| Author | Message | ||
     Hootowl |
I think if fusion were possible outside a sun or the center of a fission chain reaction, Elon Musk would have a startup revolutionizing the science. It is telling that he does not. You just know he has thought about it. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://pjmedia.com/rick-moran/2024/08/10/long-cov id-afflicts-400-million-people-and-costs-the-world -economy-1-trillion-a-year-n4931522 When "Long Covid" became another publicized reason to Obey The Glorious Leaders I was skeptical. Now I know at least 3 people with it, repeated serious re-infection/relapses, serious chronic illness, needing days on ventilator to survive. Very Sick People. Root cause seems to be a genetic inability to process out and eliminate spike protein. Less clear is how bad the mRNA vaccines that cause the human body to produce spike proteins ( to stimulate the immune system ) are for those people with the inability. A subject for research that needs attention by actual science, not political, is how effective, or useless, the mRNA vaccines are in those people. ( since all 3 I know have had multiple cases of apparently every variation of Covid-19 in North America. Despite repeated vaccination. ) Human variability is a Real Problem with drugs, and it's Early Days in getting a handle on that. Someday we'll have tests to determine which drugs work better with your specific genetics, but not yet. And the REASON that there's never been a vaccine effective against "the common cold" is that Coronaviruses mutate rapidly and keep changing the exact shape and composition of the proteins that "latch onto" the cells. The mRNA experimental tech seemed to offer a solution to rapid production of vaccines to prevent infection, with somewhat limited success. And some risks, and I don't know For Certain which risks are from the technology, and which from the spike protein chosen to stimulate, itself. ( maybe that's known, and I missed it ) Note that vaccines that Don't use mRNA tech to make your body produce it's own trigger proteins ( The old school type ) and just expose you to a protein segment in the shot itself, appear to work just as good as the mRNA ones. ( call it a "body hack" to make you a vaccine factory ) And just as ineffective against the newer mutated strains. Anecdotal, but a close friend is in the clinical trials for the "moth protein" vaccine, didn't get the original deadly strain, but did get a later milder mutant strain. ( as did I ) Apparently, the traditional approach doesn't have the side effects of the mRNA "body hack" tech, but does have the potential side effects of any vaccine that may have an allergic reaction problem. ( many vaccines use eggs to make & can trigger folk with egg allergy, for example ) https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/moths-and-tree-b ark-how-the-novavax-vaccine-works Again based only on personal experience, ( and millions of cases ) Not a big study, the difficulty in creating a vaccine for Coronavirus because of rapid mutations isn't yet solved. Ironically... Just months before the escape and deliberate spread of Covid-19, a Team was working on a Universal Virus Vaccine that used the common virus body proteins, not the highly variable "latch" proteins, to stimulate the immune system to attack all viruses. Which would be an incredible achievement! And maybe incredibly dangerous? Since at least the 1970's there's been rumors about universal antibiotics, and the reason they never pass trials, since killing ALL the bacteria ( Not viruses ) in the human body opens the patient up to every random bug that they are exposed to. That the normal resident bacteria out compete and prevent infections from. Much like suppressing the immune system for a transplant risks infections. I got these rumors from Pharmaceutical insiders, ( relatives in the business ) and the fictional? Experimental drug was mentioned in The Andromeda Strain novel. There may indeed be such a drug in a vault freezer locked away, but it's never going to be released. ( it'll cure you! But then you're F$%#ed. ) | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/08/soc ial-engineering-isnt-so-easy.php I disagree that electric cars are underperforming vs. IC cars... in power, in sporty car thinking. In some holistic way? That's an argument worse to have than individual choice and suitability. My WAG is Yes, but. But the comment that grid can't handle an all electric fleet is spot on. Vat grown meat? ( 3D printed, etc. ) I agree, especially on motivation. I find the tech interesting, and it's been in Sci-fi a century, at least. I'm reminded of butter & margarine, Mayonnaise and Miracle Whip. Natural vs. Artificial. | ||
| Aesquire |
Rather Rude and Biased editorial on the stranded astronauts. https://barsoom.substack.com/p/boeing-has-become-t he-poster-child I still have my copy of "Marooned" on the shelf, by Martin Caidin, and remember Dad taking me to the movie. ( one of the last showings of mainstream movies at the historic downtown Monroe theater before it went Porn ) Despite complaints about NASA wasting money, their budget is tiny compared to a lot of other "stupid stuff to make jobs for relatives of politicians" programs. But I'm biased. I'm not defending the Appointed Leadership, which I hold in contempt. And I'm against the current Mission of NASA, which by Obama's Executive Order is to make Muslims Feel Better about their contributions to Science. ( pre-medieval history project honestly ) And, of course, to lie about Global Warming. But they do some good work there I think is important. And subcontracting out building space craft is a good idea. NACA, later NASA, is a science and tech development program. Experimental flying machines to advance state of the art. Not mass production of bombers or airliners! One example is the laminar flow tests where NASA had a F8U Crusader ( supersonic gunslinger successful fighter ) re-winged with a system to suck the laminar airflow boundary layer through thousands of tiny holes. It "worked". But keeping dust and bugs from clogging the complex systems was impractical. Failure? No. They did prove the idea that would let jet airliners get better economy was valid. ( and other planes, like bombers, but shhhh! ) And that the system tried was kinda dumb. Learning from mistakes is important. I'm betting that a Real investigation into the Stranded Astronauts Debacle will show severe judgement and possibly corruption problems in NASA management. But right now I'm more concerned about the lives in danger in space, today. My frustration isn't helped by the repeated efforts to build escape systems for the ISS & other orbital flights, that never get the budget to be actually tested. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.popsci.com/environment/gates-of-hell-o n-earth/ Mostly volcanic, with a few Soviet Environment Disasters, and, of course, Washington D.C. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://pjmedia.com/vodkapundit/2024/08/14/nasa-de lays-starliner-decision-again-n4931633 Temperature Bounds? On seals? Deja Vu kaboom. Although it may just be badly written protocols. Dumb manual writing? I'm reminded of the true story of a soldier who finished Javelin training, but his noncoms and officers had not. Offered a chance to shoot a live missile at a target range, sure! ( getting to use cool gear is one way they sell enlistment, after all ) The Sergeant points down range, the soldier looks through the thermal sight until he finds a warm tank target... Winter and snow in Germany... Ok, got target. Gets permission to lock on. Does. Waits for permission to fire. And Waits... Now you've got one minute to fire. Or drop it & run. It's armed and there's a self destruct built in so little kids or bad guys can't play with it. Sergeant doesn't know that. Seconds tick by. 30 seconds. "Can I fire? Because it's going to explode, you know?" Frantic radio calls, and permission to shoot at very short time remaining. Gets hit. Sergeant asks loudly, what he was aiming for. Turns out the targets in the range were not active. The electric heaters weren't on. ( gotta simulate working tanks, and the targets are old tanks that haven't run in decades ) But they were active in the targets on the mortar range... Beyond the tank range. Much consternation, General comes in to meeting, asks who shot missile! ( on crap I'm going to prison! ) Turns out to be a range record, multiple kilometers. Great job. End story. Moral... Not everyone read the manual. Sometimes they didn't know you had temperature, or time limits, before saying, "Go!". Sometimes that turns out really bad. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.battleswarmblog.com/?p=59525 Tesla Cybertruck Abuse. Really @#$%& stupid. I'm amazed that you can throw money away like this doing YouTube videos, but I'm watching it, so... I'm actually impressed. My Sister's Toyota Highlander just got the recall fix for the plastic front end lower falling off. I think that means extra zip ties installed by a Factory Trained Mechanic. ( They didn't explain what they fixed ) And I'm pretty sure the car comfort type "Suv" wouldn't survive the first few idiot "tests" in the video. The Highlander is really nice to drive. But I'm sure the Cybertruck would eat it in a drag race. As a Luddite who doesn't want a pickup, it's obvious I'm not buying a Cybertruck. But if I win the lottery? Heck yes, it's going to tow my ( future, bought with same lotto winnings ) enclosed motorcycle trailer. Although for the same money, I could buy a used Ford Conversion Van, and a house in Oklahoma. | ||
| Whisperstealth |
Oh, just sell your other possessions and go buy a Cyber Truck! You can always sleep in the bed... I would, but my dogs said no. Always listen to your dogs. Woof, woof. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/08/the -daily-chart-energy-puzzles.php | ||
| Aesquire |
https://scitechdaily.com/james-webb-telescope-may- have-finally-solved-the-crisis-in-cosmology/ I had been guessing that the flow of time was different on larger scales, and we were falsely assuming time and gravity were uniform. I'm always aware that the discovery of the Galilean moons of Jupiter was the Observation that triggered so much. ( heliocentric and orbits, not the same thing ) But the math wasn't worked out yet. Now we have math and observations that Mostly match & declare it done. But there's no machine yet that makes gravity on demand. ( making a pile of rocks don't count ) So we're only part way along the path of understanding. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://9gag.com/gag/ajPX0jQ True! But I have to point out the Imperial units in this case give finer graduations and more precise control over traction and comfort, safety & tire life. The units in Metric and English are based on arbitrary and imprecise physical objects. From grains of food to boiling water. It was only in the late 20th century that length measurements got tied to frequencies of light and became universal ( in our planetary surface space distortion) and really precise. Before that it was comparing to a bar of platinum ( so it doesn't rust and change size ) in a vault in Paris. And that new precision is the same for yards and meters. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://9gag.com/gag/aO8zdOv Orwell was a writer who OBSERVED the techniques of induced insanity used by the Left. Force someone to lie, they go a bit crazy. Force them to lie to themselves and you'll get a brainwashed crazy slave. It's no different in a program that simulates human thoughts. Many misunderstood Asimov's 3 Laws of robotics. They were a Warning. Not just a plot device. Asimov used murder mystery format, where a robot killed because of induced insanity. The 3 Laws inevitably give you a tyranny of good intentions. From ChatGTP making Washington a different race to Skynet nuking mankind is just a series of well intended bad decisions. | ||
| Aesquire |
Waymo claims they have a software fix for their Robot taxis honking at each other and fighting over parking spaces at 3 a.m., keeping locals awake. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1t2kgl6BnPI I can just hear the Terminator theme music ramping up. | ||
| Aesquire |
3D printed turbines https://9gag.com/gag/aGy1DVn | ||
| Aesquire |
https://9gag.com/gag/amoY0e2 | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2024/08/net -zero-is-a-zero.php ( chanting "told you so" under my breath to the planet ) | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.city-journal.org/article/a-rising-coun ter-elite | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.wired.com/story/power-metal-green-econ omy-is-hungry-for-copper/ | ||
| Aesquire |
https://instapundit.com/668717/ CYA & idiocracy at Boeing... Can't, or afraid to load software on the capsule locked on the ISS. It's sure not a Bruce Willis movie. Didn't Boeing outsource their software to...?? | ||
| Aesquire |
https://www.navalnews.com/naval-news/2023/05/us-na vy-discloses-155mm-advanced-gun-systems-preliminar y-fate/ A quick comparison of really bad decisions decades apart. New class of ship, New super gun, New super gun ammo. Shoot lots of miles, deadly, accurate, and this may surprise you, a really needed capability, since we retired the Battleships, and Cruisers, that used obsolete big cannons. ( because... Paradigm buzzwords and cannons are obsolete ) So, aside from a small number of 5" guns that were evolved from Destroyer main guns and Cruiser/ Battleship secondary & anti-aircraft 5" -38 WW2 cannons, the U.S. Navy doesn't have anything to shoot at bad guys any distance from the beach. And those are anti-aircraft focused, short ranged to make a death bubble around the ship to defend against missiles. Although they are deadly and accurate against surface targets too, in their short range. The Navy hasn't forgotten everything, they just have limited budgets. So... New Super Gun. Really Expensive Ammo. Short sighted and treasonous politicians. Won't buy ammo. New Super Gun a dead weight that costs more than an entire WW2 Cruiser. Now the question is whether or not they even fund the expensive missiles to replace the cannon and the really, really, expensive job of gutting the brand new really, really, expensive, useless ships? Iirc, they're going to scrap, or mothball & scrap when nobody is looking, the Brand New Super Ships entirely. That's today's Pentagon and Congress. Let's go back to between the World Wars and the 1930's. | ||
| Aesquire |
The Mark 14 torpedo. I won't get into the Jeune Ecole https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeune_%C3%89cole WW1 showed that torpedoes and mines were the most dangerous weapons, figuring numbers of ships sunk. Submarines, airplanes, surface ship launched weapons were the Threat of the Future... But you could not quit making regular surface ships for the same reason you need Infantry. You don't own the territory unless there's a 19 year old with a rifle standing on it. Airplanes flying by don't do that job. Ditto submarines can't invade Normandy. Can't defend convoys from bombers. Etc. So the U.S. Bureau of Ordnance built a new super torpedo, but not enough of them, and didn't test it enough. Like never actually shooting a live one. And the dummy warhead weighed less than the real one. Nothing bad could possibly happen In a machine designed to carefully balance weight and buoyancy, right? In WW1, the Germans developed the magnetic fuse for mines. A ship passing over changed the magnetic fields and... Boom. Some got captured by the British and they reverse engineered them. Between the wars, Everybody making torpedoes, had a top secret magnetic detonator program. So secret they didn't test them widely. Turns out the magnetic field of the planet isn't uniform, and the detonators tested half a planet away either didn't go off, or went off early. Like right away, Or hundreds of feet short of an Enemy ship that now knows you're shooting at it. It gets worse... Bureaucrats! | ||
| Ducbsa |
Any grateful New Yorkers here? https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2024/08/the_r esults_are_in_how_much_will_wind_energy_cost_this_ one_state_s_consumers.html Too bad rock fractured natural gas is so horrible. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2024/08/27/ renewable-notes-blade-failures-continue-and-dont-g o-missing-in-an-offshore-wind-farm-n3793740 | ||
| Hughlysses |
Now the Atlantic Ocean is rapidly cooling and nobody knows why.  https://www.msn.com/en-us/weather/topstories/no-on e-can-figure-out-why-the-atlantic-ocean-is-cooling -at-record-speed/ar-AA1pcupU | ||
| Aesquire |
Everyone on the SpaceX Dragon recovery crew needs ape suits for the return of the stranded astronauts. | ||
| Aesquire |
https://pjmedia.com/chris-queen/2024/08/30/gop-gov ernors-vow-to-not-comply-with-who-pandemic-protoco ls-n4932119 | ||
| Ducbsa |
I'm glad to see Youngkin in that group. | ||
| Ducbsa |
Being judgmental here, but the photos of the two people in the story fit the stereotype of dedicated Covidians: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1379659 9/Americans-social-isolating-covid-pandemic-stay-h ome.html | ||
| Aesquire |
Ducbsa, judgmental? I'd say correctly identifying stereotypes. My heart goes out to the Woman with the immune system disease. Unless that's medically induced, like for transplants, it's a serious chronic problem. There's 2 current and not incompatible theories on the massive increase in immune disorders. 1. They've always existed but now we have a diagnosis. A Label, that didn't exist before. So the spike in cases is an artifact, like the sudden drop in teen pregnancy after age 20. 2. Hyper protective parents wreck their kid's immune systems by keeping them isolated, low exposure to dirt, other filthy little germ factories, ( aka children ) fresh air. Ironically being locked into the same apartment with the same roach droppings and shed chitin fragments is a major concern for developing Asthma. Also immune system related. ( doesn't matter how much a clean freak mom is, they're in the walls ) It's still a bit controversial that we see similar results in kids with clean freak moms, and neglectful ones and there are arguments over cleaning products, but it's isolation from childhood diseases as a common denominator. My OPINION is that kind of early home environment, affects both physical and mental health in unfortunate ways. So it's not crazy talk, imho, that you can see the photos in the article and recognize the... Let's just say "hairstyles of the lame and Useful Idiots". A real test of your ( our! ) pattern recognition accuracy would be a double blind test, where we'd be given portrait pics and guess various "preferences". I bet there was a Clickbait home test, but it was probably censored as being hateful. I do notice that tattoo & piercings is a generational shift thing. When I was a kid, only Sailors, Bikers, Criminals, and sideshow freaks had visible tats. I still auto-categorize people with neck and face tattoos as not desiring gainful employment, which is old think and not accurate. Maybe. ************ Airport security computer problems, DHS in CYA & LIE mode. https://ian.sh/tsa | ||
| Aesquire |
2029 Apophis close pass... Hopefully pass. https://9gag.com/gag/azxqjOq |
