I feel like the thrust-to-weight dynamics on multicopter drones don’t really lend themselves to heavy payloads like water bombing in the quantities needed. An additional issue is that, due to wanting to maximize power density for the high amperage motors, you often end up using lithium-polymer battery formulations that are less than adequately shielded for the possible impacts the drone might incur. I would be concerned that the risk of a drone failure itself igniting a new fire in a remote area would outweigh the potential.
My take is that this (and similar effects in other media) is the consequence of the rise of targeted advertising. Prior to the advent of surveillance capitalism, there was a vested interest in the development and refining of subcultures.
Someone in the media would identify a new nascent subculture, invest in catering to it, and in the process create a new demographic that advertisers could pump money into to address a specific audience. Ugly and capitalist, sure, but on the flip side, if you were a member of one of those subcultures, there'd be a steady flow of investment into the community you considered yourself a member of. If you listened to the Grateful Dead, someone would be there to sell you peace signs and tie-dye shirts. If you listened to emo punk, well, Hot Topic. The money the advertisers paid would go back into the magazines, critics, studios, etc. that would then further promote, develop, and refine the subculture--a virtuous cycle of sorts.
Google et al. negate the need for any of this. If you want to sell tie-dye shirts, you buy a slot on the "tie-die shirts" keyword. It's (arguably) more efficient for the advertiser, but, it eliminates the economic incentives for subcultures to exist. So they don't. Everyone is their own one-person-addressable subculture, which is essentially identical to one sprawling morass of culture.
What little money remains flowing into the media system chases the spontaneous flash-in-the-pan meme hits that broadly appeal, because that's all that's left.
I feel like the most novel aspect of this image is an implication of the shape of the reflective casing at the far rear of the device--it seems to suggest a parabolic "shaped charge" sort of focusing element that likely helps to boost the neutron flux and initiate the "spark plug" from the rear at the same time as from the front.
Hmm. I've read every book on the subject and I have a feeling I've heard this arrangement already somewhere (shape of the mirrors used to direct the radiation pressure, not neutron flux).
I suspect that would fall under the rule that if two black holes’ respective event horizons ever cross, they merge and initiate the eventual merger of the two respective black holes.
I've seen this vaguely referenced, but when I dig in I don't find support for it.
It's far from obvious that just because the event horizons (which is just a mathematical concept and a 3D area of space) should control the trajectory of the singularity.
With two identical blackholes, with a event horizon of radius R, why should a singularity 2R away be unable to escape?
Not only are these aircraft hangar sized buildings with soundproofing, they’re also likely wired for hundreds of amps of lighting, including truss and catwalk systems to he able to position and distribute that lighting.
I suspect if you're wary about fomite spread of disease (later shown to be airborne for COVID but initially assumed), then it's easy to pick up a phobia of grappling the handlebars of a scooter that a stranger has recently used.
Additionally, at least anecdotally here, as the city centers hollowed out of normal business/leisure traffic, a lot of the rental vehicles were visibly breached and used by homeless folks, which often tarnished the literal appearance and reliability of the rental units in addition to damaging the brand.
It’s less that this allows new unprecedented weapons, and more that this allows one to validate material properties in similar conditions to a nuclear bomb detonation without actually testing a full scale device. This lets one verify and refine the otherwise “magic number” constants in computer simulation code that were empirically derived 50-80 years ago.
Of course, if you’re a nascent nuclear power along the lines of NK, you just do full scale tests, treaties be damned.
North Korea hasn't signed any treaties abolishing nuclear weapons tests. In point of fact, the USA itself hasn't ratified[0] any treaties prohibiting the type of underground tests the DPRK has conducted. The US chooses not to do those (and has maintained a voluntary moratorium since 1992), but is under no obligations.
Notwithstanding the US's deeply hypocritical stance on treaties it hasn't ratified but others must follow, North Korea did in 1985 sign the NPT which forbids them even building nuclear weapons, as well as the 1992 "South-North Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" where they explicitly pledge not to test nuclear weapons (which they indeed didn't do until 2006).
An agreement was made to suspend the nuclear program in 1994, the US then refused to certify it after 9/11 due to NK's transfers of technology to Iran.
Whatever anyone thinks about that, it's got nothing to do with the 1994 agreement (which is easy to read, it's only a few pages).
NK subsequently withdrew from the NPT, and got a nuclear weapon in 2006.
> South-North Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" [...]
I believe that NK's stance on the matter is that SK is hosting military bases for a foreign nuclear armed power (the US).
So it's implicitly threatened by a US nuclear attacks, and that threat became explicit under Trump.
You know, the best part is that US is doing this same thing with the incoming president shitting on the work on the previous president for the sake of domestic politics, and not getting a new deal with the belligerent state!
So instead of Clintons deal Bush tore it up, didn't get anything, and now North Korea has nuclear weapons. And instead of Obamas deal Trump tore it up and got nothing. Now Biden also wants a new deal, so we know how this version of story likely ends (especially with Bibi bombing out of control, the pro-nuke factions in Iran have great fuel for winning the go/no-go argument on building a weapon.)
This gave me a bunch of insight into the workings of those old survival tricks of using analog watch hands to find cardinal directions:
- Since the video starts at solar noon, the sun is always at 12:00 relative to the video.
- Swapping reference frames, if you had a clock face with 24 hours on it, and aligned the "12:00" to point at the equator, the "0:00-12:00" axis would define a longitudinal plane through the Earth, and the hour hand would define a second plane that would intersect with the sun--the hour hand would "follow" the sun.
- Conversely, if you pointed your clock's hour hand at the sun, you would know your "12:00" would be due north/south (depending on hemisphere).
- The same is true for conventional 12-hour watches and clocks, but you must find the "half-way" mark between your hour hand and noon, because the hour hand is moving at twice the speed relative to the hypothetical 24-hour clock.
> Conversely, if you pointed your clock's hour hand at the sun, you would know your "12:00" would be due north/south (depending on hemisphere).
Not quite. In the southern hemisphere the sun moves 'backwards', so you have to flip the clock backwards, or instead point the 12:00 mark at the sun and then the hour hand shows north/south.
Just a word of caution for anyone that would want to use thos in an actual survival situation. If you're really lost, the best thing to do is stay put and wait for someone to find you. If you have to move, knowing which direction is North is pretty useless unless you know enough about where you are and the surounding area. And even then, in such situations, topographical landmarks will likely be more useful.
Not to be a nay sayer, it can be fun to do, and perhaps even useful in some situations. But probably not something that's going to save your life, no matter how many time Bear Grillis used it.
I suspect that they would, if for no other reason that if the direct action is indiscriminate in whom it harms, then the well-heeled will have the resources necessary to seek compensation via litigation while the marginalized will be out of luck.
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