Related to the SpaceX discussion in the CWT, can someone explain Starship's place in a mars program to a guy who never played KSP (but watched some videos)?
I see the 1st stage vehicle design as optimized for heavy surface to low orbit launches. The second stage is confusing, mixing atmospheric engines and heat shields with vac engines for fairly inefficient interplanetary burns. The whole thing looks more like Tintin's Lunar Adventure than any real mission I've seen designs for.
What am I missing here? Why is this better than launching a lightweight interplanetary-dedicated ship plus a smaller lander? Is the whole mars thing just hype for what's really a STO heavy lifter?
SteveKirk
7mo ago
That's nonsense, I've watched you have arguments with people, then ban them for a two week old post a day later. Maybe it was just "in the queue" lol
Tempering this, most of the money in renewables is in shady grants, kickback schemes, and running scams. It's like investing in the Chinese stock market as a foreigner: all the value is harvested by 5 layers of insiders, and the iShares China ETF you can buy has only gained 20% since 2012.
(I seriously didn't realize it was that bad before looking it up for this post)
The profitable way to "invest in renewables" is by getting your non-profit a $50 million "inflation reduction act" grant to identify minoritized stakeholders and leverage indigenous community engagement for the equitable siting of utility solar (run an extortion and money laundering racket with ARM lawyers and a casino company, funneling kickbacks to certain political parties)
And you've got to be in the inner circle to keep the money flowing. Owning a residential solar installer has been a gold mine for years, but suddenly next year you're paying 50-100% tariffs so that some other guy's overpriced US solar panel factory can profit by getting a special tariff waiver on imported components
Speaking of that guy, I saw he deleted his Twitter recently. Although he's still posting substack articles defending Letitia James's political prosecutions.
SteveKirk
7mo ago
Yes, I found a two month old mayo jar in the back of my fridge recently, and was disturbed that it looked and smelled exactly the same as when it was opened. Probably time to start avoiding the modern stuff
you're a moron
No mod action
This guy is going way too hard
Banned for two weeks.
Thanks, there wouldn't be nearly as many funny jokes around here without your "moderation."
Looking forward to seeing how far back in my post history you'll go to find something "unrelated" to ban me for in revenge.
Just got done planting 300 row-feet of garlic, like 450 plants. Hopefully going to be a good crop next year, even though the last went in almost a month late.
The cloves are also much larger than the commercial seed I bought last year--basically planted the largest third of this year's crop. So that should give them a head start.
Probably overdo the garlic just because it's one of the few things you can do in the garden this time of year. But I use a ton of it and it's a remarkably good gift for the kind of people who like "organic garlic" as a health food.
Do they not? Isn't the hydrogen atmosphere of Jupiter rather dense due to how cold it is? I'm not sure what the math would look like on a Hot Hydrogen Balloon. (Edit: like 2-1 density ratio between 100C hydrogen and -100C hydrogen, you'd only have 1/6th the buoyant force of a hydrogen balloon on earth. But double check my napkin math before trusting it for your Jupiter colony please)
Think selection bias here, not causation. Especially given that teen pregnancy has become "more unhealthy" ever since it was relegated to a vice of the lowest of the underclass.
Pointing to biology is like suggesting that Lincoln Navigators must have a design defect that causes drive-by shootings and running red lights.
Frankly, I'm still giggling that after years of redditors claiming themotte users would do spree killings, the first rat murderer came right out of /r/GeorgistFuckCarsAnticapitalismTEDtalks, and got the most uncritical support from the same people who were faking performing hysteria over "violent right wing extremism" in 2020. They went straight from claiming the motte needed to be banned before nybbler shot up a synagogue to fedposting about shooting up a board meeting, with zero cognitive dissonance.
Noticed theschism has been pointedly avoiding discussing it
SteveKirk
7mo ago
Thanks, I had no idea about the Early Life part, and only remembered your post-bush moving-to-canada stories.
You've been writing for a long time, is there any chance you still have like 2005 era blog comments? It would be really interesting to see old-you's perspective on events I hardly remember.
I've always wanted to play Majora's Mask just to experience the groundhog day mechanic. Being able to have active NPCs without breaking a save if you messed up their questline seems really cool. But nobody copying it in the last 20 years means it probably didn't pan out as well as I'd hoped.
And I always give the japs a little extra leeway when it comes bizarre puzzles, just because half the time a Japanese player would be going "aha, this is clearly a cultural reference to kaguyahime the moon logic princess, that means I should go cut some bamboo and give a rabbit his mallet back."
I'd expect they'd be railroaded into an abortion if they tried. "Ohh, we'll have to report this... or we can just make it go away for you"
Most of the teen births that actually happen seem to be the "gave birth in a toilet because she was so obese nobody realized she was pregnant" sort.
Think I just got to the scenes your friends were talking about. the writers went so hard on their relationship I'd have thought this came from a doujinshi, not an official Nintendo manga.
Checked the authors' early life sections just to confirm, and of course they are both women.
Someone could write a book on why women love the small bratty girl vs strong but vulnerable guy pairing so much. I've just been calling it the Ernest & Celestine effect
Zak is really the only option when you've gotta go fast (and building facilities too slow!), ironically because the v-tubers project gives him perfect drone control on transcend difficulty, without any base facilities.
Used to play Gaia as a kid, overrating the free worms.
Miriam always seemed super fun, and a great excuse for using probe teams. She's basically the one case where the player can't casually wipe the other factions with impact rovers, and you actually have to play diplomatic+spy games to catch up on tech.
Back in the 90s, the sexual revolution was unassailable, because those of us arguing against it
Am I mixing you up with someone else, because I thought you'd always been a liberal until... 2008ish?
Looks like the manga was a big factor in reviving her popularity. I got sent a panel from their first meeting after saying I never played it. That damn grin <3
All I can say is that your friends saved up all their correctness points to be objectively correct about this one thing, at the cost of not knowing what sex they are.
If it makes you feel any better there's a good chance they've silently done a 180 in perfect lockstep since then. The "le heckin wholesome" reddit fandom go from gushing about things to declaring them ultra-problematic on a weekly basis, with feuds between influencer cliques bubbling into ideological shipping turf wars like a much gayer version of the 30s soviet union.
Just tell your friends they're guilty of a gross objectification and done a yikes media illiteracy, because only alt-right Blue Archive playing chuds like Midna. That should take care of it.
Mentioned the other week I did an alpha centauri run one night. The interface is a little dated, but the rest of it holds up great. Finally managed a 70 turn transcend win after plotting it since childhood.
Also once again have the Deus Ex installer for my once a decade replay, but that's too big a time investment unless I get snowed in for a few days this winter.
I'd like to hear how @WhiningCoil 's retro builds are doing.
Funny coincidence: I've been half- watching a friend do a completionist run of Twilight Princess, because I'd never played anything other than OoT and apparently missed out on the best waifu in the series.
The actual dungeon puzzles don't seem awful, at least compared to my memories of the OoT water temple, but the side quests are ridiculous.
Huge open world to explore? Sure. But needing to fly a chicken to revisit a specific hidden ledge, at night, only after you can control your wolf transformation and have talked to a specific NPC in a subbasement on the other side of the world... Yeah, that gets a bit much. Playing it blind would require searching every inch of the world about 10 times over.
I can imagine it would get annoying to play if you're not as obsessive as my friend, but Midna's ass covereth as many sins as it inspireth new ones.
SteveKirk
7mo ago
Follow the names back to subs and you'll find a lot of familiar faces. The discord server takeover plus weaponising the "no culture war" rule just let the rest of reddit ooze in and fill the space.
Keep in mind most of the ieds were made out of old artillery shells and such, not stuff you could buy at Home Depot. Also a lot of guys blew themselves up practicing how to splice cellphones onto 500lb bomb fuses because their mom called at a bad moment.
I just got a 100Ah 12v battery from a known-good supplier for $99! They were like $800 a few years ago.
Admittedly it was a pricing mistake with an accidental double-65-off, but they're honoring mine.
Anyone think of a good project, or should I just add it to my home backup system for longer uptime? Could run my whole house on 2400wh for... Uh, 2hrs in winter. But minus the heater, water heater, oven, and well pump it would run everything else all day.
8 minutes in for anyone watching. Although it's funny to watch from about 6 because they flip from "it's outrageous for Republicans to spread doubts about our elections" to
Just pure fucking evil, they all deserve a very short prison sentence. At the very least every single single party apparatchik deserves to have its wealth seized as proceeds of criminal activity.
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