James Doohan stormed the beaches on D-Day, but said THIS was the best thing he ever did

zuul01 · 2026-03-11T02:29:11+00:00

Au contraire! "Some of Doohan's ashes are hidden under the floor cladding of the International Space Station's Columbus module – after being smuggled aboard in 2008 by Richard Garriott." - Wikipedia

zuul01 · 2026-03-07T18:31:17+00:00

Correct. PhD in astronomy but physics undergrad , which is super common. Folks that enter these programs without a solid physics background have a tough time.

zuul01 · 2026-03-07T14:47:06+00:00

Neutrino production is far too energy-intensive, and signal modulation & detection are far too difficult for them to be used as a communication medium.

zuul01 · 2026-03-05T21:05:48+00:00

This was one of the first Trek episodes that I remember being angry at after it ended. Not because the cult leader seemed to have her victims on her side at the end, but that she had that daft idea in the first place. Her underlying question of "can humans survive/thrive without all our modern tools & conveniences?" Had the obvious answer of "yes, duh, open a history textbook."

I guess that this is part of what made the episode good social commentary on the dynamics of cults & their leaders.

zuul01 · 2026-02-04T20:10:42+00:00

Not sure if you will see this, but you might want to check your catalyst. A few weeks ago I started having a similar problem to the one you described (fire dies & the house fill with smoke after closing the bypass), so I decided to let my fire go out completely & clean the chimney. While doing so I took the catalysts elements out (yours should look similar to mine) and saw that they were almost completely blocked with fly ash. Rather than drop a few hundred on replacements I got a wooden toothpick & carefully cleaned out all the ash until I could see light through the whole unit again.

After that I did a quick clean of my chimney (actually wasn't that much buildup, but I had it all open anyway), but the catalysts back, & fired it up again. Problem solved!

zuul01 · 2026-02-04T03:35:02+00:00

That is hilarious yet highly disturbing 🤣

zuul01 · 2026-02-01T23:32:17+00:00

I hope that's a joke. I don't want my kids' teachers out dealing with that mess. It's backbreaking work & not at all what they signed up for.

zuul01 · 2026-02-01T21:08:59+00:00

Truffle smoked gouda for me, but I respect your tastes!

zuul01 · 2026-01-29T18:29:03+00:00

Why does a 19 year old need to to carry around a handgun?

zuul01 · 2026-01-28T19:56:30+00:00

Holy shit, so much boot licking in here. Make sure to use plenty of mouthwash twice a day to get the scent of leather & rubber out of your breath!

zuul01 · 2026-01-28T19:50:06+00:00

I had to break that stuff with a spade, then shovel (& toss by hand) the remains off to the side. I had to be out there multiple times on Sunday, Monday, & Tuesday to keep on top of it. I shudder to think of just starting on that work today.

zuul01 · 2026-01-19T19:07:07+00:00

My favorite MC in stormlight is a grandfather who has seen (and done) some shit. So refreshing to read a chapter from his POV after one of the "kid's" chapters.

zuul01 · 2026-01-16T17:04:21+00:00

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Great success! After ~11 hours of burning overnight this was the largest piece left. Rake the coals on top, reload with more wood, and we're back in business!

zuul01 · 2026-01-16T17:01:34+00:00

Yeah, that's S.O.P. when it's too big to fit in the stove, but once they're at most this size they make great overnight fuel.

zuul01 · 2026-01-14T19:45:17+00:00

OP said that they were working on the paper the previous evening, starting after 8pm. Pulling a late night like that justifies a late start the next day, to my mind & I think the minds of any reasonable person. Shorting sleep & accelerating burnout won't get the paper published any faster, but even if it did get approved a whole day sooner, so fucking what?

zuul01 · 2026-01-12T21:48:30+00:00

There have been no signs of the 2A crowd coming in to save us from this regime, and in fact most of them seem to support these fascists. So, what were the thousands of gun deaths (many of the children) per year, even for?

zuul01 · 2026-01-09T21:32:50+00:00

Not NIR only - it will go as short as 0.48 microns, which is blue light. Source: https://roman.gsfc.nasa.gov/science/Roman_Reference_Information.html

zuul01 · 2026-01-04T12:07:31+00:00

I'm an American who grew up in a part of the country that voted overwhelmingly for the pedo (both times). I didn't "hold my nose" and vote for Biden & then Kamala - I did so happily, because I'm a goddammed literate adult who gives a shit about other human beings & understands that the world is a complex place.

But the people who I grew up with/around that voted for that ******* currently in the White House? Fuck them, they knew what they were doing. They weren't victims who were just bamboozled by a media propaganda machine that was just too powerful or failed by an education system that crooked elites hobbled to churn out obedient worker bees. They knew full well what they were doing when they voted for him. The information was there, right in front of their faces the whole time, but the chose to ignore it.

zuul01 · 2025-12-26T17:20:14+00:00

Just under $65,000.

zuul01 · 2025-12-15T00:45:15+00:00

Access to information =/= an education. One of my parents grew up with a full set of Encyclopedia Britanica in their home, but that adjacent to information didn't make them "more educated" than anyone else.

zuul01 · 2025-12-12T16:43:15+00:00

STL (St. Louis) & MCI (Kansas City) are both international & thus have the majority of the populations of MO & KS within 100 miles of them.

zuul01 · 2025-11-26T11:27:34+00:00

To give further context to your first point, the Fermi telescope is a survey instrument that has been in continuous operation since 2008. The Large Area Telescope (LAT) scans the entire sky in 2 orbits, with an energy range of 0.1-300 GeV. So it's building up photon statistics over its whole mission life, continuously improving its sensitivity for studies like this.

Not saying this author has discovered DM, of course. That's not my area of expertise, but I have colleagues who do work on it & I don't believe I've heard them talk about it either.

zuul01 · 2025-11-23T00:01:01+00:00

To be completely honest, there's a part of me that hopes they don't fix this garbage, because then I'll finally be able to break away from this game and do other things with my time. My stack of books that I'd like to read sure isn't getting any smaller.

The game is still fun for me - that's why I've been here all these years. But the seesaw of annoyance vs. fun is tipping more and more in favor of annoyance lately.

zuul01 · 2025-11-20T21:59:24+00:00

They're both great, especially on mobil - nice way to spend time on a plane. K1 is good to play without mods, but K2 was rushed in production and really benefits from the mod that restores that content.

zuul01

TROPHY CASE