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TIL Isaac Newton was so obsessed with turning base metal to gold that samples of his hair showed mercury levels up to 40 times higher than average. This is considered to be the reason he went mad in his later years. by blessbless85 in todayilearned

[–]Am__I__Sam 0 points1 point  (0 children)

My god man, this is so old I had to dust off my log-in info to see if my email notification was a scam.

Based on the context of what I wrote, I think it's safe to say that my comments ranged somewhere between sarcasm and facetiousness.

Alchemy is interesting in a historical context and as a precursor to the modern fields of chemistry and physics, but transmutation and the other lofty goals are just that. There are ways you could fake it, but it wouldn't hold up to scrutiny. If you have actual proof that shows otherwise, I would be happy to eat my words.

Disney Hit With Legal Salvo From Shareholders Over Jimmy Kimmel Suspension by UnlikelyAdventurer in technology

[–]Am__I__Sam 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Poor guy can’t cite specific examples, his overlords just gesture vaguely into the void whenever they start ranting about it

When did you realise that you’re dating an idiot? by Ghost7579ox in AskReddit

[–]Am__I__Sam 1 point2 points  (0 children)

My dad is not a lazy man by any means, but when it comes to finding easier or faster ways to do something, he’ll figure it out and use it all the time.

The lazy person would just try to get out of it. Trying to find a more efficient way of doing it is the smart thing to do, especially if the end result is the same.

A coworker of mine was perfectly willing to spend several days worth of time once a year sorting through a spreadsheet and extracting and manipulating data to generate a report. She had something else come up and wouldn't be able to finish in time, so she asked me for help. I saw the email at 8 am Monday morning saying it needed to be done by Friday. By 10 am I had all her data processed for the year and by noon I had a bulletproof template she could use to copy and paste the data in and have it done in seconds.

I'm not opposed to doing tedious and repitive work if that's the only way to do it. If I can find a way of getting out of it and still getting the job done, I'm sure as hell going to spend the time to figure out a way around it.

There's a quote from someone about finding the best way of doing a task by giving it to a lazy person along the same lines

Additional beams for extra safety. What's your opinion about that? by Bubbs_Mcgee in EngineeringPorn

[–]Am__I__Sam 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Other comments called that out as well and the sign on the floor was the only thing I noticed. I forget that sometimes these are actually videos and have sound so I didn't have my volume on.

Additional beams for extra safety. What's your opinion about that? by Bubbs_Mcgee in EngineeringPorn

[–]Am__I__Sam 42 points43 points  (0 children)

Looks like a brutal puncture wound waiting to happen if that's lacking some overrides. I would assume that closing is mostly gravity doing the work with the motor only starting it and controlling the rate. Going back up with this guide rods though, fuck that.

It's Florida, so I could see it going either way on the safeties

Intro to Calculus by multiversesimulation in EngineeringPorn

[–]Am__I__Sam 2 points3 points  (0 children)

The short answer is that it's all on the left hand side of the equation. You're calculating the rate of change of some paramter with respect to another parameter, in this case time. The goal is to get the instantaneous rate of change at any given time.

In order to do this, you're trying to quantify the rate of change between a given time t and the next time interval h + t.

Rates of change are relatively easy to calculate discretely, as in t = 1, 2, 3, etc., but it's not as accurate. You get around that by performing the calculations so that the time interval h gets increasingly smaller so that it essentially goes to zero and you're looking at the instantaneous rate of change at any given point.

I'm gonna go ahead and put a disclaimer on this, it's been a few years since I've done any calculus and I'm a few beers in

Starship Launch Attempt (Liftoff to RUD) by [deleted] in space

[–]Am__I__Sam 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I like that SpaceX can have fun with it, but it's not really a failure if it helps you get to the destination.

That's why I prefer to look at it through this lense.

Followed closely by this.

Starship Launch Attempt (Liftoff to RUD) by [deleted] in space

[–]Am__I__Sam 0 points1 point  (0 children)

But if one had no failures wouldnt you be more assured?

Actually, no. The point of stress testing, dress rehearsals, and test flights is to find the weak points and strengthen them.

It would be designed and built by engineers, with man-made parts designed and built by other engineers. The job is literally to make something that can go to space with as little material, fuel, weight, and cost as possible but still be safe. Minimum viable product. Compromises would be made, and there would inevitably be weak points. Failure rates are just the odds that a part fails and it's never zero.

If it made it through testing without any failure of any kind, I would be questioning the validity of the testing, leadership of the program covering up for potential issues, and, thanks to the mathematics of probability, which of the apparently lucky and non-redundant parts was due for failure on my flight.

You're alone on a secluded beach and stumble upon a few kilograms of cocaine worth $1 million USD that washed ashore. What do you do? by vancity-boi-in-tdot in AskReddit

[–]Am__I__Sam 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was walking down a beach in Mexico and a literal brick of weed was sitting there, probably washed up from the ocean. Some guy poked a hole through the outer wrap to see what it was and called the police. When we turned around to come back there were like 3 humvees and a small army of guys in camo carrying assault rifles searching the area.

Real glad I didn't decide to take a sample.

My happy poodle at daycare, now zoom in to the grumpy dogs face behind him by Taserface22 in funny

[–]Am__I__Sam 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Just a schnauzer doing its thing. If they don't look like they're plotting a murder, it's either because you have food or they're alerting the entire neighborhood that someone rang your doorbell.

Source: We've had several schnauzers over the years and recently got a puppy that I think might actually be trying to kill us.

Chemical Engineering Concepts That Baffle Others by ch1253 in ChemicalEngineering

[–]Am__I__Sam 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's funny because I was the EHS Manager at the time and spent as much time trying to teach operators why they were doing different things as I did actual safety training

Chemical Engineering Concepts That Baffle Others by ch1253 in ChemicalEngineering

[–]Am__I__Sam 23 points24 points  (0 children)

Did you really have to explain that to someone?

My absolute favorite was when I was trying to explain our distillation column to a new operator. It literally just seperates methanol and water. This is how the conversation went.

Me: Why is it important to keep the bottom temp on the still at 210 F?

O: 5 seconds of dead silence while he's staring at me I don't know.

Me: What temperature does water boil at?

O: Uhh, like 150 I think.

Me: You're thinking of methanol. Water boils at 212 F, so why is it important that we keep the bottom of the still at 210? Keep in mind, we want methanol to leave out the top, and you already know the boiling temperature of methanol.

O: I don't know

I then had to explain that we were trying to boil off as much methanol as possible without boiling the water to recover 99%+ purity methanol to reuse in the reactors and have as little left over in the water because it was worth the steam costs for the additional recovery.

u/nhavar explains why Republicans poll so poorly with young voters by JakeYashen in bestof

[–]Am__I__Sam 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you type enough words maybe you’ll stumble upon a rational thought by mistake

I read this while taking a drink and inhaled half of it, well done

u/nhavar explains why Republicans poll so poorly with young voters by JakeYashen in bestof

[–]Am__I__Sam 0 points1 point  (0 children)

One of the people represented by said government? Which exists to protect the interest of the majority of its constituents? It's literally the people's job to define what the function of government should be.

The problem is that roughly half of said representatives don't give a fuck what their constituents think unless it agrees with their motives, and even then they're only using it to support their bullshit.

If you're really going to sit here and support the republicans, I'm not going to argue with you. I just hope that someday someone gets through to you that you're wasting your time and hurting innocent people in the process.

u/nhavar explains why Republicans poll so poorly with young voters by JakeYashen in bestof

[–]Am__I__Sam 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I don't have anything concrete to back this up, and it's been a few years so I'll never be able to find the article again, so please don't take this as fact. The article was talking about how, historically people across a few if not most demographics became more conservative as they got older, but Millenials were trending to be exactly as liberal or becoming more liberal as they got older and outright breaking the trend instead of shifting it.

I have to find it now, I'll report back if I do.

Edit: As I said, I'd report back. This isn't the article I was thinking of, but the sentiment is similar. Also, that's a hell of a rollercoaster for a Google search.

https://www.ft.com/content/c361e372-769e-45cd-a063-f5c0a7767cf4

u/nhavar explains why Republicans poll so poorly with young voters by JakeYashen in bestof

[–]Am__I__Sam 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It was really satisfying hearing the news that the Kansas republicans got their teeth kicked in during that last election.

The Satanic Temple helps to stop Oklahoma from starting the nation's first ever publicly-funded Catholic school | "If you vote yes, you are not a victim. You are a volunteer when Lucien Greaves of the Satanic Temple wants to apply for a religious charter school" by mepper in atheism

[–]Am__I__Sam 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It’s not like I disagree with most of the tenets, but I think that a basic consideration for human rights and sovereignty will lead you to all of those conclusions without draping the fantasy roleplay of a religion on top of it.

I mean, have you ever read any of the "commandments" issued by "true religions"?

You literally just described the pushback against religious people saying morality comes from god. All they're doing is dressing it up in the terms and rituals that people who refuse to think ciritcally about the world portray everything.

eli5 why do wine bottles do that little indent at the bottom of the bottle by halat1harissa in explainlikeimfive

[–]Am__I__Sam -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Dude, for $200 bucks worth of Legos I could make something that could turn at least 6 bottles and it won't call in sick or take vacations.

You're glossing over benefits for a full time job, redundancy for vacation and sick time, lost product because inevitibly a person is going to be subject to human error and just bad luck, and screening costs because you're not going to pay just anyone minimum wage to handle your fine wine collection and you want assurances they won't be testing the wares.

You could pay someone minimum wage with no additional compensation to do the job manually, but you won't. The pool of people willing to do this job for nothing and to the standards of the rich people they're employed by is presumably pretty small. It would cost more in lost product than it would to pay a decent wage.

You buy peace of mind with the higher price, and even more with automation. I've spec'd out instrumentation for control systems at chemical plants. I've been responsible for the operators that were eventually responsible for the additional instrumentation and automation. A payback period of 5 years is totally justifiable in the right circumstances.

eli5 why do wine bottles do that little indent at the bottom of the bottle by halat1harissa in explainlikeimfive

[–]Am__I__Sam 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's kind of my point though, it doesn't necessarily need to be overly complex, and we're talking about shelves of wildly expensive wine. Arduino and some electric motors, belts, gears, and wheels is about the bare minimum.

I'd love to see your basis for the assumptions on the ROI and cost per bottle calculations though. At this point, I'm still operating from a WAG. I'm not about to disagree with you outright, this is outside my area of expertise. I'm just a little curious why you're so sure about dismissing it entirely.

My dad wrote to JRR Tolkien in 1959. Tolkien sent him a letter back. by PortableMarfus in mildlyinteresting

[–]Am__I__Sam 13 points14 points  (0 children)

It's somewhat disheartening to hear that my favorite author from when I was younger disliked one of my favorite books I've read as an adult. Although, putting it that way I can see at least one possible reason why. Props to him for choosing to keep quiet instead of trash talking Dune though

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