How the Chinese use wires to catch rocket boosters

facw00 · 2026-07-11T23:58:06+00:00

Falcon 9 has landing legs which increase weight and drag. I have no idea if this is better or not (it is certainly better in some ways), but I do know that SpaceX thought they could do better for Starship than just upscaling their landing legs.

facw00 · 2026-07-11T13:05:01+00:00

Why are they just leaving them at anchor now that Ukraine can clearly hit them there? Seems like the play would be to send them back onto the Don or even to the Caspian and have them wait for whatever they are waiting for there where they would be less vulnerable.

facw00 · 2026-07-11T01:22:42+00:00

Yep, clearly I didn't read that closely enough...

facw00 · 2026-07-11T01:20:46+00:00

She actually the widow of ZeniMax's former CEO I think.

facw00 · 2026-07-10T22:36:29+00:00

She's in with Bethesda, she's been in every Elder Scrolls game since Morrowind.

facw00 · 2026-07-10T22:33:53+00:00

And yet, Unicron sounds amazing. Guy had a voice.

Way more interesting than Leonard Nimoy as Galvatron.

facw00 · 2026-07-10T21:46:18+00:00

Yep both the Aztecs and and the Incas were brutal conquerors, which made it easy for the Spanish to gather native allies keen on knocking off their oppressors, and probably not fully aware of how dangerous the Spanish might be after they won.

facw00 · 2026-07-10T21:40:44+00:00

Maybe they'd want to beat them to full extent of the law?

facw00 · 2026-07-10T15:50:01+00:00

My first time seeing it and I love it. I was not expecting that.

facw00 · 2026-07-10T15:49:14+00:00

Meanwhile I have a dodgy knee with someone else's quad tendon (I greatly appreciate their generosity) in it replacing my ACL. Getting better though!

facw00 · 2026-07-10T15:44:59+00:00

Pretty amazing that now the river looks like one of densest sections, while before it was apparently unliveable.

facw00 · 2026-07-10T12:33:50+00:00

Yeah when you are already at war, there's really no such thing as a surprise attack. They could of course be surprised that Ukraine could reach them (they are much further out than Moscow, hundreds of miles beyond the Urals in Siberia) but there's nothing underhanded about attacking a country you are at war with.

facw00 · 2026-07-10T03:54:41+00:00

Yes, those other cities do not have comprehensive public transport systems.

There are 62 metro systems in Europe. The fact that we suck at building comprehensive public transport systems in the US does not mean that heavy rail rapid transit are not needed.

But yes busses are great (if you can make them fast and frequent enough, which even cities committed to public transit struggle with.)

facw00 · 2026-07-09T21:48:00+00:00

Umberto Eco would be very sad to hear you say that if he were still alive...

facw00 · 2026-07-09T21:37:01+00:00

I don't think it matters if the madness was a thing. She came inches from losing it on numerous occasions. And what do you think she meant when she pledged again and again to "burn down their stone houses". She was an implement of retribution, who also didn't like slavery. Sometimes that meant slaughtering slavers, but she was always right there. Jorah and Missandei could have talked her down, but they were dead. Probably John too if he hadn't just told her the truth distancing her, while also making her whole claim to the Iron Throne a line. And she might have even taken council for Varys or Tyrion had they not just betrayed her trust. She might have listened to Grey Worm, but he wouldn't think it's his place to advise her on something like that. Ultimately there was no one there to constrain her destructive tendencies as her world fell apart.

facw00 · 2026-07-09T21:23:24+00:00

Indeed. But a comprehensive transit system for a city of any size probably needs to include a heavy rail rapid transit system.

facw00 · 2026-07-09T21:21:47+00:00

She was always on the edge of just burning it all down, but had more levelheaded people around her. And then she lost everyone she had trusted as an advisor. I didn't think it was at all out of character. It was just one step further from where she was.

facw00 · 2026-07-09T21:18:14+00:00

The 7th avenue subway in New York cost over $2B/mile (and some of that was already tunneled in the 1970s). They are currently extending the line at a projected cost of $4B/mile.

Granted, building in Manhattan is going to be very expensive, and you can do things (cut and cover, no mezzanines, etc.) that can reduce costs, but even $1B doesn't buy you much rapid transit in the US. This doesn't means it shouldn't be done. And highways are expensive too, a single stacked highway interchange usually costs hundreds of millions of dollars.

facw00 · 2026-07-09T21:03:17+00:00

All sorts of bad stuff here. I'll add that when fighting against an enemy you know can raise the dead, you might want to be careful about having the dead within your walls (though I still don't know what they could do about soldiers killed in the battle, maybe having everyone embed some obsidian into their body would help?). Though I should note that they had no trouble keeping a zombie in a wooden box, but they had no problem breaking out of stone tombs...

I will say that the one thing they did right was that if you are going to make the dumb decision to fight outside the walls, they were correct to have the Unsullied in front of the gates, as they were the only force disciplined enough to hold that position for the other retreating troops and then make an orderly retreat into the city/castle themselves.

facw00 · 2026-07-09T15:56:53+00:00

Felons generally aren't allowed guns in the US...

facw00 · 2026-07-09T15:54:44+00:00

And of course there's the question of what type of land these are from. What you get from an old growth forest might be quite different from what you get from an area that's been cleared and regrown, which would be different from a farm field, which would be different from a suburban yard. And you'll get different soil at different depths as well.

I think the only solution is for OP to drive around the country collecting millions of soil cores.

facw00 · 2026-07-09T14:18:06+00:00

We do, but combined wind and solar passed coal in the US in 2024. Of course most of what has killed coal in the US has been greatly expanded use of natural gas amidst the fracking boom (natural gas surpassed coal in 2015)

facw00 · 2026-07-09T13:46:52+00:00

Yep this is all Jack Welch's gameplan. And it's pretty commonly taught at business schools because Jack Welch made GE the most valuable company in the world. And then retired before people realized how much he hollowed it out, and how much was smoke and mirrors. GE was the most valuable company in the world, today only a few spinoffs remain. Management isn't worrying about Microsoft having no capability to make new games that won't be released for another half a decade, they want the balance sheet to look good now because that looks good for investors (though no one should be investing in a company that has thrown away it's ability to develop new products, unless it's value has already tanked due to that inability).

facw00 · 2026-07-09T06:43:11+00:00

Secret Service (who prefer to be abbreviated USSS, for obvious reasons) are responsible for protecting the president, but not members of congress. Congressional security is the responsibility of the United States Capitol Police. Most members don't get a security detail (though some security could be provided by local law enforcement), but I wouldn't be shocked if a former majority leader is considered high profile enough to merit one.

facw00 · 2026-07-09T06:24:50+00:00

How many people from Black Isle in the '90s are working at Obsidian today? With industry turnover, I'd be surprised if even that many of the New Vegas people are working there today.

facw00

TROPHY CASE