Hi all. Hubski newb-ish. Long-time lurker with a recent lapse during school. But I'm aware of the etiquette and most of the personalities here. Pubski's new to me though - share updates like bar talk? My wife and I started our first full-time jobs this year. We got married this year too. Moved to a new city this year. Graduated this year. Wrote our theses in Spring this year. "This year" feels like ages ago. Anyone else feel like that? I think a lot of people struggle during their first year of marriage. I've seen a lot of our couple friends get into bad situations with each other immediately after getting married. If that's true, it's not hit us yet. Despite a lot of firsts, a lot of new experiences, a lot of uncertainty, we're solid. I'm very thankful for this woman. We're headed to London for Christmas (that's another first for me, traveling outside the country). Let's hope the first-year blues don't settle in then! We're going drinking this weekend on that grown-up, salaried cash before we spend next week apart while she's at a conference. Pubski's got me anticipating that a bit early. I ought to get the wife on here too - her job's got a beer tap in the break room (juicy startup bennies). Cheers, all.
Welcome to our little sanctuary! Sounds like this year has been one for the record books, my friend!! As life settles down to a normal pace and pattern over the coming year, you two will need to make conscious decisions and have clear conversations. There has been a whole lot of "noise" in your life this year, and that can drown out the little squeaks and klunks from places where the machinery of life operates. As things quiet down, these little squeaks and klunks will need to be addressed. Best you do that as a team, approaching these maintenance issues together, rather than saying things like, "Geez. I never noticed how loud you chew. That's really annoying." :-) Enjoy London! Oh... and I was just there. If you have the chance, take a tour of Shakespeare's Globe Theater. Get Millie as your tour guide, if you can. It is a fascinating place, and she is a bring and shining spark, who absolutely adores the place, the history, and the theater in general. Her enthusiasm for the place is infectious.
We've been shamelessly soliciting to-do items from everyone - it's why I mentioned it above :) I'm pretty sure we're getting a London Pass (has anybody heard of this before?), and it conveniently includes a free tour! Well met, goobster.
Welcome! When I got married, sure there were difficulties, but we also had a really strong sense of "we're in this together" that encouraged us to sort those difficulties out. So, maybe you won't run across "first year blues" at all if you've got the right attitude going in to this whole marriage thing?
It's been a week, Hubski. Sunday started the week off with a bang by throwing my new Porsche into a 720 degree spin. Or the better part of one, at least - coming down an on-ramp I goosed the throttle (in 2nd, a little spirited but a long way from reckless) and had the car kick left into the better part of a 360. it refused to catch until I was about 20 degrees shy of a full revolution at which point I straightened it out only to have the car continue into another 3/4 revolution. We (me, the car, my wife and my daughter) came to rest about 40 degrees from straight. Fortunately we didn't so much as kiss a curb. It's worth noting that Porsches are known for this. It's worth noting, however, that I drove that car up 1500 miles of the PCH in all weather and can only describe its handling as "predictable." There are no surprises whatsoever to be had from that car; you can break the ass loose and catch it again as if you had a cutting brake. The back tires are P-Zero Rosso Asymmetricos with less than 2,000 miles on them; the fronts are Conti Extreme DWS with less than 500. I spent the better part of Sunday breaking the thing loose everywhere I could under any conditions possible before I realized that the blessed little thing will happily crawl up the 50% grade mud hill next to my garage with nary a complaint, let alone manage wet pavement with no surprises (other than this one). It also took me more than a day to realize that the '77 Skylark with bald tires I drove in High School was so miserable on ice that I could turn the bitch 90 degrees by stomping the gas and lunging hard in the drivers seat to one side or the other. Miserable traction or no, I could never get that Buick more than 180 out and i once lunged it down an ice-covered hill and lurched it on purpose. I ended up on a friend's lawn but I never got a 360 out of it, let alone two of them (with barely 40mph of momentum). It had to have been diesel. HAD to have been. But dayum. It took me from distrusting my car to distrusting every road. Shit coulda been really bad. Monday I discovered my book was dead at my agency. It's been a long road. It's been a lot of work. It's been the better part of a year convincing my ex-agent's boss that her email eats attachments. But we solved that three weeks ago and I no longer have representation. So go find another agent! Something rarely mentioned to beginning writers is that the act of writing is far and away the easiest thing about being a writer. It's the act of selling that will kill you. The guy who talked me into writing a novel is on the NYT Best seller's list right now (for like the 8th time) and he's told me that if he were growing up in the climate right now, he'd never make it. And of course, it's NaNoWriMo, that one month a year where all your loser Facebook friends post their fucking word counts every day without caring one fucking iota that their bilgewater is why I'm not allowed to ask my agent if she got my book except for every twelfth week. That if there wasn't so much shit in the sewer rats like me would be able to get around easier. Know how you become a successful writer? Ask Anne LaMott - be independently wealthy and have a successful writer as a father whose agent will happily read your shit for ten fucking years. I also got notes back on the short film I've been mixing. They make it abundantly clear that my involvement is resented, that every creative choice I've made has been rejected, and that really, they would like me to put it back exactly the way I found it. Which would not be a problem except that I took on this mix as a favor to my best friend and he's had to fight so hard to get any changes that whatever instruction the director gives, my friend browbeats me over. They've formed an insular little cadre over there where it's their film and I'm the interloper and I had to have a 3-hour fight about this before my friend even heard himself yelling at me for making a change and wouldn't even let me explain why I'd made it. Once he gave me the opportunity and I spent fifteen minutes explaining my thinking he acknowledged that I was being completely shut down and belittled but not that I might not want to do that for fun for every single improvement I've attempted to make to their fucking film. So that's basically a month of my life I'll never get back. Meanwhile, they're the squeaky wheel which means the actual paying project I've got has taken a back seat. It's shit too, of course, but at least I'm appreciated... which made me realize that pounding fucking Pro Tools for appreciation is a shitty-ass business model. It also made me realize that all the clients I used to get good work from have exited the industry and all that's left are Premiere Punters that are not at all interested in my help. I finished Monday never wanting to mix again and never wanting to write again. Frankly, I'm still there. And, of course, I have to execute those notes within the week. And the guy I wanna bitch to? he's the guy who caused the pain. yesterday he suggested that I could turn some other fucking screenplay into a novel and I told him "fuck writing forever". He responded that nobody ever hits on their first movie (he's wrong) and I responded "fuck movies forever too." Yesterday I had to go fix shit at the birth center. Turns out birth educators are less gentle than fucking high school students. One of the women who rents our space for classes legit pushed an HDMI cable into the wall. I measured; it takes 8 lbs of force to do that. So I was left with the choice between making my wife tell everyone who rents there to stop being gorillas or gorilla-proofing my birth center. Now I'm left wondering what else is going to break; I need to switch the entire fucking network over from Netgear to Ubiquiti (we've blown the mind of a Nighthawk through the simple application of a few cameras) but I can't do that until I've systematically erased every creative touch I've put into this fucking film over the past month. The wind is so bad here it ripped the cover on my motorcycle, which I haven't had a chance to touch in a year because I've been too busy dealing with other people's bullshit. So here I sit. Drinking coffee and venting because the alternative is removing my work so I have time to gorilla-proof a business where every customer resents me. It's fuckin' great. Where's the drambuie.
We appreciate you KB. You're a damn fine writer. Never quit.
Well, shit. All of that sucks. I wanna point and laugh that you are surprised that a rear-engine vehicle with three people in it failed to respond predictably to steering input, when - practically speaking - there was basically zero weight over the front wheels... but I am, quite honestly, talking out my ass with information probably gleaned from a combination of Top Gear, my father, and Elliott, who all hate Porsches with a passion. (Well, except for Hamster.) And, more importantly, I would also be laughing at a potential car wreck involving your lovely wife and angel of a daughter, and even I am not that much of a dick. So let's stick with "diesel spill". The book and the movie? It's shit when you knew that this was the most likely outcome for both projects from Day 1. But getting to the end and seeing them actually turn out that way has got to be defeating. Sorry about that, man. I've always expected you to have success along the lines of Andy Weir, (but without Reddit). Maybe it is still coming down the pike... The same wind that took your MC cover destroyed my RV cover too. Now the side mirrors are sticking out like ears from big gaping holes in the fabric, and a tear along the roof seam will destroy the whole thing the next time we get anything over 15 MPH. There's another $300 to Amazon coming up during the holiday season... Sorry for the shit sandwich, my friend. And... who the fuck drives an HDMI cable through the goddamn wall?!?
So from a physics standpoint, there are four wheels on two axles. If there is an engine behind the rear axle and nothing up front, there is a load of - not zero, for sure, but we'll call it "neutral." Put a driver in front and the weight loading is neutral plus driver on the front axle - there is more load on the front axle than there would be with no driver. Obviously, the car is not designed to be driven with no driver. But just as obviously, when you put two extra passengers in, there is more load on the front axle, not less. More than that, the argument is that Porsches spin the rear wheels, not the front, which is exactly what happened, but c'mon. The car weighs 3000 lbs. A woman and a 4yo is the difference between drivability and doom? You went where I did - "well everybody knows that Porsches suck and obviously you're a bad driver if you don't know that." But really? Bad enough that you can get a double pirouette in street conditions at 40mph in 2nd gear? 'cuz I'll bet you could give me the keys to a Corvette and point me towards a skating rink and I'd have a challenging time repeating my performance. And once more with feeling - I drove the damn thing 1500 miles in wet and dry, with a passenger in the front seat (a passenger who outweighs my wife and daughter, I might add). If I can do this at 50mph in the rain with no surprises, I should be able to do this at 40. The book was at a top tier agency, was given over to a top-tier editor of their choosing, was edited to reflect the changes of that editor and then, because of the bullshit rules that have grown up around NaNoWriMo and its ilk, I'm not allowed to contact my agent more often than every twelve weeks. This was not the most likely outcome - until my agent decided not to be an agent, and her boss wasn't as enthusiastic as she was. It's really easy to say "well what else were you expecting" when clearly, I wasn't expecting this.
Sorry. Text-based medium. I agree that the car should not have spun. I also know the reputation of Porsche better than I know the cars themselves. (Hence my equivocation.) And you and I both know that 99.999999% of all books written don't get published, and work done for free is always treated poorly by those we do it for. We know both these things, and yet we still do them. The fact that you started at the 75-meter line in a 100-meter race, and were still eaten by a tiger before you crossed the finish line is just the world sticking in a final fuck you for good measure. And that sucks.
Late to the pub... dead silent on hubski for a couple days... Started a new job on Monday and it is AWESOME. Gone are the days of an abusive SVP. Gone are the days of being shoved into roles and responsibilities I had no reason to be undertaking... Working for a great VP now. Promoted to the next level in my career. Decent money. Downtown (which is good and bad). Amazing workplace (I'll post some pics at some point). Lots of opportunities for me to help in a growing company. Things are looking halfway decent up in here... (sorry to the others who are having a not so good week)
I'm working my way towards something with this one. I like painting in that there is no deceit. I am either where I want to be, or I am some distance from it. I am starting to develop some sort of religiosity to painting; I don't think it can be helped. I am presently sitting in MDW on my way to SJC. Had a wedge salad and an IPA. Someone nearby is wearing sandalwood. As a roommate, cgod burned a lot of sandalwood, and stocked our small bookshelf with nautical fiction. The olfactory system is amazing. My father's favorite uncle just died. He would be sad if he were here to be so. Thanks for the read, lil. Edit: No it was nag champa. Right smell, wrong name.
I'm sitting in the day surgery ward waiting with my mom. She will go into surgery for a malignant melanoma on her hand. The olfactory system IS amazing. I imagine there are hospital smells, but I wouldn't know. I was looking for the hospital coffee shop an hour ago. Someone helpfully said, "Follow your nose" assuming that I had a sense of smell. I don't. I learned that a melanoma is cancer in the melanin: the cells that control skin pigmentation. A melanoma, if not caught soon enough, can spread to the lymph nodes, and then I guess, everywhere. Wear sunscreen. Meanwhile, my mom says she's had a good run. She's almost 91. Now I will go back to waiting. The reading was fun to do, mk. I like when hubski distracts me.
Living in a national park does really weird things to your psyche over time. I've been here long enough that it has started to feel weird when people ask me where "home" is. I know they're asking me where I'm from but home is currently a 3 minute walk down the road. I've put down roots here but being in the service industry was always meant to be a means to an end so this really isn't where I intend to spend the rest of my life. Even so this will always be a home that I picked and it feels weird picking a new home. Especially when the criteria for the new city is which ever one happens to have a University that wants me, but even that might not stay home. Most people I know have one place they consider "home", or the original home that they tend to gravitate towards. It's very weird feeling like that place is a split over about 3 locations across a huge country and none of those places are anywhere I lived before I turned 20. The original home doesn't feel like home at all and I haven't even been gone that long. Got a new housemate and I already don't like him even though I haven't given him a chance at all. That's another thing that is weird about living in a national park, your current situation never last. We have a lot of staff who return to work for their summers during school and every year it will be different for them. This isn't the kind of place where you can ever really just get comfortable with a routine existence like you can in a normal place. The problem is every week the place looks slightly more beautiful than it did last or I look at it from another angle and I decide I'm not done with it yet. This place can really grab hold of you, people return after years of being away because they aren't able to get whatever it is we get from this place anywhere else. I don't even think anybody has successfully described that feeling either. Oh, also I tried my first scotch the other day. It was the Glenlivet that every bar has. It was sweet but so is a lot of alcohol so I don't know about it. I'll probably head over to the fancy bar the next time I get a chance and see what I can get with more flavour.
The one thing that has stuck with me about being "out there" is the quiet. There are noises once you get off the paved roads, in the trees, on a lake, but they are a different sort of caliber than most people in the modern world experience. I've been out at star parties where it has freaked people out and messed with them that they can hear trees rustle in a light breeze from a few hundred feet away. You can hear deer move in the shadows before you see them. You can hear the yips of cyotes in the distance. The ringing in my ears from years of metal concerts goes away after a few days out in the world. I need to plot a return.
I live beside a train, it’s not a very loud train but it’s literally across the road. I’ve heard from a lot of Americans that national parks in Canada are very different. I mean we literally have a whole little community here. Banff has an elementary school, high school, and hospital inside the national park. Here we have a softball league in the summer, hockey league in the winter, and yoga at the community center. From what I’ve been told you guys will have small towns outside of the parks but nothing like this. Granted, it’s still very easy to get some quiet and you’ve still got to watch out for bears.
flop, splat I tried to get my pizza out of the oven with the first stick-like object in my vicinity - a knife, in this case. Somehow I wasn't careful enough and my dinner ended up on the floor, tomato sauce and mushrooms flying in all directions. The precise physics are unknown to me but I must've yanked it out too fast. If I set my mind on something that's hard but achievable, I can usually get there. So in the last month I have taken exactly two days off and have spent all the others writing and polishing my thesis to hit my deadline yesterday. It's been tiresome to say the least - not helped by other problems and the fact that stress impacts my sleep noticeably. Anyway, there was a chapter that I wanted to get done on Monday, so I kept working even after everyone else had left at my internship. Originally I wanted to relax and make myself some proper dinner when I came home. By the time I was home it was almost 8pm (I usually eat by 5:30) and I was so hungry and tired I went with a frozen pizza. Which then flopped onto the floor. cue really, really deep sigh I cleaned it up and managed to salvage the remains. And yesterday I handed in my tome: 25,000 words, just over 100 pages with 70+ graphs and maps. It's not the final document, but a 90%-done document that determines whether you can graduate or whether you need to put more work into it. That meeting is next week. I'm quite confident in what I have, but you never know how the thesis committee is going to take it, especially since this is the first time they will read more than just a chapter here or there. Today I took a day off to recharge a bit, to do some stuff that I had been postponing. Finally got my inbox back to zero. Called my previous landlord who still hasn't paid me back my €475 deposit. And the dumb sweater I bought online a few weeks ago? It got lost in shipping so they're giving me a refund. I see it as a sign that the fashion gods are giving me a second chance.
Which then flopped onto the floor. cue really, really deep sigh One of the many benefits of owning a dog, is when this happens, I call the dog, and she comes running in and ecstatically cleans up the mess and thinks I am the BEST PERSON IN THE WORLD... instantly turning a bummer into a little bit of joy. Sorry about your pizza. Congrats on the thesis! I was so hungry and tired I went with a frozen pizza.
I started collaborating with one of the doctoral students on a research project. We talked about our respective works over the last few weeks and noticed a few non-trivial similarities. At least we have hopes they aren't trivial. Right now we are going through the archives to check if it's indeed something new. I don't want to give away too many details as of yet, but he works on edge currents and junction effects in graphene whereas my work is about optical properties of 'bulk' graphene-BN structures. Who knows, perhaps I'll be soliciting publishing advice sometime next year? Chess: I won. 8.5 out of 10 - a new personal best with only one match left. Books: I've finished reading Durant vol. 3. Was it a lot of work? Not really, the secret seems to be pacing. So far it's ~2270 pages in 103 days which averages to about 22 pages per day. Assuming this rate as constant, I am now thirteen months away from finishing the series. And that's a lot of work. :P Health: Ever since I got my pair of glasses, the migraines passed. At least the worst parts of them. It's astounding how uncorrected astigmatism can influence your well-being. Heart stuff isn't going as well, unfortunately. I'm quite anxious about my upcoming checkup. Hypotension is getting worse, 85/60 as of this morning. Standing for too long has become rather uncomfortable. I can still run like crazy, but simply standing for longer than 40 minutes is tiring. Don't ask me how it works, I don't get it either. Sciencing: I got my hands on some caesium carbonate! It's not much, but it should work for my needs. What do I want to do? I'm going to check if I can cause saponification of (trace) esters in mineral oil. It shouldn't (and frankly didn't) happen anywhere near the standard conditions and with sodium or potassium hydroxide, but caesium hydroxide I plan on making might just be reactive enough to work.
Just bitter. Deeply, deeply, powerfully bitter today. I know it's poison, I can see that it's poison, and I'm drinking deep of the cup of Wormwood anyway. Something felt 'off' last night. I got on my bike after a too-long commute home (A ten minute drive that became almost an hour and a half of driving) and barely made it four miles before throwing in the towel. My legs just didn't want to move even though I felt cardiovascularly fine. Puttered around on various parts of the internet until too late. Fell down the tidder rabbithole again, even though I deleted my old accounts and haven't made a new one in almost a month. That's when my 'psychotic break' began, and I just stopped caring about all the shit going on that I am capable of perceiving. Endlessly bitter about all kinds of things. Religion, politics, the ongoing gender war. The fact that I can't seem to keep a positive spin maintained for more than a few days at a time until I hit a funk like this one. I'll come out of it, probably. Just gotta drag my ass across broken glass for a few miles first. This seems to be how I choose to self-harm. I'm hoping that this does not last many more days. Sunday I'm singing with the New York Philharmonic. I would like to be excited but at this point I'm just done with the music. Bernstein wrote for himself, and the Kaddish is a deeply personal piece. It means jack shit to me, especially at where I'm at in my relationship with whatever divinity is laughing at humans presently. It will be cool to hear Jeremy Irons doing the narration I suppose.
Drawing I've been trying to describe this image and why I've drawn it for the past five or ten minutes. I'm gonna be fucking honest with you. I don't completely no why I drew it. Yes, I did learn a few things in the process. Yes, I am ashamed of it. Yes, I'm also oddly proud of it. No, I will never do something like this again unless I literally can't think of anything else to draw. Yes, I'm sorry for making it. No, I'm not sorry for sharing it. Fucking look at it and weep. Weep for yourself. Weep for me. Weep for mankind. Life I'm having a good week overall. I have absolutely no reason why I should feel like I'm having a good week but I'm having one anyway. Dala and I are gonna make tacos, hopefully pork tacos, this weekend and I'm excited to make them. Hubski Howdy to both PTR and AdamTheChespin. I'm sincerely excited to see you both here. Sorry my first shout out to the two of you involves such a shit drawing. Please don't hold that against the community. Edit: Also, howdy to FirebrandRoaring even though we've already conversed a bit. It's good to have you here.
Howdy. Not sure what constituted the feeling, but I'm glad y'all're having me.
I don't think I am. I write stuff, but not fan fiction.
"FbR's Gratuitous Russian: the Only Five Phrases You Need to Survive in the Mother Country!" Only $5.00! One for each phrase!Not Russian, I know
It's one buck per phrase, yo. You're being entirely too generous.
@rd95, Please don’t mention me. I rarely use this site.
Hit me with the baileys, barkeep. No one's walking in yet anyways. A month ago 'round this time I was contacted by a Rolling Stone reporter to get a scoop on a case study for her article on the rise of extremism alongside anti-Semitism in the States. She has a bit of material around the subject, so I'm interested to see where she ends up with in this iteration. For better, the case study includes foiled plans for hitting Turkey Point and causing only what comes of screwing with those types of plants with bombs. My independent project in GIS has shifted from a focus on ground source heat pumps to emergency services in the case of the former's aftermath. For worse, there isn't as much readily available information on the spread of radioactive material in the event of an attack. More likely the case, I'm not asking Google the right questions. So far I've been looking at emergency services protocol and manuals. Best nugget thus far is one of the US government agencies' site. Other than that bit, the academic finish line is close. Yay.
If you want to get spooky about it and do some really questionable research, I think you'll discover that post-2001 nuclear closures have been heavily influenced by their vulnerability to attack. Frank Barnaby published a book in 2004 called How To Build A Nuclear Bomb that, contrary to the title, is mostly about improvised and non-state-actor-level WMD attacks and strategies. His nightmare scenario was a 747 out of Heathrow hijacked upon takeoff and diverted to impact at Calder Hall. He observed that with vessel thicknesses designed in the '50s, Calder Hall was completely vulnerable to the impact of a large commercial airliner (and, despite being designed in the '50s, completely invulnerable to anything less than that). By 2004, of course, Calder Hall was already being decommissioned. I did further research because that's what you do when you're a writer. STNP, by contrast, was designed to withstand the impact of a large commercial jetliner. More than that, the NRC requires US reactors to pass an Aircraft Impact Assessment if they are to keep operating. Vessel breach on a nuclear reactor is a big deal - as it turns out, a much bigger deal than most amateurs can guess. Odds are good that anybody with the knowledge to carry out a targeted frontal assault on a nuclear reactor will recognize that the amount of ordnance and planning necessary can be more efficiently applied elsewhere. Beyond that, containment has been the fundamental design parameter for pretty much all modern reactors, of which I would consider Turkey Point an exemplar. Three Mile Island was a wicked bad meltdown. Radiation from Three Mile Island didn't broach 1mrem over background. Fukushima? Certainly not great... but radiation exposure there was largely a local problem. Now - shall we talk about real fallout? The data likely isn't there because the critical release you care about requires the kind of violence where you've likely got other problems. You can't just crack a reactor like an egg and if you've got the kind of juice to crack a reactor like an egg, you can do more impactful things like, well. You know. 9/11.
Regarding the case study itself, I gathered a private for the national guard wouldn't have had the resources to pull off the stint, but the evidence towards outside help in cracking the egg apparently was worth note. Had a facepalm moment understanding the difference in info I was looking for from NRC and the case in your last example. Running back to Turkey Point's wiki page, I found the sources I needed,. Guess that rules out: "this is a problem that hasn't been addressed". Thanks for the insight, as always. Perhaps specifying the question further like affected wetlands, property damage/insurance coverages, etc. Hm.Vessel breach on a nuclear reactor is a big deal - as it turns out, a much bigger deal than most amateurs can guess. Odds are good that anybody with the knowledge to carry out a targeted frontal assault on a nuclear reactor will recognize that the amount of ordnance and planning necessary can be more efficiently applied elsewhere.
Beyond that, containment has been the fundamental design parameter for pretty much all modern reactors, of which I would consider Turkey Point an exemplar. [...] The data likely isn't there because the critical release you care about requires the kind of violence where you've likely got other problems. You can't just crack a reactor like an egg and if you've got the kind of juice to crack a reactor like an egg, you can do more impactful things like, well. You know. 9/11.
It would be worth laying out the sheer violence necessary. The DTIC will happily help you out. You're looking for damage category B (perforation), thickness of slab over a meter. It appears that a 22kg shaped charge will perforate a 1.2m reinforced concrete wall. We're on beyond ammonia weapons here, by the way, although Tim McVeigh kinda sorta shaped the OKC bomb. He also had 6200lbs of "energetic materials" or 5,000lb of TNT (2.5kT for those keeping track at home). Turkey Point, bless their hearts, has a cutaway of their setup: So. to perf the reactor vessel in a properly showy fashion you have to broach: - 3-4 feet of reinforced concrete. Clearly, our 22kg shaped charge will do that. - 2 inches of steel. not tough at all in splendid isolation, more challenging when surrounded by concrete. - an air gap. Excellent for dissipating kinetic energy. - 3-7 feet of concrete shielding. between 25 and...? worth of explosive, after the concrete, the steel and the air gap. - Another air gap. - 8-9 inches of steel. So... it's certainly possible to do this level of damage. You might be able to do it with a ryder truck full of explosives. But you're effectively trying to break open a bank vault in a concrete bunker in a bank vault in a concrete bunker. Set aside for a moment the fact that you're the master of the universe if you can sneak this level of malfeasance next to a reactor. Mad props. A bigger concern, I think, is that any anticipated fallout pattern is going to be highly sensitive to the style of breach. I think (not sure, but think) you're in bunker-buster territory and most of your dissipation is going to be from the primary breach event. At which point it isn't even really a "reactor" question anymore, it's an "impressive amounts of KE" question.
Best I can situate the proposal at this rate is pulling a trick from entry-level physics and asking my audience to imagine for a moment that this breach occurred in a vacuum for the sake of the map itself. Though, this would be silly to dismiss given the info provided. Looks like St. Lucie's got the same, if not similar, set up. I think (not sure, but think) you're in bunker-buster territory and most of your dissipation is going to be from the primary breach event. At which point it isn't even really a "reactor" question anymore, it's an "impressive amounts of KE" question.
We got smarter people on here when it comes to nuclear power. A major issue that nuclear proponents don't like to talk about is what to do with the byproducts. They're radioactive for a long time and we've been playing Hot Potato with high level waste since the Manhattan Project. People who Want To Believe will generally mention thorium reactors about here but the most enthusiastic endorsement I've ever gotten out of any of the nuclear scientists I know has been "...yeah, maybe but there hasn't been a lot of compelling evidence to research it, really." Bill McKibben dismisses nuclear power because without subsidy it's more expensive than coal or wind. "Subsidy", to my mind, is a great way to negate "externality" . I don't think the issue is that simple. My father is decidedly pro nuclear power. But then, he once made a terrified trucker take 4 showers before he realized his geiger counter gave a false positive if he twisted the shield towards the sun. I'm of the opinion that most of the public discomfort with nuclear power comes from fear and distrust and that "dirty bombs" are a psychological weapon that works once at which point everyone figures out that the whole world is kinda radioactive and we deal with it just fine. But I'm also not entirely convinced that the very permanent and expensive drawbacks to nuclear power are negated by their efficiency and environmental friendliness. In other words, I don't know what to think but I sure do think a lot.
Essentially, in the case of a fallout, what's the average radius of plume exposure and all the nasty by products of such - urban populations, natural habitats, food sources affected by airborne contamination, etc. I'd like to think I found my answers one and two for at least Turkey Point upon revisiting the search without the context of a serious assault as the cause of said events. From here it's a matter of finding what I believe is the best sets of data to intersect with for a clean answer on a readable map. Otherwise, I really appreciate the offer. Turns out it was a matter of asking O Wise Google the right question after all.
Use the opportunity to tell a bit about yourself, yo.
I’d rather not. Thanks for the suggestion though.
So let me tell you about healthcare. Think of torture, but you pay for it. Then get asked to come back for more and then you pay for it. Then you get a piece of paper saying in short "fuck if I know." Then they shuffle you off to someone else because the doctors can spend 5-10 minutes with you before the next billable fuckwit gets their 5-10 minutes. This week I ran on a treadmill, fat jiggling everywhere, until I failed. To my credit, I did not fall down, only through sheer fucking brute force of will. They have not called back demanding more tests, so I must have done as well as expected. A few days later, however, and HO-LEE-FUCK am I out of shape and fucking beat to hell. They also tested liver, glands and found that the kidneys are once again working as they should, and I thank Keto for that. Doctor likes the blood work, despite not liking Keto style diets. The one thing I will say in the favor of most doctors? They know it is a numbers game, and the numbers dictate the care more than feelings and other nonsense. If it works, and you have the data to back it up, it works and we call that medicine. I am not losing weight, which is really worrying, and we cannot figure out why; I'm fat as I have ever been and I should be dropping pounds, but those numbers can eat a bag of dicks for all the stubbornness about moving they exhibit. Speaking of numbers, the few docs and I had chats... all the numbers are moving ever so fucking slowly in directions some might consider "not dying, but think about life insurance and survivors." At least I am not getting worse. And I am not diabetic, which shocked the shit out of me. With all the baking and crap I have eaten over the years, and a family history, and the fun adventures with malnutrition and physical labour I no longer have any possible markers of insulin resistance, elevated sugar responses or the Type 2 death sentence. Yet the body feels like shit, I feel like shit and I get weekly migraines that are fucking with me. The one thing that has come back is the bullshit fuckery with my sleep schedule. I fell into astronomy because I was up all night anyway might as well take advantage. Then I got old and shit went all tits-up. When I was a young man, I could go 2-3 days and not sleep, then sleep 4-6 hours and be fine. That all natural, no drugs, no weird shit, only coffee and chocolate and hate of the world. That, for me, was normal. Then, it hit me like a semi at 40MPH one year that if I did not get 8-10 hours of sleep I was dead to all but the angry voices in my head. I finally had a choice of fixing the problem or get fired so I got tested and well golly-gee no shit I have sleep apnea. Of all the things one could possibly fucking suck at? I choose breathing and sleeping. I do not hate medicine, yet. I bet a surgery will shove that dial, and fortunately all my bullshit is chemical and not physical. Nobody wants to cut me open until there is an idea on what piece of shit inside me is being the asshole. Fortunately my health insurance is not totally fucked over yet, but I have no qualms that Congress will do something this year just to fuck with me and make my bullshit that much less pleasant. After the testing, where I had lower than normal blood pressure, good cholesterol and good blood work, I celebrated with a pound of bacon and a 6 ounce steak. When I took a piss the next day, it smelled like bacon. There is something in that statement that I should be both proud of and ashamed of.
SHOW ME YOUR KNITS vol. 1 Finally took some pictures of some of my in progress knitting and crochet projects for flac: This will be a shawl when I get done with it. I started out with an asymmetrical triangle pattern and didn't like how the increases were working up so I ripped it out and started over using almost the row pattern from the original but going with a symmetrical increase and more stockinette stitch. I am in love with this color changing yarn and may have bought way too much of it. This is a pattern from Expressions Fiber Arts, and is the most complicated knitting I have done to date. Another shawl (this one is for a friend) and is crochet. The white bit is my somewhat blocked test sample. Pattern is also from Expressions Fiber Arts. Can link to patterns or post the pattern that I made up for the first shawl later if anyone is interested (I am on my phone right now.) I have the brim of a hat worked up but 1.5 inches of 1x1 ribbing is only interesting for my mistakes. WORK Working like it's summer (read: super busy) and all I really want to do is hibernate like a bear because my body says a big fuck you to everything after daylight savings ends. Trying not to complain though because I can think of worse things. But it does smell like cat food in my office for some reason right now and I am not sure why. Probably someone cooked fish in the microwave again. TACOS rd95 promised me tacos for dinner this weekend and all I'm saying is he better deliver, I wanna be a fat kid and stuff my face and take a nap.
It dawned upon me some time ago that, as much as I want an intimate relationship in my life, I'm never going to get it, so there's no reason to bother. I'm not a pleasant man to be around unless you already know me well enough to stay. It took me a while to recognize that the barrier is not one most people dare traverse, and it's none easily movable. It would take being someone else to become more appealing, and integrity is not something I'm willing to trade for a company of another person. There's a certain melancholy to it. I may never become a parent — something I've been dreaming about for years. I may never find someone to spend private time with. There's also recognition that that's simply how things are; it's nobody's fault. I'm not refusing meeting someone. I just recognize that intimacy has such low probability in my life that I shouldn't consider it. I'm okay with that. I've been alone for years, except for the bright light some time back. It's not so bad. This realization made me much calmer. I don't have to worry about whether they like me anymore. I don't have to pretend for someone else's benefit. I don't have to force a conversation I don't need. If there's nothing to come from it anyway, there's nothing I have to put into it. It has also made being good to people easier. If you don't have to worry about how people may react to your kindness or help (which aren't necessarily the same thing), all you're left with is the good faith to act upon. ROSA Storylining comes along at a slow and steady pace. Rosa is a different story from anything I've ever planned or written: it's a big project that I can actually tackle. kleinbl00 may hate NaNoWriMo with his guts — not without a good reason — but me, it helped get over the anxiety of putting words onto virtual paper, and I apprecaite it for that. Disengaging it from NaNoWriMo makes the project much bigger, with possibilities running amok. I'm considering shifting the nature of things to the way I initially envisioned it, making it a more surreal and personal experience. Roadside Picnic, from which I draw inspiration, has ended on a very personal note — a contrast to subverting a world-threatening event common to science fiction and fantasy stories. The conflict of the story is always my biggest concern, because I can't seem to weave it in. I have distinct characters in their very own environments that simulate a different reality as well as I can imagine it, but the plot, aside from certain points that I want to have happened, is beyond me. I love the characters but can't seem to find a good place for them.
I thnk your attitude towards the relationship might be flawed. Putting yourself out there includes offering something to a relationship, an investment or a sacrifice. Im not sure how friendship/intimacy compromises integrity, unless your partner is a tribal warlord or a malicious Ponzi scheme operator. I think its possible that you mean by integrity is actually the vulnerability involved in seeking a relationship, not to mention the vulnerability of committing to one. You gotta get a little out of your comfort zone to get funky. Source: my roommate snuck a handle of Tito’s in through campus security.integrity is not something I'm willing to trade for a company of another person.
I used to think that in order to be appreciated, I have to go out of my way to be someone else — someone other people want to see in me. I thought I had to be funny, clever, helpful, non-offensive, doing well academically, never saying "no" to anyone... I'm not saying I need not change or grow. I'm not saying I don't need to be open with people. I'm also not saying I want to leech off my relationships and provide nothing. I'm saying I'm no longer comfortable with pretending to be someone I'm not. There's a list of things I can give someone in a relationship. If they like me for what I am and I enjoy their company, we might have a good time. Otherwise, I'd rather invest work into making or improving something.
I'm in motherfuckin' Montreaallllll. I just got in, so I have no real thoughts, other than what my colorful uber driver told me. I think I have the kind of conversational demeanor that makes older Uber drivers talk to me as if they were giving life advice to their wayward son. Immigration gave me a good scare. It's really hard to explain why you're in Canada for non-work reasons for 46 days after you tell them you're an online freelancer. Literally the last sentence: "Hey, next time you want to become a citizen in a country, do so the right way, don't just try to stay here until you become a citizen or you'll just get deported." gives me a stamp and points me towards the airport exit, I walk to the uber pickup door smelling of gallons of sweat, gratitude, and shame. Thing: I did Startup Weekend before I left Alaska and my team won 2nd place! There was only three of us on our team, so I'm pretty proud of it, even though we presented a business plan, instead of an actual tech idea. Also won a free ipad, so I was able to give my mom something for Christmas without feeling like an abject failure. Other thing: I'm really afraid of clubbing. My hosts are going to take me clubbing soon and I need to not get into my super introverted shell / throw up on anyone's shoes. Anyone have any advice?
I hate customs so much. I used to travel a lot to see bands. Canada usually didn't give me to much grief to get in, even if it was for 16 hours, but my own damn country acts like I'm suspicious because my vacations to somewhat distant places only last a day. Yes I'm from Wisconsin. Yes I was there this morning. Yes I realize it's 2 AM at Niagara Falls. I don't know how to open the trunk. It's a rental. Yes I was in Toronto just to see a band. No, not working for them, just a fan. No I don't know them. Sure, if it makes you feel better, I'm a pretty big fan. Ugh. The few blocks of Montreal I've seen are cool.
See you in a couple days! I can’t wait. You already win points because the centre phi is one of the hottest new places in town. It’s my personal opinion but I find clubs kind of boring. Especially in Montreal because we have so much more fun stuff around :) My advice is to suck it up for a night, and then find friends around your interests/events. I’ll try to point you in the right direction!
See you soon! I'm going to be drunk at their party. On their livestream. Surrounded by famous / really good chess players. I'm crying on the inside >.<
In Portugal for my dad’s 70th birthday. It’s really beautiful here. Feeling like a spoiled brat when my parents bankroll the vacation like this... but then I’m addicted to travel and enjoy spending time with them. I think I got to work a little harder to pay for myself the next time. To alleviate the guilt a little.
Or, alternately, you could thank them for their generosity, and enjoy their gift to the fullest. The hardest part about gifts is not giving them, it is receiving them fully. Think like this: Why did they pay for your trip? So you would be there with them. They want your company. They want their daughter to share the experience with them. The greatest way for you to appreciate their gift is to fully enjoy it, rather than beating yourself up for some self-perceived failure on your part. Feeling guilty about receiving their gift, takes away from their enjoyment of the gift. Halcyon talks about the Gifting Economy at Burning Man, and kinda nails it:
Today, one of our clients posted this vlog: It's darn good. Still, doesn't touch elizabeth Travels.
I'm a really quiet guy, I don't like drawing a lot of attention to myself and I tend to be a people pleaser. Because of this, most people at my company can see me as a well intentioned pushover - which is fine, it's a part I know how to play. But I'm also really, really good at presenting. Like, storytelling championship good. Last week I finally had enough information to pitch a solution for a company problem and I destroyed it. I now have two VPs actively working to put the project in motion and get me a budget. They're also trying to bring me to the attention of a lot of powerful people. I still don't like that part, I want people to focus on the problem and it's solution, but at least it's progress. I also have to make eight loaves of bread this weekend. I'm using nearly 18 pounds of flour. I'm really worried I didn't do the volume calculations correctly and there's going to be dough everywhere.
That feels like a lot of flour... how big are these loaves? Also yay for kicking butt at work! Perhaps you can use this as leverage to get where you want to be in your work life, if you've not already done so. That might make the being uncomfortable more bearable?
Now that you mention it, I think that's flour for 16 loaves - the standard recipe makes 2 loaves and thinking I needed 8, I think I multiplied by 8. And yeah to the work thing. I like these big challenges and starting projects, so this should be fun.
lil the book is in the mail. If anyone else wants a book of poetry by a guy who doesn't like poetry. Some of them are incredibly acceptable. Most OK book ever! They cost about two bucks to print. Plus postage. And a cup of coffee or something for me would be cool
I'm planning a short one night camping trip with my wife next Tuesday before Thanksgiving. She has only been camping a couple times so we're going to keep it simple. I'm a little worried about rain in the forecast though -- I'd prefer mud not to be the most memorable thing from her first camping trip with me. I'm also running the Turkey Trot 5k Thanksgiving morning. My sister's reasons for signing my family up had more to do with the shirt than anything else, but it will be fun. And it's been way too warm here in N. Texas -- flower bulbs are usually planted in the fall to winter to the dirt so they will sprout better in the spring, but we've had enough 75+ days that a couple decided to sprout now. Hopefully they won't completely die when it finally gets cold.