PuddleOfKittens's recent activity

  1. Comment on "Shower thoughts" and other things to ponder in ~talk

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    I thought Gotham was Chicago and Metropolis was New York.

    I thought Gotham was Chicago and Metropolis was New York.

  2. Comment on US Joe Biden administration grants California waiver to ban gas car sales in 2035 in ~transport

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    If everyone could collectively pull their heads out of their asses and focus on cars a bit less, electric trains have infinite range and are cheaper to run than trucks. And it's insane that...

    What about shipping? As far as I know they aren't making EV semi trucks. How are any goods going to get transported where they need to go? There's no way you could have an EV truck with the same distance a diesel truck has.

    If everyone could collectively pull their heads out of their asses and focus on cars a bit less, electric trains have infinite range and are cheaper to run than trucks.

    And it's insane that everyone is commuting daily into LA via car, consistent routes in high-traffic areas is where trains excel. Seriously, the cost of trains is less than a tenth of cars, so if we're really worried about cost of living then they are the obvious choice.

    2 votes

  3. Comment on What are your predictions for 2025? in ~talk

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    I think housing is weird because demand is inflexible, and supply is also inflexible (because NIMBYs). So the price is whatever the price is.

    I think housing is weird because demand is inflexible, and supply is also inflexible (because NIMBYs). So the price is whatever the price is.

    1 vote

  4. Comment on Sionic Energy unveils 100% silicon anode battery with high energy density in ~enviro

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    Fuck, I meant volume. Batteries are a tiny proportion of EVs' volume. Typo. Fixed.

    Fuck, I meant volume. Batteries are a tiny proportion of EVs' volume. Typo. Fixed.

  5. Comment on "Shower thoughts" and other things to ponder in ~talk

    PuddleOfKittens
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    Travel to probably the industrial revolution (the first one, with textiles/water mills), introduce electricity and you can potentially undermine the benefit of the first steam engine. And given...

    Travel to probably the industrial revolution (the first one, with textiles/water mills), introduce electricity and you can potentially undermine the benefit of the first steam engine. And given how absolutely filthy the first steam engines were (and the cleanness and efficiency of electric motors), you could potentially prevent fossil fuels from taking off in the first place. Both because electricity is cheaper, and because people wouldn't want the stink when there's a better option.

    It would depend a bit on your knowledge (if there's one item I would take with me, it would be a solar-powered Wikipedia reader, because memorising stuff is hard), but as long as you have the basics of electricity, how to make a scalable battery, electrolysis (including electrolyzing iron) and the optimal shape for a wind turbine (if you compare 1980s wind turbines to 2020s wind turbines, the latter are something like 10% of the material simply due to aerodynamics improvements) you can basically jump the entire industry forward 200 years (so 1700 to 1900ish, don't ask about rubber etc plz). Electric trains/rail would be vital too.

    Modern renewables have a hard time competing because modern fossil fuel engines have something like 300 years of development and network effects, so the further back you go the more competitive you are, but I wouldn't want to go back before the industrial revolution because the industrial revolution might not have been possible before then - modern banking/trade, developments in shipping and the sort of infrastructure that made the mass importation of cotton from Indian slave plantations, all clearly contributed to the economy of scale that made textile mills profitable. Also, Britain wasn't liable to just be conquered if it gained a sizeable economy in 1700, whereas in e.g. 1200 it probably was.

    Although arguably, if you could go back to e.g. the 1450s and 1) produce iron without charcoal (up until coke coal was invented (first used for smelting iron in 1709), producing 1KG of iron required burning ~10KG of wood, which made iron hella expensive), you could set up iron electrolysis and mass-produce iron blanks (bars that blacksmiths bought as raw material), and 2) produce cast steel (not to be confused with cast iron, which is a confusingly-named ultra-brittle steel that's basically useless except for pots/pans), you could produce insanely cheap (for the time) cannons of superior quality to any of the hoop-cannons they had (where the gun barrels were built like a beer-barrel (several planks of wood iron, with a hoop around them to hold them together) instead of a single cylinder with a hole bored through the middle), and if you could make one then any king would give you basically unlimited money to make more.

    Selling cannons has two benefits: 1) you're the key to a king's conquering all of Europe making him (and thus you) richer than god, and 2) if the king conquers all of Europe then Europe isn't going to invade and conquer you.

    Of course, that's a great theory but how do you get the seed capital with which to build anything? Well, here's my idea: as the location, choose the middle of the king's court so the nobles clearly know you're not just some muggle. This might require some fast talking and historical research prepared.

    By the way, forget about making copper - if you really need to, you can mostly just use steel wire initially (because you're trying to make steel anyway) and copper is hard to find geographically and plain not worth it when you can just buy copper. Aluminium wire is a better option, but aluminium is a pain in the ass to produce AFAICT and by the time you're doing that you'd have unlimited hoe heads to sell for copper coin (or maybe axes).

    2 votes

  6. Comment on "Shower thoughts" and other things to ponder in ~talk

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    Cheese is carrying that question really hard. There are lots of different cheeses.

    Cheese is carrying that question really hard. There are lots of different cheeses.

    1 vote

  7. Comment on Goodbye refrigerants, hello magnets: Scientists develop cleaner, greener heat pump in ~enviro

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    If you want a copy of the paper, try directly emailing the authors to ask for a copy. AIUI they can't publish it for free, but they can personally email unlimited numbers of copies to people.

    If you want a copy of the paper, try directly emailing the authors to ask for a copy. AIUI they can't publish it for free, but they can personally email unlimited numbers of copies to people.

    3 votes

  8. Comment on Sionic Energy unveils 100% silicon anode battery with high energy density in ~enviro

    PuddleOfKittens
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    No, they're going to completely replace the anodes in the lithium-ion batteries. It's phrased incredibly poorly. Broadly speaking, there are three parts of the battery: The cathode, the anode, and...

    People quoted in the article claim that silicon batteries are going to completely replace lithium-ion batteries. We'll see!

    No, they're going to completely replace the anodes in the lithium-ion batteries. It's phrased incredibly poorly.

    Broadly speaking, there are three parts of the battery: The cathode, the anode, and the electrolyte in the middle of the two. It's sort of like a lead-acid battery, where the cathode and anode are the dissimilar metal prongs, and the electrolyte is the acid. Lithium goes in the electrolyte (and theoretically in the cathode in future, but that's another discussion).

    The anode is usually graphite, but ideally would be silicon (which has better numbers), except silicon has a habit of expanding and contracting massively, which rips the battery apart and has made it unusable until recently, where we have some bits of silicon included in the (graphite) anode. Like, 20% silicon.

    Sionic isn't doing anything unexpected, although they possibly are jumping the gun a little.

    I'm not completely sure how higher energy density can result in faster charging times, but maybe it has to do with the materials used and not the energy density directly.

    AIUI the silicon provides 5x the throughput, so theoretically the silicon can be 1/5th the size/weight of an equivalent graphite anode while achieving the same end result. Or alternatively, keep it the same size and have higher energy throughput, which means faster charging and higher wattage output (assuming the anode is the bottleneck, although I have no idea if it is).

    Honestly, I'm not sure what the benefit of energy density even is with cars, I think lower weight is far more directly useful than lower volume. Maybe lower volume permits a slightly smaller frame and thus lower weight and better aerodynamics? Batteries are just a tiny proportion of the car's weight volume. I suppose lower volume would permit more space to be used for airflow and cooling.

    2 votes

  9. Comment on What are your predictions for 2025? in ~talk

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    My rule of thumb for a real-estate market crash goes like this: if you hypothetical market crash event happened, would you be unwilling to buy a house? Because if you still are willing, then so is...

    My rule of thumb for a real-estate market crash goes like this: if you hypothetical market crash event happened, would you be unwilling to buy a house? Because if you still are willing, then so is everyone else and there isn't a market crash.

    I think a market crash for housing is quite possible, it'd just require some de/reregulation around zoning and such - if proper dense housing with narrow streets (was legalized and) occurred on a large scale and people recognized how much cheaper it is, then they'd start being unwilling to buy suburbs and the price would drop dramatically, and speculators would freak out too and then the market would start to bottom out. I don't expect that to actually happen, but it's possible and I really hope it does.

    7 votes

  10. Comment on Finland will review whether to reintroduce antipersonnel land mines for improved defenses against Russia on the NATO defense bloc's longest land border with its main adversary in ~society

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    The reason I asked if you were a pacifist is because you rejected the idea of using nukes, and similar means via conventional warfare. If you object to following through on deterrence, then you...

    The reason I asked if you were a pacifist is because you rejected the idea of using nukes, and similar means via conventional warfare. If you object to following through on deterrence, then you must similarly object to using deterrence in the first place (because deterrence doesn't exist if the other side expects you won't follow through).

    Also, you're saying "killing is bad" in the context of a war, and it's hard to tell if you mean "this is always bad and war is not an excuse", and "this is justified but I wish it wasn't and I wish the invasion never happened in the first place" (the former is idiotic and the latter seems like a pointless statement; nobody (sane) likes wars happening.

    So, getting to your actual comment:

    There's not a lot of nuance, because modern wars are total wars, where the entire economy is leveraged for military advantage and the "civilian populace" are widely necessary and employed in military production. Before Napoleon, generally speaking the state was the army, and if you defeated one (1) army then the state would collapse and you win the war. Nowadays, if you defeat one army then the state builds another army and the war keeps going until the state runs out of manpower and/or money(/resources). Combine that with logistics permitting a neverending stream of both manpower and logistics, and you have the meatgrinder that is modern warfare, exemplified by the western front of WW1.

    Fundamentally, in modern wars you need to bomb military factories, which are filled by "civilian" workers and are located in "civilian" cities. There is neither clear geographic nor economic separation between civilian and military.

    My key point here is that being unwilling to bomb a civilian populace as a side-effect of targeting war production is fighting with your hands tied behind your back. At the end of the day, the attacking country (or its populace) choose to have civilians around their production centres, for the economic/production benefits it provides them in more effectively build materiel with which to invade you. If you require defending armies to not bomb the attackers' production, then you are not realistic about permitting a defense.

    Winning a war basically consists of inflicting enough misery or functional damage on the other side (specifically: the entire state apparatus, not just the military!) that the general populace are unwilling or unable to continue the war. In practice, modern states are extremely resilient to mere destruction of factories (even when a factory is directly bombed, workers can typically restore 90% of functionality within 24 hours - so if you bomb a factory 10 times, it'll still generally have ~35% of its functionality (this was based off WW2 nazi factory statistics)), and in the case of the Russia/Ukraine war the shortage (and thus high wages) of factory workers directly increases the costs of the Russian army hiring more troops. Every single dead factory worker increases the Ruble cost of deploying another Russian soldier in Ukraine.

    In fact, in the context of Japan there were a lot of decentralized workshops for producing small-arms in all those wooden buildings in the cities, so it's hard to argue the distinction between firebombing a civilian populace and firebombing rifle production. Like, if someone has a home workshop producing rifle buttstocks (with that neat fancy two-piece system to save wood and get the wood grain protecting the tip of the buttstock) and you firebomb it, did you bomb someone's home or did you bomb a factory that the family decided to sleep in?

    Actually, to be explicit, if you're producing rifles for a fascist military then you're pretty obviously not a civilian, any more than if you're a truck driver in logistics moving around shells. I doubt anyone thought those Arisakas were for hunting purposes.

    If you're purposefully targeting civilians who aren't working those factories, and without any perceived benefit to reduced capacity of those factories, then you're obviously committing war crimes, and you should stop doing that. But similarly, if you e.g. set up a gun factory in the middle of a refugee camp, you're complicit in any refugee deaths that result from the gun factory getting bombed.

    So, to summarize:

    1. War is horrible, something being a "good idea" in the context of a war is not to do with whether it inflicts misery or not, because wars are inherently harmful to its participants.
    2. Civilians working for the military aren't civilians
    3. Blowing up critical military infrastructure is a perfectly acceptable means of waging war (that includes factories)
    4. Collateral damage is basically inevitable and that's okay, what's unacceptable is intentional collateral damage (although there's some nuance here on what proportion of expected collateral damage is acceptable)
    5. Please learn how nukes/deterrents work
    3 votes

  11. Comment on Finland will review whether to reintroduce antipersonnel land mines for improved defenses against Russia on the NATO defense bloc's longest land border with its main adversary in ~society

    PuddleOfKittens
    (edited )
    Link Parent
    The countries that haven't ratified it include USA, Russia, both Koreas, India and Pakistan. (Edit: also China) And in practice, THE ENTIRETY OF EUROPE, despite the map. Put it like this: anyone...

    The countries that haven't ratified it include USA, Russia, both Koreas, India and Pakistan. (Edit: also China)

    And in practice, THE ENTIRETY OF EUROPE, despite the map. Put it like this: anyone in NATO can ask for support from the US, and the US can deploy landmines as they haven't ratified the landmine ban, so all NATO countries have that option while retaining their high horse. Just like with cluster munitions.

    It's easy to sign an agreement banning something if you don't think you'll need them.

    7 votes

  12. Comment on Finland will review whether to reintroduce antipersonnel land mines for improved defenses against Russia on the NATO defense bloc's longest land border with its main adversary in ~society

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    Are you a pacifist? Do you think Ukraine should surrender and let Russia annex them?

    Are you a pacifist? Do you think Ukraine should surrender and let Russia annex them?

    6 votes

  13. Comment on IEA Report: The future of geothermal energy in ~enviro

  14. Comment on Finland will review whether to reintroduce antipersonnel land mines for improved defenses against Russia on the NATO defense bloc's longest land border with its main adversary in ~society

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    Landmines have been pivotal in preventing Ukraine's offensive, they've demonstrated they're basically necessary in a static war. Landmines are also fundamentally defensive, which makes building up...

    Landmines have been pivotal in preventing Ukraine's offensive, they've demonstrated they're basically necessary in a static war. Landmines are also fundamentally defensive, which makes building up your landmine capabilities an effective method of deterrence with less chance of alarming your neighbor into thinking you're planning to invade them.

    Mines, like nukes, are an ugly thing with consequences that linger and kill innocent people for decades after the war ends. That doesn't make their use unjustified.

    Ukraine is fighting for its life, and they would have had tens of thousands fewer casualties if they had built up a strong mining doctrine before the war started. They're using mines despite the bans, because they're facing an existential threat.

    If Finland were in the same sort of war, should they also use mines? Absolutely. And Russia has shown they'll just up and invade without justification or warning.

    21 votes

  15. Comment on ‘Unprecedented risk’ to life on Earth: Scientists call for halt on ‘mirror life’ microbe research in ~science

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    The problem is that the offensive side only needs to find one chink in the armor to win, whereas the defensive needs to win everthing. If the mirror bacteria find one type of food they can eat,...

    The problem is that the offensive side only needs to find one chink in the armor to win, whereas the defensive needs to win everthing. If the mirror bacteria find one type of food they can eat, then they could become an unstoppable plague that eats everything containing or relying on that food type. Which could be entire food chains.

    Stuff like glucose shouldn't be affected by chirality.

    9 votes

  16. Comment on What possession(s) do you have that continue to delight you every time? in ~talk

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    The original Mobiscribe, the screen broke (no cause, it just shattered itself one day), and I bought a PineNote (which the Mobiscribe was sort of a stopgap for anyway). Apart from the lack of...

    The original Mobiscribe, the screen broke (no cause, it just shattered itself one day), and I bought a PineNote (which the Mobiscribe was sort of a stopgap for anyway). Apart from the lack of open-source-ness, I didn't have any real(ASTERISK) complaints about the Mobiscribe as a whole. Apparently the newer versions have a better CPU, which was the #1 showstopper. They could make the case a bit better.

    The stylus is fine, generally if it's scratchy then you need to replace the nib (or at least clip off the sharper bits, to kick the can down the road a little). It feels a little glassy on the screen, smoother compared to the ReMarkable for instance, but it's still really quite nice.

    Actually, my #1 complaint about the stylus is that it's hexagonal. If it weren't for that, I'd say the stylus is outright better than other styluses (the RM2's stylus is far heavier, and apparently deliberately so, because a weighty metal pen is apparently perceived to be "high quality", which is stupid). The PineNote's stylus is almost better than the Mobiscribe's, it's rounded rather than hexagonal so nothing to dig into the hand, except it has the pocket hook thing at the top, which is annoying and useless and digs into the web of my hand if not rotated out of the way.

    You can buy nibs online from the official store of most e-note sellers, albeit at a rather grossly high price of ~$1/nib and you can't buy e.g. a 50-pack to save money. You'd think a shaped piece of felt would be much cheaper.

    3 votes

  17. Comment on What possession(s) do you have that continue to delight you every time? in ~talk

    PuddleOfKittens
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    Before it broke, my Mobiscribe. When it wasn't pissing me off with its rather numerous flaws (e.g. it had a habit of freezing up for 30+ seconds straight, in notebooks with lots of pages full of...

    Before it broke, my Mobiscribe. When it wasn't pissing me off with its rather numerous flaws (e.g. it had a habit of freezing up for 30+ seconds straight, in notebooks with lots of pages full of lots of lines).

    5 votes

  18. Comment on Anyone interested in trying out Kagi? in ~tech

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    I pay money, receive service. It's forgettable, which is a good thing. I don't need to worry about "who's the real customer" and such.

    For people that have been using Kagi, what's been the killer app so far?

    I pay money, receive service. It's forgettable, which is a good thing. I don't need to worry about "who's the real customer" and such.

    7 votes

  19. Comment on While ambitious urban planners try to make fifteen-minute cities a reality, the Nordhavn district of Copenhagen has gone one better – what's life like when everything you need is a stroll away? in ~design

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    I mostly just use the two terms - traditional city or hypertrophic - but the article uses three terms, and I don't find the third term all that useful. My comment on radiant cities was...

    I'll see if reading the blog brings clarity though it seems you're not sure either?

    I mostly just use the two terms - traditional city or hypertrophic - but the article uses three terms, and I don't find the third term all that useful. My comment on radiant cities was specifically related to the article - namely, to disambiguate any confusion of anyone who read the article and saw my terminology misaligned with it slightly.

    You definitely should read the article, though.

    1 vote

  20. Comment on While ambitious urban planners try to make fifteen-minute cities a reality, the Nordhavn district of Copenhagen has gone one better – what's life like when everything you need is a stroll away? in ~design

    PuddleOfKittens
    Link Parent
    No, I just mean the area of Nordhavn. Basically, what would this classify Nordhavn as - traditional city, or hypertrophic city? Upon rereading the article, I perhaps should have instead said...

    No, I just mean the area of Nordhavn. Basically, what would this classify Nordhavn as - traditional city, or hypertrophic city?

    Upon rereading the article, I perhaps should have instead said "radiant city" instead of "hypertrophic city", but honestly I don't care which it is, they both suck.

    1 vote