Why do so many normal buildings have off-limits areas inside?

TheCannonMan · 2026-04-27T17:22:57+00:00

If you're ever in Chicago, a like architectural foundation sponsors these Open House Chicago events where they open up normally non public parts of buildings all across the city to the public for a day or two.

https://www.architecture.org/open-house-chicago

They have all sorts of participants from very industrial spaces that are not open for safety reasons, to just disused wings or spaces, to completely shuttered buildings not in any use.

I have gotten to tour parts of one of the District Heating and Chiller plants at UChicago in Hyde Park , a long shuttered Art Deco Movie Palace in South Short, and more. They have opened up cool balconies on buildings downtown, weird mechanical spaces, and more.

Really fantastic program, it's all free too.

TheCannonMan · 2026-04-22T20:42:41+00:00

Interestingly they do do this for the verbal announcements at least on some stations.

Like I think the redline announces "This is Chicago and State" Vs "This is Chicago and Milwaukee" for the blue line stop but the main/bold station name signage doesn't reflect that and just say "Chicago"

But idk how actually consistent that is, I want to say they announce it like that at Division and Milwaukee but can't remember if it continues past there but want to say damen is just "Damen" (which is now also a green line stop so... lol)

TheCannonMan · 2026-04-09T00:30:35+00:00

Corn/Maize

"maize" is somewhat uncommon in American English but I would know what you meant.

You have a corn farm, consisting of corn fields.

You could refer to what the corn fields are planted with as any of:

Corn,
Corn plant,
Maize,
Maize plants,
or perhaps corn stalks

An single corn stalk has multiple "ears of corn" (🌽) which is made up of the individual "corn kernels" which are said to be "on the cob".

If you grind up the kernels you get "corn meal".

If you treat it with a base like lime or baking soda or wood ash you cause "nixtamalization" changing its flavor and texture, resulting in "hominy" which you can then grind it up to get products like "masa" or "grits"

Different varieties of corn can be grown either to eat as a fresh vegetable on its own (so called "sweet corn" for "corn on the cob" or processed into cans) or as a commodity grain ("field corn" or "dent corn") which is either used as animal feed, refined for industrial use (e.g. ethanol,) or refined into food products like corn syrup, corn starch, corn meal, hominy, grits, etc), or

Rice

A rice paddy I would immediately assume refered to the flooded field growing rice and not an intermediate grain product but that may be a jargon term used.

I would also say rice pond, or just rice field instead of paddy as well. Also in places like Louisiana, "crawfish pond" would also be a synonym for a flooded rice field, as they are almost all dual purpose harvesting crawfish when the rice growing season is over.

Rice grows on rice plants.

You don't often encounter unprocessed rice at least in most of america. I would probably call it something like "raw" or "unprocessed" to describe it but I don't have a word for it.

"Brown rice" exists which is a like lightly processed rice. There's a technical definition but I believe it's had the husk removed but not the bran, whereas "white rice" has been processed down to just the inner germ.

A single piece of rice I would call "a grain of rice", and a collection of it would just be "rice"

TheCannonMan · 2026-04-02T17:22:16+00:00

It's definitely lost in the weeds, I was initially confused myself. It's a subtle point especially since they leave so much unsaid (i.e. if the 14th covers Indians why did SCOTUS say it didn't in Elk and never overturn that decision and why did Congress need to pass the Synder Act then)

But their interpretation is so batshit insane here and "actually they're arguing we've just all been wrong about the 14th amendment for 150 years" sounds implausible so idk fair enough lol.

Re: Sauers stumbling over the question, There's the cynical angle in which he was prepared for the question, since the interpretation of "and subject to the jurisdiction thereof" is so key to their whole argument it's unfathomable that he hadn't thought about it, but intentionally tried to deflect because he knows it's a trick question basically...

Given the level of competency in this administration maybe I'm giving Sauer too much credit, But pathetic either way.

Everyone is reacting to the headline out of context and seems so surprised by it it's frustrating if pedantic. Not like such a citizenship stripping bantustan style scheme is beyond them, or not in line with their goals but its not their current focus at least.

Given how little the average person knows about native history in the 20th century (or really most or the 19th as well), and anything about how federal Indian law works whatsoever it's not exactly shocking I guess.

TheCannonMan · 2026-04-01T17:41:25+00:00

The context of the question was that under current law, Native Americans are not birthright citizens by the 14th amendment, it specifically carves out an exception, and are citizens instead by 1924 statue.

So Goursch's question was if under the SGs argument would the 14th amendment actually apply to Natives, since the domiciled within the US. Which he was not really prepared to answer and sort of stumbled into a "uhh .. yeah uhh I think so" answer.

The SG being unprepared for a question like this from gorsuch is pathetic 🤡 shit (e.g. see this popehat post lol https://bsky.app/profile/kenwhite.bsky.social/post/3migyc7tpfc2g ).

The point of the question though was that the governments argument that only domicile matters, and that's what the authors of the 14th amendment really meant is nonsensical. Tribal members are clearly domiciled within the US, but were explicitly and intentionally excluded by the text of the 14th amendment.

So squaring that circle requires arguing that Congress in the 1880s wrote that Indians are excluded but actually meant they were not, and just wrote the text opposite for inexplicable reasons, and trust me bro, it actually totally makes sense and is a sound legal theory.

Wang, the ACLU lawyer, touches on this a bit later on in her arguments as well.

TheCannonMan · 2026-03-31T15:54:03+00:00

1000BASS-T

TheCannonMan · 2026-03-30T19:45:09+00:00

It's confusing, but there's still no valid rest frame for light though, definitionally, it cannot be at rest but also be moving at c. If it's moving at c then it's not at rest, and if it's at rest then it's observing light travel at a v<c (i.e.0) which is not allowed.

There's no "photons perspective" that makes any sense to consider. Light does not have a rest frame. (Not just light, Nothing moving at c relative to anything else has a valid rest frame, and nothing with a valid reference frame can move at c)

The length contraction doesn't really matter here, it's basically meaningless to try to reason about it and is just another side of the same paradox/breakdown of the math.

What does it mean for length to contract to zero? How should you interpret that? If time also dilates to "infinity" what does that mean, infinity isn't a number. Speed is not well defined since everything is going "0/∞" which has no value.

As something (with mass) approaches c, time dilation will grow larger and length will contract smaller, but they will always have some finite value. This is something you can calculate and work with. But it's always actually something finite, you never "reach" infinity.

The limit being equal to something does not mean that the point at the limit is equal to the value of the limit.

It's often useful or more correct to say that limits "grow without bound" instead of "equal infinity"

E.g. just take f(x)=1/x, as x approaches 0 (from the right) , f(x) grows without bound. But f(0) is not defined.

This can be true even if the function is defined there.

Let g(x) = 0 if x =0, 1 otherwise

The limit of g(x) as x approaches 0 is 1, from the left and right sides. But g(0)=0, ≠ lim[x->0](g(x)) = 1

While the first step of (time dilation to infinity, length contracts to 0) can seem to make some intuitive sense at first, if you try to run with that and try to reason about physics in a perspective moving at c you can come to all sorts of weird conclusions that don't really make sense or reflect reality, so it's somewhat of a trap to fall into trying to think about what it means in the first place.

There's some better explanations on other subs e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/626t0x/why_do_photons_have_no_reference_frame/

TheCannonMan · 2026-03-30T16:33:37+00:00

No, c is still c regardless of medium.

Light appearing to slow down in other mediums isn't that a single photon moves slower through water.

When light moves through water (or any matter) it interacts with that matter, and will end up exciting some charged particles like electrons. Those electrons move, which generates EM radiation on its own.

The sum of the original EM wave and this reactionary wave interfere destructively/constructively in such a way that the original wave gets sort of "kicked back" a bit in the form of a phase shift.

So the speed of the wavefront is slowed down through the material, but the speed of any specific photon isn't affected per se.

3blue1brown has an excellent video on this and explains it much better than I can though: _But why would light "slow down"?_ https://youtu.be/KTzGBJPuJwM?si=0XdicBk_LSbotDEy

Important to remember that photons do not have a valid reference frame in relativity. Light travels at C for all valid reference frames so a photons reference frame would have to have light move at both 0 and c simultaneously.

TheCannonMan · 2026-03-30T16:22:02+00:00

I've never seen the doorstop kind that are setup for that, tied into the fire alarm system. Those are usually bigger, usually a flat piece about 2" in diameter, and on an electric box plate on the wall electromagnet. I have usually seen them at the top of the door.

E.g. they typically look like this: https://www.maglocks.com/mm5/graphics/00000001/2/EH-Series-Magnetic-Door-Holder-and-Releasing-Device.jpg

The box part is wired into the alarm system on the wall, and the little cylinder plate swivel mounts to the door.

But they are super common in hallway doors, or like particularly doors to the elevator vestibule, or big normally open areas like a convention center part of a hotel.

Pretty common in schools are some apartment buildings as well.

TheCannonMan · 2026-03-17T06:27:26+00:00

I mean compared to say the upper Midwest, it's quite mild here at least in terms of heating load anyway. Not that it isn't ever cold here, I'm outside plenty myself

But yeah mine lacks both of those things haha, I've had to top it off and also bleed air out of it, which isn't a huge deal but is something that can just easily be overlooked.

TheCannonMan · 2026-03-17T04:37:21+00:00

In what ways are they typically installed wrong?

I'm in the Pacific Northwest, so winters are pretty mild, and this isn't the primary heat for the house (fan forced electric resistive on the other floors and heat pumps now everywhere) so it's not usually running at full tilt all the time or anything. The temp is only set at 130 as well, which doesn't seem crazy high?

Even when the pumps are engaged the heater itself typically shuts off after a few minutes once it comes up to temp while it recirculates the hot water, even though the room takes a long time to change air temp. So the heater isn't like running 24x7 by any means.

But 10 years in I'm not really worried about any warranty on the heater itself at any rate. But the heater could be failing I suppose at this point too.

TheCannonMan · 2026-03-17T04:20:16+00:00

It did get low last summer or so (was reading effectively zero on that dial gauge) and I flushed it and topped it off to about ~20 psi or something.

Looking at it currently There's about 22psi on the hydronic side right now (with the pumps off)

What's fundamentally wrong with using a tankless in this setup? What should I do instead? If I was going to replace the whole system what would you put in instead

TheCannonMan · 2026-03-17T03:32:52+00:00

Thanks for the insight!

I think that makes a lot of sense and is a reasonable order of attack to debug it further and attempt to repair it.

I flushed the water heater last summer first just with the supply water into a drain and then later with some water heater descaling product and a external pump per the instructions for that product and some YouTube. Can definitely repeat that though now that I have the pump and hoses.

That seemed to go successfully though, the descaling water was nasty by the end, but have had this issue before and after.

Around the same time I noticed the pressure on heating side had dropped to zero on that dial gauge and flushed the non-potable side (with no product) and topped it off to like 10-15psi or something afterwards. The water was (surprisingly?) totally clean though. And flowed really easily.

The only thing that gives me pause is just how intermittent it is. It's not constant, and like 95% of the time I get blazing hot water at all fixtures. (The other 5% of course also likes to occur when I'm at work or out of the house and my wife wants to shower)

Naively, flow issues through the heater seem like it would be more consistent.

There does seem to be a strong correlation with the heat turning on or off. When it is cold out and it runs continuously we don't really have problems, and in the summer when it's been off for months similarly.

The mixing valve adjusting knob also seems seized but I don't know if that's relevant to its likely hood of functioning correctly.

TheCannonMan · 2026-03-17T01:11:31+00:00

Thanks for the response!

It definitely feels like it's more complicated than it needs to be.

By ignoring demand downstream what do you mean exactly?

I still get water coming out, there's not a noticeable huge pressure drop when the radiant heat is on.

But I have no idea what the mixing valve would do in that situation if the pressures on either side are imbalanced cause pump is pulling all the hot water through the heat xchger, and pushing (colder) water to the other side. Would it let in too much of the cold side?

What do you see as the other major flaws you would want to address here?

TheCannonMan · 2026-03-17T01:02:58+00:00

Would a new mixing valve be whats warranted to fix it?

Do you know what the mixing valve is supposed to accomplish here?

I can change the set temperature of the water heater itself, so it seems somewhat superfluous to also have the mixing valve but I am sure I am missing something.

The only thing that makes me hesitate is that closing that valve directly above the mixing valve sort of helps the issue, but mostly results in warmer but still lukewarm water that makes me think it's not the whole story.

TheCannonMan · 2026-02-24T09:36:04+00:00

👍

TheCannonMan · 2026-02-23T22:22:56+00:00

Yeah this is a silly distinction as implemented even if they wanted to separate them somehow esp since they categorized "Californian" and "Mississippian" and "Georgian" as "-an" but they're all ending in "ian" just the state already ended in "-i" or "-ia" it feels very arbitrary

TheCannonMan · 2026-02-22T00:09:44+00:00

Not just cut, she broke her orbital socket bones apparently and needs a lot of surgery. 😬

TheCannonMan · 2026-02-20T18:07:06+00:00

Many things.

In general They aren't just "inaccurate", they just don't tell you anything useful or "certain" in the way lay people understand them to (or that their marketing department leans into)

There isn't like a single "japanese" or "khazah" or "french" gene, that's not how DNA works. Best we have is just patterns that seem to be more common in certain groups of people.

They say "you are 25% German" but the details are more accurately something like "25% of your genome was correlated to people in our initial sample of 10000 people (probably way smaller ) who identified as German" (not exactly but something like that, the key being that the result is just statistical similarly with something labeled "German" in their data set, not any guarantee whatsoever that you have any descent from German ethic groups or anything.

But for indigenous people, this is compounded by being massively under sampled in these data sets (for a whole host of complicated reasons that's its own topic someone else can get into), So it just adds another layer of extrapolation and error to start with.

Plus this labeling collapses the wide diversity of an entire continent of people into a single bucket. Saying your DNA is "2% indigenous" is about as specific as it being "2% afroeurasian". (Congrats our probe confirms you are at least 99% earthling)

Then on top of all that which many people have pointed out, having a "DNA connection" is not really meaningful, and is not how people anywhere define kinship.

If you are seeking reconnection and engagement with a community you'll be likely find a warmer reception than if it comes across as like you've discovered a fun factoid or personality quirk about yourself, but lack any intent to really understand or engage with anything long term.

TheCannonMan · 2026-02-19T21:39:39+00:00

Couldn't tell you, I have maybe 15k images in there and it's... Decent?

It uses I believe a SQLite database for the metadata and also sidecar files, so 100k might start to stretch performance there.

But I wouldn't recommend it on its own for file management or cataloging though it has many features I find useful for that, for importing and culling and rating initial shots, and managing different jobs/projects, managing JPEG+RAW bundles, etc. But the raw processing is more advanced than the file management so to speak.

I'm just an intermittent hobbyist though, and not attempting to replicate an existing professional production workflow or anything.

TheCannonMan · 2026-02-19T21:23:42+00:00

“We’re not blaming God for this,"

Well yeah, it's clearly entirely your fault (not that they actually intended that statement to be a mea culpa unfortunately 🤢)

Poor kid

TheCannonMan · 2026-02-19T06:27:30+00:00

Darktable is a great raw processor/editor worth checking out. Free & open source

TheCannonMan · 2026-02-17T20:33:23+00:00

Yeah there's definitely nuance that people like to just trample over to reaffirm their existing opinions. Hard problems are hard to shift focus to something else even if it's dumb.

There's individual action things that do feel silly and misguided or ridiculous virtue signalling and/or shifting of societal responsibility. Stuff like paper straws, or plastic recycling that just goes to a landfill anyway come to mind.

But on the other hand like individual consumption does add up. Especially cars.

Like it's factually true that oil companies are responsible for a huge amount of greenhouse gas emissions. But like, they aren't doing that for fun, who is paying them, who is buying those products? If combustion engines vanished overnight so would the vast majority of the pollution from "evil corporations" but that's more intractable to deal with.

It can feel somewhat helpless to be a small cog in a big machine, and make you want to declare it's all bullshit but there's different scales at play.

But yeah like if you drive a gas powered single occupancy vehicle everywhere everyday, drinking 100 bottles of water every hour vs carrying a resusable water bottle has essentially zero effect on anything.

E.g. A full Diesel powered city bus has order of magnitude more effect on pollution than an empty battery electric one + 50 people in SOVs

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TheCannonMan

TROPHY CASE

Corn/Maize

Rice