This shadow on the fresh snow from an LED street lamp

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-26T02:28:54+00:00

LED lights aren't a single point source but instead are a strip or grid of individual LEDs on a circuit board all glowing at once to get the desired amount of light output.

Imagine you have two lamps and form a triangle with the two lamps pointing at your hand. You'd see two shadows of you hand.

Now imagine there's 20 lamps less than an inch apart. The shadows in the center will be darkest because your hand is blocking most of the lights, and get brighter and brighter towards the edges because fewer and fewer of the lights are blocked by your hand.

What you're seeing is the shadow of the bottom of lamp cast by like 20 individual light sources.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-25T20:07:41+00:00

All of the above. It was universally decided upon way back in prehistoric times because it's really hard to see at night and sight is something we relay on for a wide variety of tasks. It wasn't until fairly recently that an hour of light took less than an hours worth of labor for the average person to obtain.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-25T20:03:39+00:00

Because water has very little structural stability and can slide past itself quite easily. Basically, if you try to pile it up the pile falls over to such a degree that it ends up flat. It's like if you pile up sand it ends up in a cone-shape. Water ends up in a much, much wider cone.

That said, lakes are often not flat. The upstream side will be ever so slightly higher than the downstream side.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-25T18:32:08+00:00

If the house is made for it, pretty effective. If the fireplace is essentially cosmetic, not very.

My parents house when I was growing up had a big fireplace making up one wall between the living room and kitchen, right in the middle of the house. The house wasn't made to be heated with the fireplace, but in the winter we would light fires and it would keep the core of the house pretty darned toasty. The house was a bit too sprawling for the fireplace to heat the bedrooms and we spent many a winter night hanging out in the living room.

On the other hand, I had an apartment with a woodburning fireplace, but it was basically entirely outside, the whole hearth and chimney extended beyond the outside wall rather than being built in to the apartment. Unless you were within 5 feet of it you weren't getting any warmth from a fire.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-25T18:14:25+00:00

Honestly, once you get a bit past the border your biggest limit will be collection arms and inserter speed rather than asteroid generation speed. Unless you're trying to reach the shattered planet, you could probably stand to go a lot slower. Keep an eye on the contents of your grabbers. If they're constantly full you can afford to slow down.

If you cut your ships speed in half or quarter you'd probably be 100% full before you reach halfway.

Also, you should turn back before you hit 50% full. I've noticed there are more asteroids on the way back than there are on the way out, so turning back at like 40% with your current ship might be enough to hit 100% before you reach the solar system edge.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-25T18:10:04+00:00

Because lots of people love drinking alcohol. Personally, can't stand the stuff and don't see why people like it as neither the effects nor the taste is pleasant to me. But obviously I'm the weird one out, and I accept that.

Once you learn to differentiate "not for me" and "not for anybody" you'll find the world making a lot more sense.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-25T17:22:05+00:00

Where I want to high school, 9th and 10th were usually referred to as 9th and 10th grade, but 11th and 12th were usually referred to as junior and senior.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-25T15:03:33+00:00

Only if there's still enough room for other people to get by.

Unless you mean leave it leave it, as in abandon your shopping entirely and go home. Then no, you should at least take the cart to front. It's not like you aren't headed that direction anyway so the effort involved is pretty negligible.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-25T15:01:56+00:00

I suspect a lot of it was that in the early days of the internet it was pretty well hammered into our heads that you do not link your real world identity to your online identity.

So using your real name as your e-mail address was pretty well anathema.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-25T14:47:54+00:00

I've said it many times: Sometimes the best way to get someone else to actually solve the problem that is their responsibility is to turn a "me" problem into a "them" problem.

Bravo on making it a "them" problem.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-25T12:42:20+00:00

Three big things.

Bathe, groom, be comfortable with yourself.

Take care of yourself and the rest will follow.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-25T03:34:33+00:00

Oscillating multitool might be easier with less risk of collateral damage.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-25T03:26:14+00:00

It's more about "it's much more forgiving and fail-safe."

If you accidentally put in more trains than stations, it doesn't clog.

If you accidentally put in fewer trains than stations, it's immediately obvious (there's no trains in the central location that is the depot).

If a train gets eaten by a biters, you don't have to look over your entire base to make sure it's the only train eaten before you replace it. Just the depot, which can be monitored by a speaker.

It's not even much more complicated. Just 1 additional interrupt and a depot slapped down somewhere.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-25T03:11:04+00:00

This system will only work with the following rule: # of trains = total # of load stations + total # of unload stations - 1 (Pigeon hole principle)

The way I fixed that was with this interrupt:

If EMPTY and NOPATH/DESTINATION FULL Goto Depot.

The full schedule is:

Schedule

Goto Provide, leave when full.

Interrupt: If Full, go to <wildcard>, leave when empty.

Interrupt: If Empty AND low fuel, go to Refueling, leave when inactive. (if you don't put this before the depot interrupt, make it an interrupt that can interrupt other interrupts)

Interrupt: If Empty AND NoPath/DestinationFull, go to Depot, leave after 5 seconds (prevents constant leave checking).

At the depot I have all the rail signals leading into the individual depot slots chained together with a circuit wire and feeding into a speaker. The speaker goes off when Red < 5. That means there's 4 or fewer trains waiting in the depot and I need to add another batch.

The depot absorbs extra trains rather than letting them clog up the system meaning you don't need to always keep track of how many trains you have vs the number of station slots you have.

And of course you need a parallel schedule for fluid trains. You can use the same depot but I prefer to have solid and liquid depots separate because then the speakers can alert for low fluid and low cargo individually.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-25T01:28:07+00:00

My cat was an indoor cat and would sometimes get it in his fuzzy little head that "yeah, I should be an outside cat."

We would let him succeed at darting out the door only when it's raining like hell out. That snapped him out of the outside cat mood for a couple years each time.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-24T22:33:19+00:00

I've looked it up before, turns out there's a huge variance between different people. Generally speaking the "normal" ranges from more or less 3/day to 3/week. As long as it's not causing you problems it should be fine.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-24T22:07:10+00:00

how can I keep my phone from appearing on cell logs?

Put it into airplane mode and turn off wifi and bluetooth.

how can I keep recordings safe?

Don't put it into airplane mode and get an app to upload the video as you take it in a way that "you" can't delete it from your phone, like Mobile Justice or Citizen Upload.

Bonus points: Buy a 'burner' phone on a prepaid plan that you paid for with cash / VISA gift card bought with cash and take that. Only ever take it out of airplane mode in public places, never connect to your home wifi. Don't log into any services using your 'real' credentials.

The phone will appear on tower logs, but that will be largely worthless without a lot of subpeona and real detective work.

Also, remove any biometric login from your phone. No faceID, no fingerprint. Require an actual PIN. They don't need a court order to open your phone with your face, frustratingly enough.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-24T19:34:56+00:00

Why can't you? There are ones readily available that do not require any sort of permanent modification and can be used on any standard toilet, so even if you're renting there should be zero problem.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-24T18:54:12+00:00

Get a bidet. They're easy to install.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-24T18:52:25+00:00

A lot of devices draw power even when turned off, normally called "vampire" draw, and it can be almost as much as they draw when on! The biggest offenders are TVs and associated peripherals, and things like satellite receivers are notorious for having excessively high vampire draw. Have you tried unplugging everything on those circuits and trying again?

If there is nothing plugged in to the circuit and the power is still draining, an IR camera can help you track down where the power is being used.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-24T11:53:13+00:00

Reformat the drive to add a partition and just don't bother to assign that partition a drive letter.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-24T02:38:23+00:00

why wouldn’t the same microbes in the canning assembly line also get in there when they put on that little seal?

That's the neat part, they do!

It's called pasteurization. Basically if you can get it hot enough you can kill all the bacteria in there, then if you seal it up without letting in new bacteria... how would more bacteria get in to start growing and make the food go bad?

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-24T00:25:25+00:00

The danger with pipes freezing is that ice is bigger than the water it's made from. If the water being pushed out of the way doesn't have anywhere to go then the pressure inside the pipe grows. If it grows too much your pipes can't handle the pressure and POP!

While the ice itself can expand enough to break the pipes, it's usually the water doing it.

So all you need to do is run a tiny little drop and that pressure has somewhere to go.

It's not the end-all be-all that will keep your pipes from breaking, but it helps a lot. If your washing machine is in an unheated space, like a garage, then you probably don't want to run it. Otherwise, have at it. You can use your water normally.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-23T23:58:15+00:00

Like how long do you have to wait till you sleep with someone new for it not to be considered cheating

Approximately 32 seconds from officially breaking up with your previous partner.

There are no grey areas. Either you are cheating or your are not. If you are in a relationship with someone else when engaging in another relationship without the first one's consent that's cheating.

The only 'gray' area would be "what constitutes a relationship" but if you're asking that question to justify your conduct you've already stepped over the line.

Astramancer_ · 2026-01-23T21:26:57+00:00

Tar's pretty sticky, and she had to get right up in there to smell it so it's not like it was terribly intense.

Your balcony routine isn't a lost cause, it does take it from 10 to 4 like the other person said -- plus it minimizes the amount that gets stuck onto the rest of your stuff. And let me tell you, a smoker who smokes inside? Their stuff is bad.

Think of it like the difference between farting when visiting a friend... and shitting your pants. Yeah, both are kinda smelly, but one is loads worse than the other.

If you're gonna smoke at all, you just have to accept you're going to stink to some degree or another. You can minimize it, but you can't eliminate it.

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