shop for 124$, meanwhile there was an N BNSF AC4400CW for about 110$). For DCC the costs are higher than it would be with N. N’s primary advantage is in space, you can either build a small layout in a smaller space or do more with a big space. With HO there is a lot more selection when it comes to accessories like buildings and vehicles. Note that with both HO and N a lot of buildings, like station platforms and freight receiving centers and what not, are assembled and painted like model airplane kits. Unless you plan on buying lighted ones (which are prefabricated) you’ll need those skills. Paints can be about 2-3$, you won’t need a huge selection of colors. Brushes are cheap, paint thinner for cleaning them is 10$ or so, primer is similar in cost to the paints. Cement is also 10$ or less. It isn’t too tricky, and given it’s a building and not an airplane or car there’s room for errors in case you don’t have prior experience building models. White glue is required too for applying the windows, which are usually little sheets of acrylic you cut out with an Xacto knife or something similar. Depending on the manufacturer N can be lacking in details, especially if you buy older (used) models. HO obviously gives a lot more room for details given its size. Something to note about model railroading is that it isn’t like building plastic models of planes or ships where there are often a wide selection of classic, famous vehicles on the shelf at all times. Manufacturers often stick to famous railroads and don’t keep any models in stock constantly, things come and go over the years. More famous models like F units will appear regularly, but something like the Pennsylvania Sharknose steam locomotives would be rarer. Availability of the certain railroad you want will kind of depend on where you live. Western railroads like Great Northern and Southern Pacific are easier to get west of the Rockies, while East Coast railroads are easier to find over there. That said, there can still be a sort of lacking because it all depends on the manufacturers decisions about what to produce. One last thing about cost: it depends on what type of layout you want to build. I basically have most of what I need for my layout based on the Pacific Northwest, in total I’ve spent about maybe 900$ish. Although I’m planning to build some individual mountains I’m not planning to put the layout down permanently because I don’t have a good means of dust control; I’m a “set it up on the table/floor from time to time” guy. My layout is just a loop and siding because that’s all I can fit on the dinner table. I also thought long and hard about expansions with double track, I decided I just wasn’t interested in doing that. My layout is based on the Northwest Washington State, specifically rural areas, and thus I felt a single track line was more likely to be in place. What I mean to say is that the cost of the hobby is gonna depend on what your layout will look like; what era, what part of the country or state, etc. How much space you really have at home to build it. Whether it’s permanent or not. Etc. Pennsy served a pretty big portion of the country so there should be lots of possibilities there. Actually one more tip: model railroading is very hard to do to scale unless you’re just building a switching yard. So don’t think about it as much as “I want to emulate the Horseshoe Curve” and more “I’m going to base the area on these landmarks and elements of the real life area u like.” Instead of worrying about trying to have realistic passenger operations and thus trying to have a layout big enough to have two stations so you can take passengers between them, it’s better to just throw in things you love or think are cool. My layout only has a single station but I still have fun taking my passenger cars around it, even if from a different point of view it might seem weird to have a passenger train running on a line with only one station. Let me know what gauge you’re thinking of getting and I can provide more info! Good luck! EDIT- Forgot about O gauge. It’s BIG, and there’s basically only two companies in the US that manufacture it: Lionel and MTH. So selection is less. They’re also very expensive given their size.

Got confused because IIRC there’s a simple 3D search radar used on early Cold War Soviet naval vessels with that name. I visited the Wikipedia article and found out the 1998 SIOP had 69 nuclear weapons aimed at it. Weird number, unless a lot of the Ohio class’ Trident IIs have only 3 RVs to increase range. In which case that’s a full sub’s worth of missiles plus another three from another. I kinda have to wonder why so many though. Patriot in Ukraine reportedly has a 4.5% interception rate (which I’m taking as meaning against missiles fired at targets defended by Patriot because there’s no reason they’d include missiles not targeted, which would deflate their numbers and be bad for PR), and that’s with the PAC-3… arguably the most advanced point defence currently employed by NATO and friends. And of course the most recent data on ABM combat available to planners in 1998 probably would have been Gulf War experience, which wasn’t great either. My guess is multi-pronged. Nuclear planners were probably restricted by a) “need to use” mentality or orders but not enough targets worth anything else in the country b) overestimating the efficacy of Soviet/Russian equipment (although the Pioner’s 98% launch success rate among a sample of ~72 missiles is nothing to knock at) or c) nuclear planners did not actually know about the efficacy of their weapons and assume the 1960s SAC mentality of “drop like 20 bombs on it because we don’t know how many will work” was still necessary (or worse, because of bureaucratic tomfoolery it simply stuck regardless of knowledge) Considering some NATO official recently talked about a primary potential use of tactical nuclear weapons being repulsing an amphibious invasion of Denmark… in 2024… against the Baltic Fleet with a whopping 4 big landing ships… I wouldn’t be surprised if C was the main reason.

I never really knew him as Darth Vader, it wasn’t until just a few years ago I found out he played him. I always remember him as the SAC general aboard the Looking Glass in By Dawn’s Early Light.

I saw a news article describing how in Namibia, officials plan to kill, among other animals, elephants and rhinos and distribute the meat to people amidst drought. This is eerily similar to how I envision the Holocene extinction event in my world building projects that I made a couple years ago. Climate change and unsustainable farming practices lead to catastrophic loss of food production, thus people take to the wilderness to hunt food. Then, most animals are hunted to extinction, further exacerbating ecological damage. Humans then starve en mass. Those that survive live off rat and corvid meat (the top dogs of this era of death) for about a millennia before dying due to a combination of “generational malnutrition” and an inbreeding depression. On the bright side, the survival of many rodents and of course corvids means several million years later we get the likes of J. Monesi and the terror birds back. Bad news: while the K-Pg extinction event resulted in anything not much larger than a dog dying, anything bigger than a guinea pig isn’t so lucky in this one. Bye bye cats. You had a good run.

“Any possible system made by a man can be cracked by a man.”- Yuri Knorozov

I had to go diarrhea twice in the night, and then when I finally laid down my cat came over to have his belly rubbed. But I fell asleep while doing that, and must have not unconsciously moved my arm away from his belly. He eventually wanted to clean himself but I wasn’t moving so probably went in to mouth and paw at me like he usually does, but because I was asleep I couldn’t react in a timely manner and got bit and scratched. I was awoken by a pain in my hand and the sound of him hopping off the bed. I turned my phone’s flashlight on and lo and behold… It’s the second time in my life I’ve been bitten by an animal. The first was when two of my guinea pigs who didn’t get along with each other accidentally crossed paths and as I grabbed one the other moved in to attack with his mouth and couldn’t stop in time (normally they’re well aware of what’s food and what’s not). EDIT- Why is paw underlined lol

@Kimera Industries This was my first plastic model. I made it ten years ago. Even with some paint having rubbed off during construction during accidents with the cement and an unpainted pilot, it came out pretty good, IMO. The detailed molds of Tamiya models do quite a bit of work. Wear and tear due to poor display methods led to decals chipping over the decade. What your seeing is basically six colors: IJN green, IJN tan, metallic blue, bare metal aluminum, black, and flat black. As I said in the other thread, good results can be achieved even with limited palette, if your budget prevents you from acquiring all of the needed paints. I haven't built any 1/72 Tamiya aircraft though, so it's possible the required ones are fewer than this 1/48 model. Good luck with your Spitfire, and have fun!

Should you do so, good luck and welcome to the hobby. Don’t expect to build something on the level of what you see displayed in fancy conventions and stuff right off the bat, but even with rudimentary skill you can make it look good. My first model was a 1/48 A6M from Tamiya. It was a gift from my grandparents, and they also bought the four spray can type paints needed for the exterior. Believing that was all I needed I began construction. The cockpit is unpainted and apart from the wheel wells and wheels it really is just the four basic colors, but it came out pretty good. I’ll post a picture over in the scale model thread tomorrow so you can see.

I had a dream I was at a lakeside resort in Idaho with my family. My dad and sister stayed at the cabin and my mom and I went into a nearby big city to pick up Chinese food. All of sudden the emergency alert system went off on tue TVs in the restaurant and our phones. The way my stomach dropped when it stated an ICBM attack was inbound is indescribable. I’ve almost never felt that kind of terror in a dream. We braced for impact by closing the blinds. We waited but nothing happened. The city we were in and many others were spared, but Cleveland wasn’t so lucky (it seemed to have been an initial escalatory strike). Later in the dream we inexplicably went to France and ended up getting nuked there despite attempts to flee. I awoke with an unsettling feeling that it’s not going to be long before nuclear weapons are used in anger again.

Aw that’s sad. I remember seeing a Smithsonian Channel documentary about them when I was little. I built a boxy mini version of it out of spare Legos from pick a brick. I was lucky to have the exact number of red and white pieces needed, and I had a lot of fun playing with it.

If an animate being exists forever, that is, does not die, can it be said to be alive? Because being alive implies you will eventually die. Just as being dead implies you once lived. Likewise, if something is created, would not that imply it will eventually end? And if it doesn’t end, how in the world did it come about? Because something can’t begin without having an ending. I’m puzzled. It’s hypothesized another universe might be born out of the death of this one. From a philosophical POV, doesn’t that imply our universe might have come from the death of another one? And the one before that came from another one? And so on. So (again, from a philosophical POV) is it even correct to think about the universe in terms of “birth” and “death?” How are we even supposed to contemplate such a concept, when literally all existence is dominated by the question of whether something is or isn’t? (Do I have a Big Mac in my hand or am I waiting for it? Does the squirrel have a nut in its mouth or does it not? Is there sunlight shining or is there not?) Can one deny concepts simply because they can’t comprehend them? I would say no. A squirrel can’t comprehend quantum physics but it still exists. So what if there are things we can’t comprehend that we will never know about- are physically incapable of understanding- but go on affecting our lives? Thought experiment: things need to add up for them to be “confirmed.” Extreme example- Lysenko’s theories didn’t add up, Mendel’s did. Police find evidence, if it adds up the criminal goes to prison, if it doesn’t they are freed. Everything in the world is premised on having a beginning and an end. Nothing comes from nowhere, to come from nowhere is nonsensical. It could be said one of the foundations of existence is having a starting point and an ending point. But if the universe itself lacks a starting point and ending point- hypothetically of course- doesn’t that not add up? And if it doesn’t add up, what then? Is the universe’s existence nonsensical, illogical? Note that arguments about the universe actually having had a “creator” entity don’t solve the problem, because then you have to ask the question of what created the creator, what created the creators’ creator, and so forth. I’ve pondered what a future intelligent species, existing in the far future near the end of the universe’s habitability, might attempt to do to survive. The only thing I can come up with is attempting to leave for a parallel universe at an earlier point in time, *somehow*. But there’s a lot of things in physics and what not that might render that an impossibility. Now I encounter this hypothetical: We have all these rules/laws governing us within the universe, but what if the universe’s existence itself is “lawless” in a sense, in that it violates the laws within itself? Does that not possibly imply there is something beyond the laws of physics et al? Or that the laws of physics themselves are bogus? At the time I was first introduced to the concept of metaphysics btw (in 6th grade) I took 30 minute long showers, and yet I never had thoughts like this lol. Bonus thought: the future does exist, there is only the upcoming present.

Curious, I was unaware of any other dual tracked-wheeled vehicles besides BTs.

What I found interesting is that when we boarded in Portland we went on to the tarmac and boarded by staircase, but when we got to Spokane we docked with the transfer hallway arm or whatever it is. I think when I went to San Francisco (via actual Alaskan Air, not Horizon) it was a 737-800. As much as I think the 737, particularly the early models, are neat little airliners, I don’t find that plane particularly exciting to fly on. When I flew to Spokane two years ago it was a Horizon Dash 8, and that was a lot of fun (although my mom took the window seat because she said she feels claustrophobic on planes if she can’t look out) so I didn’t get to see much even though we had a good view of the propeller from our row). On another note, I prefer the 787 over the 777 (sorry @AlamoVampire (I think I remember that’s your favorite plane)) when I visit Japan, even though I only flew on it once. I’m not too familiar with Alaskan geography but looking at the map I’m surprised they’d have flights between those two (Wrangell and Petersburg), they seem pretty close. Also just looking at the map, the distance seems to be comparable to that between Port Townsend and Seattle (checking just now it’s actually shorter- PT-Seattle by air roughly 65 km, Wrangell-Petersburg by air 52 km). Port Townsend is principally reached by ferry, although there are probably seaplane flights available too, but those are low capacity and more touristy than truly commercial. I imagine weather might be a factor preventing water transport though. Okay, doing more research I’m seeing another factor- the waters between Wrangell and Petersburg are apparently a navigational nightmare. Contrast this with the easy peasy Puget Sound and it’s obvious why airlines between the two towns might be more profitable than a ferry service compared to Washington, even though they have smaller populations than Seattle (obviously) and Port Townsend (the latter is 10k people) which in my mind would mean less travel and thus less income to justify maintaining frequent service between the two.

For my birthday I went to the Evergreen Aviation & Space Museum with my dad. I rode on the back of his motorcycle for the first time. I wasn't expecting anything necessarily exciting, I've been there quite a few times. Due to financial troubles in the 2010s, some of the museums exhibits are a bit dated, such as a giant mural depicting the plan for the Constellation program, proudly claiming it will take America back to the Moon by 2020. But lo and behold, they had a (unrestored) F-117!!!!!! Together with the F-15A, A-10C, and RQ-4 mockup, they have a good sized collection of relatively modern American aircraft now. There's also an F-14, but its kept outside and is in pretty ratty condition. Reading about it just now, it seems a number of museums across the country have received F-117s for the first time in the past few years. The one at Evergreen was the first Nighthawk to drop a bomb during Desert Storm.

This is nowhere near the size of a proper developed world modern train, so it could be counted as a model train. At the same time, it is about the size of some British narrow gauge engines- proper engines which once transported passengers and freight. Nowadays some are operated by tourist railways. It's possible that the definition of "model train" depends on regulatory technicalities rather than size or design. Narrow gauge engines are presumably properly registered with the UK's railway regulatory bodies. That Thomas replica might be homebuilt, operating on homebuilt rails too.

On Monday I returned from Spokane, flying Alaska operated by Horizon Air. I found out the Embraer E175 is a neat little jet. It seems like the capacity can’t be more than an Amtrak Viewliner I coach car lol. Being a rather small 22 year old (I was still several hours away from turning 23) it wasn’t a problem, didn’t feel cramped at all. On the flight there we climbed and cruised for 10 minutes before descending (left from PDX). On the way back though it was weird. We never got an announcement the climb phase was over, although the seatbelt light did go off. And we seemed to fly quite a bit lower, perhaps no more than 5000 meters (just eyeballing it, but in any case, it was definitely below 10k). Note that at the time the inland NW was going through a heatwave. Do flights ever get rerouted lower than ideal cruising altitude (from a fuel economy POV) to avoid turbulence? This is probably a question for you, @AlamoVampire

Today is my b-day (July 22nd Pacific Time). It’s 2:00 AM or so as I’m posting this Last year I reported I was buying some Lego Indy stuff in honor of it. They discontinued the theme sadly, but I’ve begun building a model railway so I’m planning to do stuff for that and a couple Lego Star Wars things.

Politics aside there is a real upside to going indigenous and making it policy to move away from reliance on foreign systems. China is the only country I’m aware of doing this on a mass scale, although India is also aiming for it (in theory, at least). I say I am aware of. This is simply because I’m not super familiar with the domestic policies of other nations besides the US, China, and to a somewhat lesser extent, Japan. Not because I’ve read and claim to state that no other country is doing this.

For those that don’t know, this is a reference to the Apple TV+ drama For All Mankind, in which the characters in S1 are left with only tapes of The Bob Newhart Show to watch when a Saturn V explodes and they get stranded on the Moon for a couple months longer than anticipated. They have a rule where they all have to say “Hi Bob!” whenever one person says it.