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Joined 3 months ago
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Cake day: December 4th, 2024

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  • So you mean more like a power plant? Are you thinking like brayton cycle, rankine cycle, or both (combined cycle)?

    I don’t know much about fusion, but a big part of how a brayton works at that scale is air. For a jet engine the combustion expands, spinning the turbine or afterwards, and this spins the axially connected compressor section which sucks and squeezes air prior to the combustion chamber. A piston engine would be less continuous, so might be better suited? But in any case, this relies on whether fusion moves a shitload of air like a combustion engine does, (and like I said idk if it does,) and if it does then I guess it could be possible so long as pressures and temperatures stayed within metallurgical limits. I also don’t know how economical it could be, but let’s pretend that this is entirely exploratory and costs don’t matter. I’m not gonna shit on your idea because the truth is that I don’t know and you could be predicting a breakthrough idea 100 or 50 or 20 years ahead. Is fusion something that can quickly explode like in a piston engine in the first place or would it be better to run continuously through a turbine? Is that even possible? Idk.

    Regarding the rankine cycle, that’s the assumed application of fusion power. It’s just the newest, best idea for how to boil water to superheated steam to spin turbines and condense back to feedwater. I only even bring this up because you specifically mentioned a steam generator, and that really only makes sense if you’re utilizing the rankine cycle. Combined cycle would be using that piston/turbine engine thing from earlier but recycle the exhaust heat to a HRSG which loops to a steam turbine and condenser and back. But you need a large volume of fairly continuous hot exhaust flow for this, so it’s wholly dependent on that thing I said I don’t know lol.

    We need some input from people who know something about fusion. I don’t really know how we would control fusion while throwing a shitload of air into it and getting an even bigger shitload of air out the other end. Without that input, idk how anything other than rankine could be managed.







  • I know you said first person and I’m gonna mention a third person one that’s fun, so I’m sorry if first person was truly a necessary piece of this for some reason…

    Warhammer 40k Space Marines 2 came out pretty recently and it kinda feels like it’s 80-20 Gears Of War and Doom. You can play co-op for both the main campaign and a separate side mission kind of thing, and the side thing is highly replayable because you level shit up as you go and then you can play on higher difficulties to get more loot. But they can spoil the story if you do a bunch of the missions ahead of the story chapters since you’re kinda playing out the B squad adventures concurrently with the A squad missions. There’s also a pvp mode, and a horde mode is coming too.

    It’s far from perfect. Load times are very long. The lore is tedious if you don’t care, but it’s honestly so fun that I don’t care that I don’t care about the lore. The devs are very much actively working on the game, bringing frequent updates and fixes, plus just straight up rolling out free additional content when ready. And there is crossplay if one of you is on console and the other is PC or something.

    The party is 3 player, but if you just want 1 on 1 time with your friend, you can set your party to private and have a bot play your 3rd and he will heal you when you go down and help with the fight somewhat. This is especially nice while you’re learning the game.





  • I disagree. Having a platform in right wing echo chambers helps them considerably, but having reasonable, unhappy constituents publicly ask questions and get unsatisfying answers is disastrous for them. Right now, even lifelong conservative voters are asking how firing veterans and taking away any hope of retiring is helping them, and there’s really no believable answer to that. They’re starting to wake up because of these town halls. Anybody else there looking for answers hears that question and thinks “hey, yeah. I want to know that too” and then sees their cowardly rep offer panicked platitudes at best or abruptly end the town hall and run away at worst. They’re seeing the mask fracture and they’re getting a glimpse of the devil underneath.

    It’s important to help these people understand that they’re not dumb; it’s just that their trust was violated. They believed conmen who actively sought to trick them. They were betrayed, and their betrayers got so comfortable and lazy that they pushed things that hurt so egregiously that it became obvious that there’s no real explanation beyond having knowingly lied to them for personal gain. I would love to say “we told you so” but they’re looking to be welcomed into a group, and smugness will just chase them toward the next predatory grift.








  • Usually 20-25% unless the service is inexcusably bad (like 1-5% of the time, and even then I’ll tip like 15%). I’ll typically approximate 20% and round up to the nearest dollar, then maybe add a dollar or two. I remember 15% being standard with it being acceptable to go down to 10 or up to 20; 18% was sorta my standard at the time, and I’d only go as low as 15%. I’ve only ever asked to speak to a manager three times that I can remember, and both times were due to what the kitchen sent out to me. I still tipped fully to the server since it wasn’t their fault. I was a chef for years, so I know how stressful it gets back there, but there’s still no excuse for the dishes I’ve sent back. There’s usually an offer to cook something else, but if I’m sending food back it’s because I don’t trust the kitchen to send out food that won’t give me food poisoning.

    Tipped minimum wage here (and therefore all tipped wage) is $2.17/hour. I believe that these businesses should be forced to pay proper wages, but stiffing your server doesn’t achieve that. These people are on their feet running around for hours and they usually don’t have enough support or leadership to do their job as well as they’d like to, and then they’re too exhausted and broke to study or work to break into another industry. We’re gonna have a lot of 30-50 year old servers living paycheck to paycheck until their knees and back give out. I’m down with tipping an extra couple bucks so they can get some Dr Scholl’s.


  • I don’t know that I’d call it a song per se, but Brand New did this on The Devil And God Are Raging Inside Me. I think it was like a minute of stuff that seamlessly blends right into the start of Sowing Season. I don’t own the CD and I only heard that part once like 15 years ago, so I truly can’t remember what it was. Maybe like a message on an answering machine?

    Edit: found it