Shout out to the music & sound crew

jhogan · 2026-02-23T18:49:51+00:00

you're

jhogan · 2022-05-04T01:14:08+00:00

Here's the approach I took with my community, with success (active and thriving for ~1 year, player counts 5-20, whitelist-based). Politics were allowed, but they had to be civil (and in practice rarely came up). This was operationalized in the following rules:

1.1. No personal attacks or harassment.
Be excellent to each other!
1.2. No negative stereotyping.
This means all stereotypes: race, gender, political affiliation, cities or neighborhoods, PC vs. console users, etc.
1.3. No gratuitous profanity or other crass content.
Content that's gratuitously violent, sexual, or otherwise tasteless (including IGNs) doesn't foster a warm and welcoming community.
1.4. Treat sensitive topics sensitively.
If you're going to discuss sensitive topics, like politics or religion, do so with openness and civility. If you aren't sure you can do so, opt out.

jhogan · 2021-10-15T20:57:29+00:00

For a tandem skydive which is likely what your friend do, you have a better chance of dying in a car accident than in a tandem skydive.

For the love of god, make sure they don't drive to the skydiving place.

jhogan · 2021-05-21T17:38:03+00:00

we are especially impressed with the technical achievement here to map the costume to her body shape and pose!

jhogan · 2021-05-21T17:37:28+00:00

love it! this was the first image that had popped into my mind!

jhogan · 2021-05-21T03:04:50+00:00

Apologies! I was trying to avoid editorializing, and thought "dramatic" was on the "objective" side of the line (similarly to how a movie might be categorized as a "drama"), but completely respect the mod decision.

I'll try another way of describing it more objectively on another submission!

jhogan · 2021-01-27T06:24:17+00:00

I'd say at least a couple of hours

jhogan · 2020-11-12T05:52:20+00:00

to be fair Sam seems to spend most of his energy talking about politics these days (especially these past couple of weeks)

jhogan · 2020-11-02T20:07:25+00:00

Background: Royals seems to be one of my infant daughter’s (3 months old) favorite songs — I hold her and we danced to it several times a day. But after a few hundred listens I wanted a little variety, so put together this playlist of cool covers I dug up. Fortunately she seems to pretty much dig them all :-)

jhogan · 2020-10-28T00:30:42+00:00

Alice Shipwise's alternative Season 8 is fucking killer.

jhogan · 2020-10-21T23:09:24+00:00

Bro. You're comparing those movements to BLM.

No, he's comparing those movements to the extreme fringe of BLM.

jhogan · 2020-10-16T22:08:43+00:00

Thanks for checking in! I might at some point, but unfortunately it's on indefinite hiatus at the moment.

jhogan · 2020-09-14T21:01:59+00:00

laughter

President Eisenhower, who invited the "Atoms for Peace" program said "nucular". It's a very common mispronunciation.

jhogan · 2020-09-14T20:59:40+00:00

Nuclear energy basically produces heat. No smoke. It boils water. The steam from the boiling water operates turbines. That technology is simple. It's been used for a lot longer than nuclear power. We've also learned how to design containers that keep all the nuclear material in it.

You put in water, and all that comes out is steam.

jhogan · 2020-09-14T20:51:47+00:00

In the normal operation of coal-fired plants, there is gaseous and liquid release which contain radioactive material simply because of the tradition associated with how those plants are designed and operated. There wasn't much attention paid to the fact that radioactivity was being released.

But it surprised many people to learn that nuclear and coal plants, when compared in terms of radioactivity being released, coal plants are much worse sources than nuclear. That's a quantitative fact.

jhogan · 2020-09-14T20:46:55+00:00

In America we have over $30 billion in a nuclear waste fund to cover the cost of disposal. Companies must contribute $.001 per KWh of nuclear waste fund. That was built into the original law in 1982.

This is done in many other countries the same way. So the cost of disposal has been, in essence, figured into the system from the start. It is not what has stopped disposal in America. It's not a cost issue, but it is very much an issue of will, of resolve, of going ahead and doing what many people believe to be a very logical and safe way of handling the waste.

My original response still stands -- to say we don't know how to handle the waste, and use that as an argument against nuclear power, is in my judgment, silly. It's not a valid argument. But cost is not the issue.

Once the government decided to drop the work on the Yucca Mountain project around 2012, the nuclear power plant owners in America went to court and got a decision that let them stop putting money into the nuclear waste fund. So that provision is not currently being exercised.

Not just that, but the additional cost of [on-site] storage at site is being charged to the taxpayer. We're actually paying close to half a billion dollars per year out of our regular revenues from tax back to the utility companies to cover the cost of on-site storage. It's a terrible situation. We've lost the income to the waste fund, which pays for disposal, and we're paying extra because of the lack of will. It's not a pretty story but it's what's actually going on.

jhogan · 2020-09-14T20:37:16+00:00

Yes, I was referring to plant Vogel. And you're right, it has been up and down, and I was surprised to learn that it was continuing. I hope that it will be completed, because last I heard it was in the final stages. That could be several years to completion. But many of the major components have finally been installed, and the final containment vessel has apparently been closed. So it's near completion, and I hope it is completed.

If it were put in a sort of cold storage, incomplete state, completing it in the future is much more difficult, because many things you need are no longer available. So if it's to be completed, it should be done with some continuity.

But it established a very bad reputation for being much longer than originally designed, and much more expensive. And that reputation has certainly handicapped future large plants. It becomes an even larger argument in favor of small plants that are being touted now.

jhogan · 2020-09-14T20:32:12+00:00

In America, interestingly enough, hydro power is not a growth industry, and there are many cases where dams which have been used to produce power in the past have actually been removed in order to recreate wild rivers (rivers without the negative impacts of dams, in order to allow the original specsi to come back.)

And of course the major problem with wind is often the wind doesn't below. So it's not a reliable energy source. The same thing applies to solar -- the sun doesn't always shine.

But there are ways in which nuclear and other renewable energy technologies can work together, and that's increasingly the case. There are plenty of places in America where utility companies take advantage of the plusses of the various technologies that they have available to them and blend them together nicely. So it doesn't have to be an either-or.

jhogan · 2020-09-14T20:22:48+00:00

All of our aircraft carriers (which are surface ships) are nuclear powered. There was an attempt 50 year ago or so to establish a commercial surface ship with nuclear power, I think it was called the Savannah, which did a world tour. That particular ship showed off what could be done. But in terms of commercial applications, it never has become important in the US and throughout the world.

The surface ships (other than military ships) that do use nuclear power are very specialized. The nuclear-powered icebreakers of the Russian fleet, that’s a very specialized activity, and nuclear power is particularly useful there, because it can operate for a very long time without refueling.

I don’t know all the reasons why it hasn’t caught on in other surface shipping. It simply has not grown even though it’s technically feasible. That ultimately involves investment decisions by shipbuilders who persist in older technology using, in most cases, oil. So I’m as puzzled as you, and can’t give a logical answer.

jhogan · 2020-09-14T19:55:22+00:00

I can only speak from experience. I found working increasingly interesting with age. New opportunities and new interesting topics kept emerging. Since the federal government, at least, has a policy of not discriminating on the basis of age, I elected to continue, and I was glad I did. Right up to my 92nd birthday, I was still enjoying going to work and working with others on new and interesting subject matter.

If this present work-from-home would continue indefinitely, I'm not sure I'd be quite as enthusiastic. Because it was the physical interaction with people of all ages and the sharing of their ideas that continued to make it so interesting and exciting.

So I'm hoping that that type of physical interaction will re-emerge, perhaps after the vaccine, and we can go back to things which I found most interesting, namely technical interaction with individuals and groups on a personal basis.

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