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[cannibalchicken]

[graycatluna]

Hey, could you do me a favor?

Could you just RB this?

The little RB statistics chart is so pleasant and stimmy to look at and I want to see what it looks like when it gets really REALLY huge because it makes me think of some deep sea lifeform

[quotemadness]

I have learned that when sadness comes to visit me, all I can do is say “I see you.” I spend some time with it, get up, and say goodbye. I don’t push it away. I own it. And because I own it, I let it go.

Carolina Zacaria

[recently-reanimated]

This video has permanently changed my vocabulary so I need you all to see it

[zegalba]

The circular island that rotates in Argentina

[sandmandaddy69]

[blueboyluca]

“When I first heard it, from a dog trainer who knew her behavioral science, it was a stunning moment. I remember where I was standing, what block of Brooklyn’s streets. It was like holding a piece of polished obsidian in the hand, feeling its weight and irreducibility. And its fathomless blackness. Punishment is reinforcing to the punisher. Of course. It fit the science, and it also fit the hidden memories stored in a deeply buried, rusty lockbox inside me. The people who walked down the street arbitrarily compressing their dogs’ tracheas, to which the poor beasts could only submit in uncomprehending misery; the parents who slapped their crying toddlers for the crime of being tired or hungry: These were not aberrantly malevolent villains. They were not doing what they did because they thought it was right, or even because it worked very well. They were simply caught in the same feedback loop in which all behavior is made. Their spasms of delivering small torments relieved their frustration and gave the impression of momentum toward a solution. Most potently, it immediately stopped the behavior. No matter that the effect probably won’t last: the reinforcer—the silence or the cessation of the annoyance—was exquisitely timed. Now. Boy does that feel good.”

— Melissa Holbrook Pierson, The Secret History of Kindness (2015)

[pileofmemes]

Modern poetry

[zentromple]

Cooking notes: Fries

Home made fries worked super well today! Beautiful Youkon Gold potatoes cut into fries.

Par cooked until almost entirely cooked.

Removed to metal bowl and tossed with seasoning (garlic and onion powders) while moist and hot.  Then tossed with a sprinkle of flower to coat; repeating until evenly dusted and no-longer wet.

Fried at 375F until golden.  Remove from oil and sprinkle with salt and MSG on the drying sheet. Eat with ketchup and mayo for dipping. I feel like I’ve tried lots of more complicated things in the past and somehow gotten less success.  Huzzah for fries!

[zentromple]

Questionable Math: Pacific Rim

Long ago I watched Pacific Rim and thoroughly enjoyed it.  However sometimes I get distracted when movies (or books, or whatever media) give me concrete details that don’t make any god damn sense.  Its like they’re inviting me to consider what they’ve done.  I mean, the did do it; they went and put it in the movie and showed it to me.

The image that I have in mind is where 8 helicopters were carrying the jaeger out to the ocean battle.  4 helicopters strapped to each shoulder.  Lets not even get into the weird physics of how they were all connected together like a bunch of balloons.  For this exercise I’ll ignore that bit and treat them like they can all lift strait up very effectively.

 The helicopters make me ask: How heavy is a jaeger?

Lets find out.

The heaviest lift helicopter I was able to find was one with a lifting capacity of 20,000 kg

That gives an upper bound on the weight of the jaeger of 160,000 kg (20,000 kg * 8).  But is that a lot for a giant battle robot?

Lets look at density to figure out what the jaeger could maybe be made of.

A quick google tells me that a jaeger is 76 m tall and that an average person height and weight of 1.8 m and 80 kg would not be an unreasonable approximation.  The jaeger is approximately 42 times taller than the person (76/1.8) so using the cube rule a jaeger sized person would be 74,088 times heavier (42^3).  The inverse is true and if we scale down a jaeger to person size it would weigh 2.16 kg (160,000 kg/74,088).  This is clearly an unhealthy weight for a person sized object.

Some more googleing to find the volume of a person gave a pretty wide range (unsurprisingly) and so I’ve settled on calling the average person that I’ve constructed at 78 L as the density of a human body is 985 kg/m^3.  The density of the jaeger is 0.0278 kg/L (2.16kg/78L) which converts to 27.8 kg/m^3

Density list:

Steel 7850 kg/m^3

Chocolate 1325 kg/m^3

Balsa Wood 160  kg/m^3

Jaeger 27.8  kg/m^3

Aerogell 3  kg/m^3

So it can’t be solid balsa wood and is only 10 times denser than the least dense solid ever made.

But maybe I’m being unfair, it isn’t a solid chocolate jaeger after all, it does have air spaces in it.  So how does it compare to real sturdy military vehicles?  An M1 Abrams tank has a length, width, and height, of 7.93 m, 3.66 m, and 2.44 m respectively and a weight of 54,000 kg which gives it a minimum density of about 763 kg/m^3.  Its a minimum density because I calculated a maximum volume given its length, width, and height so it was actually smaller its density would increase.  The tank density of 763 kg/m^3 is about 10% of steel, which I assume is what a lot of a tank is made of.  With that ballpark density modifier I’m happy to say that the jaeger could be arguably made from a material of up to 278 kg/m3 and very happily indeed I have discovered that the density of aluminum is 270 kg/m3 so there we have it!

The jaegers as depicted being hoisted by the 8 powerful helicopters could plausibly be constructed from aluminum; plausibly with respect to weight alone, and only if they were 90% void spaces internally.