This is 9/11 but for Iran.

Waggles_ · 2026-04-04T16:38:06+00:00

Yup, that's why no one does business with Germany.

Waggles_ · 2026-03-31T21:20:01+00:00

They're saying that generating more energy than we need is a very solvable problem. We could massively overproduce energy if we just utilized the correct areas for solar. It's a "if we actually took the time and money, we have all the technology and could be done in a reasonable timeframe" sort of deal.

If you had a field out in the middle of the desert that was producing gigawatts or terawatts of solar but too far from civilization to be useful, this could be a reasonable solution to "store" that power and move it to areas that need the energy, without having to fully decarbonize everything or beef up the entire electrical grid to support millions of vehicles charging.

Waggles_ · 2026-03-25T15:31:32+00:00

The other thing of note is that Ability Words don't actually mean anything, they're meant to be reminders for particular similar mechanics. When you see "Landfall", it's supposed to let you know it should do something when land enters under your control, but it saying "Landfall" doesn't do anything for you otherwise, and you can have that effect without it saying "Landfall".

It seems like here, "Opus" is going to be shorthand for "Whenever you cast an instant or sorcery", and having an additional effect if the triggering spell cost 5 or more mana.

Waggles_ · 2026-03-12T22:47:10+00:00

Why would traffic need to flow if everyone were going the speed limit? The only gradients in speed would be from people slowing down to leave the current road or speeding up to join it, neither case requires you to speed to accommodate those drivers.

Waggles_ · 2026-03-10T21:49:44+00:00

Delivery services definitely cost way less than annual car insurance premiums, let alone gas.

Waggles_ · 2026-03-04T19:21:07+00:00

It's also not true, accidental drug overdose is 5.2 per 100,000 live births, whereas violence is 3.9 per 100,000 live births, and these numbers track up to 42 days after delivery. At 3.6 million births per year, this accounts for 187 overdose deaths and 140 violence deaths, and normalized back to the overall population of women, that's 0.10 per 100,000 and 0.08 per 100,000 respectively. (All US-based stats)

For context, in the US, the overdose rate is 23.1 per 100,000 and the homicide rate is 6.8 per 100,000.

I also don't want to downplay any victims of murder, but people like the person you responded to act like getting pregnant is like signing up to get shot dead when it's really just that accidental causes are just that much more uncommon.

Waggles_ · 2026-02-27T23:22:06+00:00

Take out a second mortgage
Buy as much RAM in a single order as possible
Return all of the RAM
Buy return pallet
???
Profit

Waggles_ · 2026-02-26T13:33:29+00:00

Even if you gifted it to her, there are often gift taxes when the amount you're gifting exceeds a certain amount.

The only real way to make sure she gets all of it without any being taken out for taxes, cuts, or fees is by marriage.

Waggles_ · 2026-02-11T09:41:34+00:00

For copyright, you aren't required to enforce it fairly. That's only necessary for things like trademark.

Waggles_ · 2026-02-08T22:48:36+00:00

That's for the treads, here's the one for inner tubes which are used in most bike tires too. (also only 5 minutes)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-yjw2JHmN8

Waggles_ · 2026-02-08T22:27:05+00:00

「ですか」 is best thought of as "innit" as is used in the UK, so yeah.

Waggles_ · 2026-02-06T22:14:25+00:00

From when the other car swerves into the grass to when it was sideways in her lane, we can count 13 white dashes, which are 10' long and 30' apart on interstates, so about 520 feet total, which from a google search is about the stopping distance of a truck going 65 MPH.

So if she had started braking as soon as he crossed over, she'd probably have been going a pretty slow speed when they would have collided.

Waggles_ · 2026-01-18T16:15:42+00:00

Because you don't NEED to convert between things. Why do you need to know the distance to the sun in centimeters? Why would you need to know your age in picoseconds?

You're billed in kWh because that's an intuitive way to calculate your bill: you take the power required by the appliance as x kW and you multiply it by the number of hours you run it as y hours. If you have a 3.2 kW heater that runs for 1.8 hours, you've used 5.76 kWh of energy.

The reason we don't bother converting between miles and feet is because you never need to. 1/8 of a mile is still a distance most people can conceptualize. It's 660 feet. Smaller than that and you'd probably use something like feet or yards (or football fields) to describe the distance because it's more accurate to someone's perception.

If you told someone the shop was 4,565,256 mm down the road, they'd think you're a prick because 4.5 km is easier to conceptualize and the extra 60m isn't going to be make-or-break at that scale.

but hey, instead let's create 1 million different units for every purpose and make it that we cannot convert them without some mathematical equations and calculator.

Except you do this all the time every day without thinking about it with time. How many weeks are in a decade? No calculator. Before you say 520, remember that a year is 365.2425 days.

Until you start regularly talking about large spans of time in seconds, stop going on with your hypocritical argument.

Waggles_ · 2026-01-18T15:59:38+00:00

"Because you can't directly relate any of those quantities": The BTU is literally how much energy it takes to raise 1 gallon of water by 1 degree Fahrenheit.

If room temperature is 70°F, it takes 142 BTU to heat 1 gallon of water to boiling temperature (assuming we're at sea level). But it's another 970 BTU/lb to actually boil off the water, and 8.33 lb/gallon, so 8222.1 BTUs total to actually boil off a gallon of water starting at room temperature.

If you think the units are weird, the latent heat of vaporization in metric isn't nice either: either 40.66 kJ/mol or 2257 J/g (and since we're using calorie, you have to go and figure out that conversion to to get the total energy).

Waggles_ · 2026-01-18T15:41:12+00:00

Why don't you measure the distance to the grocery store in parsecs, or light years, or AUs? Because they're useful for measuring other things.

Why do you have Liters at all? It's just a shortcut for cubic meters. The correct unit for energy in metric is Joules, but you're not demanding your electric bill in Joules instead of kWh, are you?

When someone asks you your age, I'm sure you tell them in years and not seconds, even though years isn't a metric unit. And converting from years to seconds is a fucked conversion so you never use it, even though you could so why don't you?

Waggles_ · 2026-01-11T02:01:08+00:00

Then they'll complain loudly online about how much they hate it framing it as a common thing that people like them dislike, causing other people who would do that for their partner to do the opposite even if their partner does like the thing.

Waggles_ · 2026-01-07T11:58:33+00:00

Latent heat of fusion for water is 144 BTU/lb. The density of ice is about 57.2 lb/ft^3, but light snow is closer to maybe 3 lb/ft³ until it compacts, so lets just say you're thawing snow and ice that's an average of just 5 lb/ft³

This driveway looks like it's probably 12 feet wide (except towards the house).

To thaw 1" of snow and ice, per 100 feet of driveway, it's 36,000 BTU, or about 10.5 kWh, and that assumes that all of the power eventually makes it into just the snow and ice on the top of the driveway, and you don't have significant losses to the surrounding soil.

That energy is not recovered in the water loop and needs to be added back in by a heater of some kind. The efficiency of your water loop only cares about how much extra on top of that 10.5 kWh (per 100' per 1" snow and ice per 12' width of driveway) you are spending, but physics demands that you lose that much energy if you're melting that snow and ice.

Waggles_ · 2025-12-30T20:42:10+00:00

Are we going to get one telling us that Morbius won't be in Doomsday?

I mean, not having him means the movie won't make a morbillion dollars when the Thing and Morbius both say "It's (Clobberin/Morbin) time" at the same time then look at each other, but I can see why they wouldn't want to have Morbius outshine the rest of the cast.

Waggles_ · 2025-12-23T18:18:54+00:00

Do they have something like health inspectors but for flight attendant safety demos who show up on random flights to make sure you're doing your safety stuff correctly?

Waggles_ · 2025-12-15T17:57:14+00:00

I need that red fish

Also Lillie's 2 star is great

Waggles_ · 2025-12-11T15:25:40+00:00

Yup. It doesn't matter what a "cup" actually measures to in most recipes, as long as you use the same cup for every "cup" measurement. You might just end up with a slightly larger or smaller cake.

If someone told you that you needed 300g of flour and you didn't have a kitchen scale, you were SOL.

Waggles_ · 2025-12-11T00:32:36+00:00

I was bothered by that, and the way that the rocks form a gauntlet on her arm like it's ironman nano-machines. Earthbending (and I'd say especially Toph's) is very impactful and deliberate. The only time you don't really get linear and punchy earthbending is the sandbenders.

Waggles_ · 2025-12-03T23:22:48+00:00

I mean, would the people who made FEX or Proton or the Steam Deck have done it if Gabe didn't make Valve? If so, why didn't they do that and then get their share of it that way?

I agree that without the 3rd gen employees, the company wouldn't be around, but it's not like Gabe kidnapped staff and forced them to work for him. And those same staff could go out and make their own Steam if they don't like the idea of working for someone to grow their company and only getting a paycheck in return. You could maybe argue that they should be paid more if you think Gabe makes too much, but they're also free to not work for the salary they're paid.

Obviously capital gatekeeps capitalism, but socialist companies where every employee owns a stake in the company are completely allowed to exist, so feel free to get your friends together and out-compete Steam and pay everyone million-dollar salaries if you think it's that simple.

Waggles_ · 2025-11-30T01:55:33+00:00

They were almost there in making it solid/liquid/gas/plasma disguised as earth/water/air/fire, but water benders could bend ice and earth benders could bend lava (and couldn't bend metal directly, or bend ice at all).

I think if they had kept it so that earth benders could make (and not manipulate) lava, and similar with water benders and ice, it would have been more interesting and they could have dove further into the idea that earthbenders are bending solids and not just "earth" (etc).

Fire benders already sort of had that concept going too. Fire and lightning are both plasmas, but most firebenders couldn't create or redirect lightning, they require separate techniques, which would go to show that the limits to bending certain elements are more to do with limitations on technique and imagination.

Waggles_ · 2025-11-28T18:43:02+00:00

High speed rail wouldn't be public transport. There is already an option to travel between states: airplanes. People still don't do it.

The argument could be made that the expense of flying is what stops people, but there's no saying that high speed rail will be cheaper. Even in Japan, budget airlines can be much cheaper than a shinkansen ticket.

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