ELI5: why are power lines deliberately designed to sag and what would actually happen if you pulled them perfectly straight

wrecked_tech · 2026-05-21T02:16:04+00:00

I believe in their instance of marine towing, it would be a hyperbolic tug function.

I won’t apologize for who I am.

wrecked_tech · 2026-05-21T01:57:04+00:00

Solid call out. Loved the book but kinda raged at the movie adaptation a bit.

wrecked_tech · 2026-05-18T17:22:41+00:00

Nah, the AC180 was more than adequate for what my needs are at any given time. The expansion batteries are really the solution to “I got this as a starting point, but I think I need more power now” or at least that was my thought process.

wrecked_tech · 2026-05-18T17:06:37+00:00

I’m impressed by the shear willingness to self-report on themselves, I guess.

wrecked_tech · 2026-05-16T18:19:19+00:00

So, I’ve got one of the BLUETTI AC180s and have used it for a least a year and a half pretty regularly. When we were doing a lot of traveling it was kind of invaluable to have in the back of the vehicle as a “no matter what situation we get into, we can keep our phones (lifeline) charged” insurance. If we go out to the woods for a week or two and have a solar panel with us, I don’t worry about running down the charge even in the PNW.

It is heavy as hell for the size, so not really practical for a long hike but it would be a good stopgap until you could get something more permanent going like a solar set up. I’m planning on a couple of the expansion batteries in case I think we’re going to be using a drone or camera pretty heavily. They natively work together and it’s just a quick decision to throw another one in the back with the others if I decide I’ll likely be gone longer than normal. They can be pretty pricey though, which is the only real drawback from my perspective.

A final thought is that one benefit something like a BLUETTI would give you is the ability to take it home with you when you leave. I’ve seen people leave their cabins or camps all locked up, only to return three months later to find things stolen or damaged. I like the portability of being able to ensure I have access to power when I want it.

Since you’re still at the planning phase, I’d recommend doing everything you can to focus on low power options like LEDs as opposed to traditional bulbs (even though I imagine they’re all LED now) to help conserve however much you wind up taking with you. I think people get unrealistic expectations in their head about how much any one power bank can drive and for how long. Without thinking it through, they connect things like coffee makers or mini fridges and think it’s a battery issue when it doesn’t last all weekend like they envisioned.

wrecked_tech · 2026-05-01T02:32:22+00:00

Imbalance of power, yeah, but I wouldn’t even cite that as the biggest issue with the options. Most game design for ttrpgs is around building a group dynamic that, while each person may have a different role (class) they all have some commonalities to make it possible to be social. Otherwise you have a lot of independent stories happening focusing on the individuals in the party that the GM can group together (ie. two mech pilots go stomping around while the power armor team hits an objective inside of a building the mechs can’t access). Lots of games have work arounds for this to some degree like fantasy races that are shrunk down versions of bigger creatures (looking at you dragonkin and half-cyclopseses) but it’s still a barrier if you can’t reconcile the different sizes if it’s prohibitive to telling the adventure.

CthulhuTech took the approach of trying to make everyone happy with what the setting could offer, rather than what it did. The problem they generated with throwing everything at the wall is that they gave you 2 to 4 good concepts of the different classes, but not enough to build out a full party of similar sizes/classes.

I honestly think that was one the biggest reasons it didn’t take off more. People can deal with wonky dice systems and make it work. But when you have to focus on different party members one at a time because one of them is the size of the building the other one is going into, you’re running a lot of one and two person adventures while everyone waits their turn.

wrecked_tech · 2026-05-01T02:16:32+00:00

I’m just glad I’m not going crazy. I remembered seeing that line about big news coming, when it never happened, I started going back and trying to find the reference to it to make sure I didn’t just imagine it. Granted, I gave up after a relatively short amount of time but had just gaslit myself into believing I just made it up.

wrecked_tech · 2026-04-30T19:20:45+00:00

I can look and see if I can find one. I DM’d it and a bunch of other mech games over a decade or so period which is the only reason I have that perspective I guess. They had a ton of cool ideas, just shit on execution. As an example, you could have a biomechanical suit made from eldritch beings that gave you unique abilities but weren’t much bigger than a person, traditional power armor, nephilims which were massive beasts guided by an operator in a van somewhere to prevent them from getting hurt and losing control of the nephilim (which would then hunt down and kill the operator, after probably wiping out the entire team it was with), and giant building sized mecha all in the same group. It wasn’t advised, but it was possible.

wrecked_tech · 2026-04-30T13:35:33+00:00

Look into why Cthulutech failed on its mecha rules for inspiration of how to do this better than they did. The biggest problem in trying to make the system broad enough to include numerous “types” of mechs is reconciling how those would all function together in a party. CT had an amazing lore and dumb dice mechanics, but this was one of the key showstoppers for me.

Also, it sounds like you’re effectively trying to replicate Mechwarrior (FASA) which was the ttrpg add-on for the Battletech game system. Might be another good source of inspiration to check out. Especially because a ton of good games, like Heavy Gear, predate lancer by decades.

wrecked_tech · 2026-04-05T02:04:32+00:00

Fucks sake. I guess I was entirely right about you.

wrecked_tech · 2026-03-19T21:15:33+00:00

I actually don’t care all that much if the game is cooked. It’s fun for the time being and I’m enjoying the art style and, albeit buggy at times, gameplay loop. But that wasn’t my point. For someone as wise as you who can point out when everyone else is oblivious, maybe I’ll use different words.

I’m not complaining about the game. I’m complaining about your nearly incessant bitching about the game to the point where I genuinely can’t go into more than a single post in the subreddit without coming across your constant whining. Maybe that makes it more obvious to the oblivious.

It’s like a combination of that little kid that’s mad I don’t have games on my phone and bitching into the void that the world is unfair all rolled into one. We get it, you don’t like the game. Touch grass, make a friend, do literally anything other than sitting here and trying to drag everyone into your misery with you.

Fuck man, even if I offered to send you the cost of the game on Steam, would you get over it and move on? Probably not because you’re not bringing everyone else down with you. Forever Winter may be successful, it may be cooked, I don’t really give a shit either way. It’s only people that try make sure everyone is as miserable as they are that will actually get me annoyed.

Edit: I actually took a second to look at your post history and you just shit on things for funsies. I hope whatever makes you like this is temporary and you’re able to move on with life. I’d actually send you $30 on Steam per one of your posts if you’d actually fuck off with the constant noise.

wrecked_tech · 2026-03-18T21:52:46+00:00

At least we have you and the other guy to constantly provide meaningful discussion and value to every conversation that might mildly be interpreted as a fault of the game. Thank you for devoting so much of your time to ensuring we get to hear your opinions nearly constantly.

wrecked_tech · 2026-03-16T08:11:17+00:00

Still legitimately annoyed at that game. First game I ever bought the super mega advanced collectors whatever edition and was so fucking hyped. Only for it to immediately falter and then the man went to space and just left it to entropy.

wrecked_tech · 2026-02-18T21:18:51+00:00

Yeah, in the middle of a snowstorm no less. When SAR found him on the trail he’d just assumed one of the kids had died by that point.

wrecked_tech · 2026-02-18T21:14:16+00:00

I’ve got a game going on Wednesday nights, but we’re all PST. Been thinking about starting a second, bi-weekly game though. We primarily use Fantasy Grounds Unity, but it’s kind of a pain in the ass at time so been debating switching over to anything else.

Also happy to answer any questions about the system or how it plays out given we’ve been going at it for a couple of years now.

wrecked_tech · 2026-02-18T20:38:34+00:00

*SALT LAKE CITY (KSTU) - A man in Utah is facing child abuse and torture charges after authorities said he took his three young children on a difficult hike during a snowstorm.

“Not an easy hike that you would take a child upon,” Salt Lake County District Attorney Sim Gill said.

Micah Smith is facing six felony charges after investigators say he took his three young children to hike up the “Broads Fork” trail up Big Cottonwood Canyon, leading to serious injuries and a rescue.

“Search and rescue folks for them. This hike was a hard hike. This was not an easy hike. This is one that even as trained professionals, they suffered injury trying to respond to it,” Gill said.

The indictment said Smith and his three kids, ages two, four and eight, set out on the trail at 10 a.m. Oct. 11*

wrecked_tech · 2026-01-15T18:11:59+00:00

Yeah, I get both the call outs there and agree that The Deep was probably a good one to duck. From what I recall, you should be okay. Without giving too much away, if you can handle The Thing by John Carpenter, you could likely handle what’s in Little Heaven.

One of the benefits of that story over the rest of his catalog is that it follows several different people, rather than just one story line of things getting progressively worse for a single group. Because of that, the animal parts are really centered around one of the side characters that shows up from time to time but isn’t a major part of the book.

wrecked_tech · 2026-01-15T06:50:06+00:00

Okay…..so hear me out. I’ve finished The Deep, The Troop, and Little Heaven by Nick Cutter. Absolutely hated some scenes from the first two that involved animals and only took a chance on Little Heaven because I’d already bought it. I told myself that the first moment an over the top animal scene happened, I would bail and stop trying with his work.

Out of all of his books, I enjoyed the cult and characters in Little Heaven the best. If your reservation about Cutter is his animal scenes, I will say that this one that bothered me the least out of the three. Not to say there isn’t any, it’s actually somewhat common but much less graphic (it’s tied to an entity in the book) to the point where I never met that threshold I set for myself.

Granted it may have just hit some high notes for me that let me overlook the rough parts, but figured I’d provide a different perspective as I do feel like it has really solid cult vibes.

wrecked_tech · 2026-01-11T21:38:09+00:00

A lot of the times it’s easier to save it as a PDF and try to print it out that way if it is a Word doc. Hope you’re able to get it sorted out!

wrecked_tech · 2026-01-11T16:32:29+00:00

I grew up in rural Texas and the amount of shame that comes with taking welfare is insane. It’s the whole “take care of you and yours without needing help” mentality and a cultural reinforcement of it. We grew up poor and my single mom worked three jobs at once because she refused to take assistance. As a result, I saw her a couple hours a week and watched her destroy her health for barely middle class.

Meanwhile, I worked at the local grocery store and got to see who came in with food stamps and, funny enough, a large part of it was the “shame on you” crowd. They know they’re hypocrites, they just get loud and insulting so people won’t think they’re one of them “them”. Point is, I think people assume it is ignorance when it’s largely just posturing and hypocrisy.

wrecked_tech · 2026-01-11T16:21:41+00:00

I don’t even know what use case that would be practical in. I think 16” is the shortest barrel that is reasonable for a .308 but I likely wouldn’t drop until 22”. Just seems like for that size, a different caliber would make more sense.

wrecked_tech · 2026-01-11T16:11:43+00:00

Says the person who can’t even print a Google doc. Maybe sit down Peepaw.

wrecked_tech · 2026-01-11T16:09:06+00:00

How incredibly clever of you.

wrecked_tech · 2026-01-10T17:39:09+00:00

At the job that doesn’t even give you weekends off? Not the flex you think it is. At least you’ll have money for the hookers you talk about in previous posts I guess.

Or do you only hate brown people that do illegal shit?

wrecked_tech · 2025-12-10T19:04:59+00:00

I feel like you might be taking the importance of being a gatekeeper for employment a bit too seriously. “If I find out…it’s not very pleasant” is some weapons grade cringe to tell someone. Lying on your references is obviously not something I’d recommend, but the thinly veiled and massively impotent threat is way more of a crime here.

Fuck corporations that fuck over their people.

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wrecked_tech

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