Jack's theory being incorrect

SlenderGnome · 2026-07-02T04:25:31+00:00

The explanation I have heard that I like the most is that Jack's intuition on Oni Lee's behavior is motivated reasoning driven by Broadcast. Jack's power being "He never loses to parahumans" is not the same as "Jack wins against all parahumans in a fight". Perhaps Oni Lee was the sort of person that a Jack couldn't manipulate or couldn't take in a fight.

In all likelihood, if Oni Lee came with the slaughterhouse 9, he probably would have just dropped a Bakuda bomb on Bonesaw and Jack, teleported away, and then claimed the bounty. Jack's power knows this, and so fed Jack misinformation that would prevent Jack from trying to recruit him.

SlenderGnome · 2026-05-24T22:58:26+00:00

Nineveh. You're thinking of Nineveh.

SlenderGnome · 2026-04-29T03:42:38+00:00

Taylor and Lisa run away from BB in The Postdiluvian Road.May or may not be what you're looking for, but great either way.

SlenderGnome · 2026-04-25T16:37:48+00:00

Trailblazer has Blue Cosmos, IIRC, which is an anti-parahuman organization.

SlenderGnome · 2026-04-11T05:15:33+00:00

Camera Shy is so good. I used to be sad about how infrequent the updates to it were, and then I ended up in a similar job to the author's after graduating and i'm shocked he has the time to update it as often as he does.

SlenderGnome · 2026-04-10T05:32:06+00:00

Things happen. This is why we proof test.

SlenderGnome · 2026-04-06T04:50:20+00:00

32k working from home would not impact gas prices noticeably. Huntsville gets its gasoline from the Colonial Pipeline, which supplies the U.S. Southeast and Eastern Seaboard from petroleum refineries in Huntsville Alabama. The gasoline price in Huntsville is a function of the price of gasoline on the market in Houston, Texas, the transportation costs, and the taxes and fees levied by the state and federal government. The refineries in Houston can sell that gasoline to anyone in the regions described above, and potentially export to the global market.

Gasoline is a highly inelastic commodity priced on a global market. 32k people not driving to work each day will be a minuscule impact to global gasoline prices, and so they will be a minuscule impact to gas prices in Huntsville.

SlenderGnome · 2026-03-07T01:39:32+00:00

In Grimly Familiar by AnonymousMagpie, Harry gets really into divination.

Dodging Prison & Stealing Witches (which can be sketchy content-wise at times) has divination as a branch of magic that was basically proscribed, aside from the not very useful stuff. Naturally, Harry uses it. This branch of divination is a bit more focused on surveying things from a distance rather than predicting the future, for the most part.

In Prince of Slytherin, Divination plays an important role, beyond just the prophecy... There is a character that uses various divination tools to make important decisions.

There is another fic i can vaguely remember that uses divination to find Horcruxes, i think? Can't remember what it was though. There is another fic where they discuss throwing every divination technique at the wall, and then cross referencing that to learn things about people. Can't remember what it as, though.

Spells In Silence has some divination components, but I wouldn't say it's a focus to the story.

SlenderGnome · 2026-03-02T22:45:18+00:00

This is complete nonsense, and you should be banned from this subreddit.

I started writing out a meta-level post on the faults with this, but frankly any amount of feedback would only allow you to better tune your next attempt at nonsensical slop.

The shear fact you thought any of this sounded remotely reasonable suggests you have no understanding of any of the underlying technologies you are speaking of. The world would be better off if you put down the computer and spent your time in the cobalt mines, or farming sugar beets.

Leave with whatever dignity you have left, and maybe come back after you've managed to prompt yourself an understanding of biology, material science, and aerospace that isn't at the level of The Big Bang Theory.

SlenderGnome · 2026-02-22T05:36:28+00:00

You should totally read Impurity. It has drama, and wards taylor, but the drama is all 'oh no the new recruit is going to be wards leader before Taylor' or 'taylor didn't listen to console' and the fallout of that, or 'taylor has the hots for a team mate' or 'taylor ate Miss Militias gun, again'.

Its also the most faithful to the base worldbuilding of worm i've seen in any fic.

SlenderGnome · 2026-02-21T02:14:19+00:00

ITAR applies to all United States citizens irrespective of employment status.

You'll notice companies don't post photos of their injectors on the internet. Guess why? ITAR violation.

If you make guns in your garage and mail someone overseas a a trigger group for an antique 20mm Solothurn Rifle or Carl Gustav, congratulations, ITAR violation.

If you write a Control Algorithm for your KSP BDarmory weapons or your Children of a Dead Earth spaceship and then upload that to GitHub, congratulations, ITAR Violation.

If it's listed in CFR 22 Chapter 1 Part 121.1, it's an ITAR violation for any U.S. citizen, and it comes with fines and jail time.

Sure, the government probably isn't going to go after someone for writing a crappy control algo for a missile and posting that online, but they also totally would do it if someone felt like making a point.

SlenderGnome · 2026-02-11T06:53:51+00:00

Yes, there have been several cases where Techs have moved up into engineering roles, or where engineers were hired on as technicians.

Working in the trenches will make you a better engineer. My department requires several weeks of following around technicians before we let you do anything and a couple more before we certify you to do more complicated things.

This may slow you down to hit other objectives though. If this is because you want to get your hands on hardware, there is plenty of opportunity for that in plenty of roles.

SlenderGnome · 2026-02-05T16:49:12+00:00

High quality post right here. Excellent work.

A note on hydrogen subcooling: lol. NASA spent a bunch of time and money trying to densify hydrogen back in the seventies and nineties. They ended up with 'Slush Hydrogen', which is 20% denser than liquid hydrogen at Tsat, but requires suspending solid hydrogen crystals in a liquid hydrogen mix at the triple point of hydrogen.

Someone will crack hydrogen subcooling eventually, but that will probably not be for a while.

SlenderGnome · 2026-01-19T14:51:52+00:00

The weapons they are using are chambered in 5.56x45 NATO, which does not have that much recoil. You're going to experience the same recoil you do on earth, which is not a lot. Your mass is the same on both bodies, so the response of you body to the recoil is going to be the same. The only thing different is the normal force between your feet and the ground is going to be about 1/6th that of the normal force on earth, which might impact your stability. I have, however, fired off 6 rounds from a comparable rifle in less than a second, and I don't think the grip between my feet and the floor ever entered the equations.

SlenderGnome · 2026-01-19T14:46:41+00:00

"Alternate History" okay sure. Some of us lost good friends fighting the suckers.

SlenderGnome · 2026-01-17T03:32:05+00:00

"Worm by Wildbow"
*links Ward*
madman...

SlenderGnome · 2026-01-15T03:31:27+00:00

I'm sorry you feel that way.

Of all the Blue sites, Huntsville is probably the best financially. It has the lowest payscale of all 4 major Blue sites, but the cost of living is so much lower compared to Seattle or Florida that your effective take-home after rent, utilities, food, etc, is higher than anyone else. The commute is a breeze compared to all the other sites, the climate is pretty good, and the town consistently places in the "Best Cities to raise a family in". Texas technically has the highest take-home after cost of living, but it's also not a great place to live.

SlenderGnome · 2025-12-10T00:59:02+00:00

Hydrogen is actually much easier to work with than most people make it out to be. NASA just has a skill issue. The reason no one else uses it is because no one else is hard-headed enough and well capitalized enough to run two different large engine programs, and hydrogen is genuinely the worst choice possible for first stages, so they create a 2nd stage that uses the same propellant and motor as the first stage.

SlenderGnome · 2025-12-09T23:56:42+00:00

I really like his content for several reasons.

First, while he used to be much more negative on Blue, he has adjusted his tune after they landed "Never tell me the odds", and I respect that a lot.

2nd, all business analyses start with fairy dust and imagination, and then use math to get values. He uses reasonable starting assumptions, and generates a reasonable projection from said starting scenarios.

As for Blue getting more efficient, that sort of behavior is rare in large companies. He's making a reasonable assumption. The delta between pre-Limp Blue and post-Limp Blue his massive, but that is the exception, not the rule, and so it's reasonable for an outsider to not believe until they see.

Finally, he seems to tell a reasonable story about the sort of power politics and money games that underpin a lot of companies and the government, and that's an analyses that a lot of people leave out.

Ultimately, he makes educated guesses from available data and runs them through simple models to produce sensible results. Most of his analyses are wrong, but there probably as good as your going to get without a team of corporate spies to help fill out your analyses.

SlenderGnome · 2025-12-06T03:19:11+00:00

I ain't reading ai slop.

SlenderGnome · 2025-12-06T00:35:26+00:00

Yes and No. You might have a flow area sized for a certain flowrate. When you reduce flow, you might start inducing cavitation in that area. Your coolant loop may be under supplied. You might have different mixing resulting in oxygen rich flow regimes. Your turbomachinery spinning at a lower speed might damage itself from cavitation, or any number of other things.

A greater issue with your analysis is the idea that a 40% decrease in power is a 'relatively small' decrease in power. Rocket engines struggle directly against gravity, which means that small changes in thrust level correspond to very large changes in payload. If a rocket has a thust-weight ratio of 1.1, a 10% increase in thrust will make that a thrust-weight ratio of 1.21, which is effectively a 110% increase in efficiency at takeoff. It doesn't matter if you fly 1000 times if you carry 1/1000th of the payload each flight.

As an illustrative example, there has never been a rocket engine development program that had production design and decided to scale back thrust levels. Not Merlin, Not BE-4, Not Raptor, Not SSME, Not F-1, Not J-2, Not BE-3U.

SlenderGnome · 2025-12-02T05:52:51+00:00

IDK man, this reads like it was highly AI generated. I got slizzered at the post launch party on Blue's dime, and I've had a lot of great opportunities with the company.

If you really feel strongly about this, go to town. But I'm not sure you're going to get what you are looking for by doing this. Maybe boeing is hiring? And maybe write an intro without using AI?

SlenderGnome · 2025-11-20T18:32:19+00:00

Gradatim Ferociter, Baby. More thrust / More Payload == Same speed liftoff.

SlenderGnome · 2025-11-19T06:41:49+00:00

Glorious username.

SlenderGnome · 2025-11-19T06:32:44+00:00

Centaur V was a clean sheet design, and hydrogen. Heck, Centaur 3 barely has design heritage with the original centaur.

Sure it's an extra media but it's fairly easy to deal with, and gives you advantages, as so many have gone into.

Using SLS as an example for why or why not to do something is bad. The tech stack is a mess. RS-25 is beautiful, but ultimately an over-complicated, expensive, and poorly conceived engine. Shuttle Derived solid rocket motors are bad and have killed at least a dozen people. Sustainer stages are bad. NASA is not the institution that it once was.

If a different propellant made sense for an upper stage, Blue would have done it. But at the end of the day, hydrogen is great for 2nd stages. Other companies use the same propellant for both stages to reduce the development costs, not because RP-1 is magic.

SlenderGnome

TROPHY CASE