In the early morning hours of 29th October, wild elephants and ex-orphans began congregating outside Ithumba, as has become their habit during the dry season. Just after sunrise, Head Keeper Benjamin heard a great commotion, followed by a flurry of movement. Amidst all the elephants, something had fallen on the earth. Its arrival sent the wild bulls running for the hills, ears flapping and trumpets blaring in consternation. In fact, all the elephants seemed startled about whatever had landed in their midst. Even the older females, who are usually quite placid, made themselves scarce.
oh sure it's cool when a spider builds a huge effigy of itself out of the corpses of its victims but when I do it it's "illegal"
Nobody wants to see 132 taxidermied squirrels Voltron their way to a human body!
Actually, I take that back. I sure want to see that.
I just read about the Nac Mac Feagle doing that with my daughter the other day in a Tiffany Aching discworld book!
You should definitely get your daughter away from the Nac Mac Feagle. It is not safe for her to run around with them even if she is in a discworld book somehow.
I’m sure your daughter had fun building an effigy with them though.
oh sure it's cool when a spider builds a huge effigy of itself out of the corpses of its victims but when I do it it's "illegal"
Nobody wants to see 132 taxidermied squirrels Voltron their way to a human body!
Actually, I take that back. I sure want to see that.
I just read about the Nac Mac Feagle doing that with my daughter the other day in a Tiffany Aching discworld book!
You should definitely get your daughter away from the Nac Mac Feagle. It is not safe for her to run around with them even if she is in a discworld book somehow.
I’m sure your daughter had fun building an effigy with them though.
Nah, they teach good life lessons and if she plays her cards right she could end up as temporary Kelda
Nae Kings, nae Queens, nae Lairds.
If we all internalised that mantra we'd be in a better place.
The one about the fucking space hairdresser and the cowboy. He's got a tinfoil pal and a pedal bin
+5
3cl1ps3I will build a labyrinth to house the cheeseRegistered Userregular
+11
FishmanPut your goddamned hand in the goddamned Box of Pain.Registered Userregular
edited December 2022
So it's the 50th Anniversary (Or 50 years and 37.5 hours) of the final Apollo moon mission, Apollo 17.
Famous for taking the photo known as 'The Blue Marble', it was the longest Apollo mission, with the most/longest lunar EVAs and most time spent on/at the moon.
If you're the kind of person like me who enjoys doing such things, this is also one of the missions you can follow in real time at https://apolloinrealtime.org/17/ . You can keep it open in the corner of a monitor somewhere and just stream an entire mission to your screen for a week or so. I've had it open for a couple days, because I find it nifty and educational - my kids loved following Apollo 13 in real time during the lockdown, which was good, because we really needed a bit of an event to stir up lockdown.
Take all headlines about fusion power with a huge grain of salt. Especially from non-scientific journal sources.
They tend to be exaggerated and sensationalist and they've been having news stories breathlessly declare stuff like that for 30 years.
There is a vast gulf between "we think we saw positive net power in a test run" and "fusion reactors are a practical commercial power source," for another thing.
BahamutZERO on
+5
BroloBroseidonLord of the BroceanRegistered Userregular
can't believe I'm gonna have a fusion powered self driving flying car in 2024
Take all headlines about fusion power with a huge grain of salt. Especially from non-scientific journal sources.
They tend to be exaggerated and sensationalist and they've been having news stories breathlessly declare stuff like that for 30 years.
There is a vast gulf between "we think we saw positive net power in a test run" and "fusion reactors are a practical commercial power source," for another thing.
Understandable but the preliminary in the body itself seems promising: supposedly a net gain of .4 megajoules
Like it’s not going to be powering much anytime soon (especially when you consider it took 2.1 megajoules to initiate the reaction) but, assuming the final analysis verifies that, even at this small amount this would be the first time we got more energy out than put in period, right?
We’re still talking baby steps in the end but it’s still a big one given where we were before
For the first time ever, US scientists at the National Ignition Facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California successfully produced a nuclear fusion reaction resulting in a net energy gain, a source familiar with the project confirmed to CNN.
The US Department of Energy is expected to officially announce the breakthrough Tuesday.
The result of the experiment would be a massive step in a decadeslong quest to unleash an infinite source of clean energy that could help end dependence on fossil fuels. Researchers for decades have attempted to recreate nuclear fusion – replicating the fusion that powers the sun.
US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm will make an announcement Tuesday on a “major scientific breakthrough,” the department announced Sunday. The breakthrough was first reported by the Financial Times.
Nuclear fusion happens when two or more atoms are fused into one larger one, a process that generates a massive amount of energy as heat. Unlike nuclear fission that powers electricity all over the world, it doesn’t generate long-lived radioactive waste.
Yeah, so, with the Energy Secretary weighing in on this ...
Assuming this is validated, does something like this basically demonstrate that commercial fusion is feasible, and open up more funding/investment with the assumption that the financial risks are not as big now?
It sounds like the headlines are premature, since the scientists haven't actually finished crunching the numbers (and apparently some of the detectors were damaged by higher than expected yield). Also unclear whether the output energy is still net positive after losing some of it converting to electricity.
the scale of the experiment is pretty small i think... but any fusion breakthrough is a big deal
but for us to get anywhere close to "hey this could really do something" a fusion reactor would have to make much closer to double what it takes to produce the reaction in the first place...
this is 20% more... at a very "small" scale.... using bleeding edge equipment and bazillions of years of global scientific manpower
still a long road ahead, but the fact that it's even possible is a good sign
the scale of the experiment is pretty small i think... but any fusion breakthrough is a big deal
but for us to get anywhere close to "hey this could really do something" a fusion reactor would have to make much closer to double what it takes to produce the reaction in the first place...
this is 20% more... at a very "small" scale.... using bleeding edge equipment and bazillions of years of global scientific manpower
still a long road ahead, but the fact that it's even possible is a good sign
Yeah we need to understand it’s still baby steps, but that baby steps are still a pretty good progress from where we’ve been.
Assuming this is validated, does something like this basically demonstrate that commercial fusion is feasible, and open up more funding/investment with the assumption that the financial risks are not as big now?
It might open more funding or it might not. Not commercially feasible yet by a long shot. At this stage they are still struggling with breaking even on energy at a small scale, let alone scaling that up in size and output thousands of times, running a reactor for an extended period of time, and running one at all without expensive constant maintenance. And it needs to make enough energy to pay for all the expensive setup and maintenance costs and still have enough left over to compete with oil and solar and etc. on profitability.
It sounds like this was an experiment with the "shoot pellets into each other with particle accelerators and compress the explosion with lasers" style reactor, neat that they actually got that to work. I remember going to a lecture at a public library about that concept in the mid 00s when they were still looking for funding to try to build one.
Realistically, renewable power is already starting to eat fossil fuels' lunch, and all it needs is better (or more) batteries to just do everything, right?
Hopefully we come up with a sustainable way to make batteries, or a way to make sustainable batteries, or both, because what we've got right now has Many Issues.
im a big fan of the "giant flywheel" approach which is totally ridiculous with our current power sources but with utopian fusion would probably be fine?????
im a big fan of the "giant flywheel" approach which is totally ridiculous with our current power sources but with utopian fusion would probably be fine?????
we've decided to go with the omelas model fusion reactor
Posts
seems like a giant decoy could keep away a lot of predators?
Nobody wants to see 132 taxidermied squirrels Voltron their way to a human body!
Actually, I take that back. I sure want to see that.
https://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org/news/updates/melia-extraordinary-birth
I just read about the Nac Mac Feagle doing that with my daughter the other day in a Tiffany Aching discworld book!
The what now
You should definitely get your daughter away from the Nac Mac Feagle. It is not safe for her to run around with them even if she is in a discworld book somehow.
I’m sure your daughter had fun building an effigy with them though.
Nah, they teach good life lessons and if she plays her cards right she could end up as temporary Kelda
Nae Kings, nae Queens, nae Lairds.
If we all internalised that mantra we'd be in a better place.
Famous for taking the photo known as 'The Blue Marble', it was the longest Apollo mission, with the most/longest lunar EVAs and most time spent on/at the moon.
If you're the kind of person like me who enjoys doing such things, this is also one of the missions you can follow in real time at https://apolloinrealtime.org/17/ . You can keep it open in the corner of a monitor somewhere and just stream an entire mission to your screen for a week or so. I've had it open for a couple days, because I find it nifty and educational - my kids loved following Apollo 13 in real time during the lockdown, which was good, because we really needed a bit of an event to stir up lockdown.
Anyway, I thought I'd mention it.
Well that seems big
They tend to be exaggerated and sensationalist and they've been having news stories breathlessly declare stuff like that for 30 years.
There is a vast gulf between "we think we saw positive net power in a test run" and "fusion reactors are a practical commercial power source," for another thing.
that I can fuck
Understandable but the preliminary in the body itself seems promising: supposedly a net gain of .4 megajoules
Like it’s not going to be powering much anytime soon (especially when you consider it took 2.1 megajoules to initiate the reaction) but, assuming the final analysis verifies that, even at this small amount this would be the first time we got more energy out than put in period, right?
We’re still talking baby steps in the end but it’s still a big one given where we were before
god fusion is SO MUCH harder than fission
The all new
All-electric
Lexus Jelq
State of the art self-driving for minimal carring.
This is pretty damn cool!
https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/politics/nuclear-fusion-energy-us-scientists-climate/index.html
Yeah, so, with the Energy Secretary weighing in on this ...
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
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Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
but for us to get anywhere close to "hey this could really do something" a fusion reactor would have to make much closer to double what it takes to produce the reaction in the first place...
this is 20% more... at a very "small" scale.... using bleeding edge equipment and bazillions of years of global scientific manpower
still a long road ahead, but the fact that it's even possible is a good sign
Yeah we need to understand it’s still baby steps, but that baby steps are still a pretty good progress from where we’ve been.
It might open more funding or it might not. Not commercially feasible yet by a long shot. At this stage they are still struggling with breaking even on energy at a small scale, let alone scaling that up in size and output thousands of times, running a reactor for an extended period of time, and running one at all without expensive constant maintenance. And it needs to make enough energy to pay for all the expensive setup and maintenance costs and still have enough left over to compete with oil and solar and etc. on profitability.
It sounds like this was an experiment with the "shoot pellets into each other with particle accelerators and compress the explosion with lasers" style reactor, neat that they actually got that to work. I remember going to a lecture at a public library about that concept in the mid 00s when they were still looking for funding to try to build one.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
Switch: SW-5185-4991-5118
PSN: AbEntropy
we've decided to go with the omelas model fusion reactor
The proactors keep leaving for Hollywood
I know it'd be good but I'm not sure I'm comfortable with saying it'd be the bomb, you know?