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Shower thoughts


p1t1o

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I learned something today.

"What does 'The Hunt for Red October' have in common with 'Fawlty Towers'?"

Spoiler

The XO in Red October is named Василий ('Vasiliy') which is the Russian equivalent of 'Basil'.

 

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4 hours ago, TheSaint said:

IKR? The future was supposed to be awesome. Instead we got "smart" phones and the Internet. I want my money back. :( I mean, there have been a lot of things that have gone right, but the whole technology thing has been a disappointment. 

I think I need to make a t-shirt. "I went to the future and all I got was this lousy smartphone."

Don't get me wrong, the smartphone and Internet are pretty amazing innovations but it should never have become the "crowning" accomplishment of this era. All it takes is a good power outage and well, we're living large in the late twentieth century but without the corner payphone. :(  

Meatloaf has a song, "Life is a Lemon" which contains the lyrics, What about your future? It's defective....

4 hours ago, TheSaint said:

Right now, vertical farming, the kind of large-scale-hydroponics-in-a-building that was being envisioned back in the 70s, is still in its infancy. It's stupid expensive, and consumes a ton of electricity. There's only one industry I know of that makes extensive use of hydroponics/vertical farming, and, well, that's because the crop has a very high market value and they don't want it to be easily visible and/or accessible.

Remember The Land at EPCOT in Disney World? Where they have the hydroponic garden that you ride the boat through and then you go to the restaurant afterwards where they serve you food made with the plants grown in the hydroponics? Yeah, there's a reason why, forty years after The Land opened, Disney still buys the rest of the produce at Disney World from traditional farmers.

It is still promising technology. It is just a shame it has not been developed as has so much more of the promising technology. I remember visiting my grandparents during the summers and he would watch some of those older movies on television. Cities under the ocean, cities on the Moon, cities even made on floating balloons in the upper atmosphere of earth. And those goofy movies were always set in 2010, 2030, or other far off date. And as bad as the special effects (and acting) were in those movies, it was always the vision of humankind progressing beyond contemporary technology. It seems that the last four decades have been stagnant compared to the decades of the 50s, 60s, and early 70s.

And yes, it's been about ten years since I have been to the House of Mouse. I even remember the ride that you're referencing. It's a shame that all it is at the Epcot center is a novelty thing.

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I think the renewed interests in Mars exploration and sustainability are driving some technological growth in the area of vertical farming. I don't know so much about plants, but I know the insect food industry is growing, and it is similar in that insects are farmed indoors. Maybe I should work on some more complete urban farming systems too? ;)

I haven't seen any produce advertising as being grown indoors, but it seems like a logical next step after the insects.

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1 hour ago, adsii1970 said:

It is still promising technology. It is just a shame it has not been developed as has so much more of the promising technology. I remember visiting my grandparents during the summers and he would watch some of those older movies on television. Cities under the ocean, cities on the Moon, cities even made on floating balloons in the upper atmosphere of earth. And those goofy movies were always set in 2010, 2030, or other far off date. And as bad as the special effects (and acting) were in those movies, it was always the vision of humankind progressing beyond contemporary technology. It seems that the last four decades have been stagnant compared to the decades of the 50s, 60s, and early 70s.

"2010: Odyssey 2" LOL. It was 1982 when Clarke wrote that. He thought we'd be making our second trip to Jupiter by 2010. Here it is 2021 and we haven't even been back to the Moon yet. I think the monoliths have given up on us.

I watched a lot of sci-fi as a kid too. Saturday afternoon movies on all the independent TV stations in LA. When I didn't have my nose in a book or wasn't busy playing wargames. I was a nerd from an early age.

1 hour ago, adsii1970 said:

And yes, it's been about ten years since I have been to the House of Mouse. I even remember the ride that you're referencing. It's a shame that all it is at the Epcot center is a novelty thing.

Yeah, when I graduated boot camp in Orlando in '87, my parents came out to watch. On my liberty day we went to EPCOT. I've got photos around here somewhere.

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1 hour ago, adsii1970 said:

"Life is a Lemon"

"... And I want my money back!" Great tune, my favorite off that album (not a very high bar, I know, but hey)

As for the hydroponics thing, I had my own little Aerogarden experiment going. I even built my own copy of it, not quite as efficient, but it worked. Currently mothballed during our kitchen reno,  but the herbs were fantastic!

Spoiler

I didn't get any pics of my homemade unit at full bush before my wife chopped it, but here's the Aerogarden in a well-developed state. The tomatoes on this batch ended up discolored, possibly they didn't get enough food with the other grow light there too for awhile (barely visible dangling in the background).

ovDBITU.jpg

Don't mind the knife; I was mesmerized by how the LEDs reflected off it. I suppose I was also reminding the plants what their ultimate fate would be.

 

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5 hours ago, adsii1970 said:

the smartphone and Internet are pretty amazing innovations but it should never have become the "crowning" accomplishment of this era.

The internet and computers already have allowed everything they promised in XX century sci-fi, without need to build its material implementations, and always fresh and upgraded to the nowadays sense of beauty.

Just virtual. But cheap and available.

Just the VR suits should get more cheaper and availabler.

Anyway, after I had visited in Google Earth various famous placeous, I realized that I don't need to spend time and money on most if not all of them even I had both enough.
Even my own city looks like a candy when you watch a promo, but if turn the camera a little, or make its angle wider, the magic evaporates.
The same was about <the world city list skipped to be polite>. A fantasy city from above, a dusty village on street view. A fantasy palace in wiki, a dog kennel on street view.
Thanks to the internet, now I know everything about this deceptive  world.

5 hours ago, cubinator said:

I haven't seen any produce advertising as being grown indoors, but it seems like a logical next step after the insects.

The termites. They are edible, they live indoors, and you even don't need to feed them, they will find something on their own.

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I was literally crying under the shower when I realized that Liquids are just gases shoved in together by atmospheric pressure.

Also, when Hydra raised its heads again after its defeat by Captain America, would it have killed the members to do a rebranding? Instead of calling it Hydra, they could call it something non-threatening like 'Bob'. Instead of the ominous sounding 'Hail Hydra' they would be saying 'Bonjour Bob' 'Bye Bob' 'Bon Voyage Bob' and no one would suspect anything. They would not be associated with the no-no Germans from World War 2, they would just be another kooky cult.

 

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On 7/21/2021 at 11:20 AM, kerbiloid said:

The same was about <the world city list skipped to be polite>.

I was going to +1-or-even-more your always-humorous entry in Shower Thoughts (although I deeply suspect you are having Shower Thoughts at all times (are you a sauna attendant, perchance?  or just the world's cleanest guy?)), but you left me hanging on which were those much-maligned cities, skipped to be polite -- now I can't sleep...

Is my city one of THOSE?  I could be living knee-deep in filth and not even know!!

<Sleepless in <Snipton>>

Edited by Hotel26
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37 minutes ago, Hotel26 said:

I deeply suspect you are having Shower Thoughts at all times (are you a sauna attendant, perchance? 

No, just often feel a shower of cold sweat on the neck reading some API things.

40 minutes ago, Hotel26 said:

Is my city one of THOSE?  I could be living knee-deep in filth and not even know!!

I started from Europe. The American ones were not so disappointing, as I didn't expect so much.

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1 hour ago, Selective Genius said:

Also, when Hydra raised its heads again after its defeat by Captain America, would it have killed the members to do a rebranding? Instead of calling it Hydra, they could call it something non-threatening like 'Bob'. Instead of the ominous sounding 'Hail Hydra' they would be saying 'Bonjour Bob' 'Bye Bob' 'Bon Voyage Bob' and no one would suspect anything. They would not be associated with the no-no Germans from World War 2, they would just be another kooky cult.

This is the problem with most movies in our time. Imagine how much worse the movie industry would be and how little money they would make with a fifteen to thirty minute movie. 

Some of the science fiction and horror movies are the worst. We do all of these things throughout the course of the movie but solve the problem in the last fifteen minutes. Wait... if that were an option almost an hour and a half ago, then why now? Why not just do it then?!

Jurassic Park? Design flaws all over the place. Why not have the circuit breakers in the main control building, where they belong? Backup power supplies for the velociraptor and tyrannosaur paddocks? Common sense. The software used to secure the facility did not have any sort of double redundancy (requires a second log-in and authorization before shutdown and reboot). Now yeah, Jurassic Park is now just thirty minutes long.

I simply chose that one for the reason my daughter loves that movie, as I once did, but once you've seen it about 90 times... :mad:

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48 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

I simply chose that one for the reason my daughter loves that movie, as I once did, but once you've seen it about 90 times

You need to watch a good independent movie where plot is more important than action.

2 hours ago, Selective Genius said:

I was literally crying under the shower when I realized that Liquids are just gases shoved in together by atmospheric pressure.

Then this will freak you out. Glass is actually an extemely high viscosity liquid. Given a very long time it will actually get thinner at the top and thicker at the bottom. Give it a couple of hundred years and it will spill out of the frame.

I wonder if the people in charge ever think about an end goal of balanced sustainable living, or if they just think that building more and more over the planet will just go on forever?

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6 minutes ago, ColdJ said:

You need to watch a good independent movie where plot is more important than action.

Got it. Independent.

Spoiler

eY2OLq3jRwdftzNOSWt7vrTk2X.jpg

 

3 minutes ago, BuranAce said:

Why do we shower in water? why can we shower in soap or Windex, maybe even milk.  but why water?

'Cuz cognac and champagne are too expensive for showering.

Edited by kerbiloid
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10 minutes ago, ColdJ said:

Then this will freak you out. Glass is actually an extemely high viscosity liquid. Given a very long time it will actually get thinner at the top and thicker at the bottom. Give it a couple of hundred years and it will spill out of the frame.

Pretty sure this is a myth. Millennium-old glass pieces have not spilled.

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1 minute ago, cubinator said:

Pretty sure this is a myth. Millennium-old glass pieces have not spilled.

Not a myth, science. Though I probably shouldn't have generalised the spill out of the frame period as that depends on many factors. So I will say give it a million to spill to be safe. As for the first, go take a caliper micrometer to some 50 year old single pane glass and compare top to bottom. Remember that when it was cast it was floated flat on Tin to give it an even thickness all over, so any difference shows the point.

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44 minutes ago, ColdJ said:

Not a myth, science. Though I probably shouldn't have generalised the spill out of the frame period as that depends on many factors. So I will say give it a million to spill to be safe. As for the first, go take a caliper micrometer to some 50 year old single pane glass and compare top to bottom. Remember that when it was cast it was floated flat on Tin to give it an even thickness all over, so any difference shows the point.

Nope. Myth.

Does Glass Flow?

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1 hour ago, ColdJ said:

Not a myth, science. Though I probably shouldn't have generalised the spill out of the frame period as that depends on many factors. So I will say give it a million to spill to be safe. As for the first, go take a caliper micrometer to some 50 year old single pane glass and compare top to bottom. Remember that when it was cast it was floated flat on Tin to give it an even thickness all over, so any difference shows the point.

IIRC this method was used to prove that the windows in “The Amityville Horror” house to prove that the windows had never been broken, counter to the claims of the people living there (it was based on an allegedly true story). But maybe the supernatural force that broke the windows reassembled them, hmmm? Or they were just hallucinating…

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