…AND MY AXE!

The lads depicted are Gen Alpha 18 year olds. Gen z is mid to late twenties now. Some of them are about to hit 30…

The same guy who deliberately messed with the vending machine will also intentionally misplace the delivery of the skull gun aug module, smh.

Steam implies water! What if we used some OTHER phase-change working fluid? :D

||(No idea what, though. my question is implied with a playful tone and is at least 50% facetious; any actual discussion that might result would be little more than a pleasant coincidence)||

“what if fire… But… MOAR”

Hence the impasse we find ourselves upon…

I would be ethically unable to treat a human being like a subhuman pet even though, as you said:

(…) to reason with <children> and convince <children> (…) didn’t with out well, because <they are> children.

… and that they are not adults.

Nowhere near mature enough to handle that responsibility.

To NOT treat them as equal, to acknowledge their incompleteness as sapient beings, puts me in an impossible position. Parenting makes hypocrites of us all. Some of us can’t do it. I would be unable to do it. I know better than to try. It’s simply not within my capacity to undermine the autonomy of a being without feeling like I’m punishing them. To do so to a being that has not done anything wrong is corrosive to my humanity.

You have my sympathy that it was so difficult for you to go through. I endeavor to NEVER put someone through that.

HOLY SHIT FUCK YOURE ABSOLUTELY RIGHT JESUS CHRIST I REMEMBERED THE ORDER COMPLETELY FUCKING WRONG

I should have looked up the periodic table to reference it >_< It goes Hydrogen, Helium, LITHIUM, BERYLLIUM, BORON, CARBON, NITROGEN, and THEN oxygen Fuck my life I skipped five whole fucking elements Goddammit THANK YOU for pointing this out, I will fix it IMMEDIATELY

I remember. And what it taught me is that in the eyes of society at large I wasn’t a real person until I was 21. It also taught me that society may PUNISH adults who try to treat people under 21 as though they’re real human beings. You see, that’s (not really) “GROOMING”. Also, in any case other than violent criminality, any action a human being takes under the age of 18 is attributable to their guardians, “because they don’t understand what they were doing”. But the acts of violent criminality? Tried as an adult “because they clearly had to have understood what they were doing”.

Look. I hate it, but: we treat children like second class citizens, like pets, like slaves, because it’s dangerous to do otherwise. Children are a fucking minefield of legal grey areas and drastically accelerated consequences. The shit you and I live through on a daily basis gets brushed off as “that’s just life” but if it happens to a fifteen year old “ARE YOU CRAZY THEY’RE ONLY A CHILD”. And I’m not so sure I’d be able to meaningfully or successfully argue against that if I ever found myself in a position where I’m found culpable for someone of that age group.

Gods help me I think I’d rather die than have children of my own, but if I ever did, I’d have to be honest with them about all the terrible features of the society in which we live:

"To me you’re a person, and if you ask anyone else you’re a person, but if the shit ever went down the law would treat you as though you are a pet. I want you to feel secure in your privacy, in your autonomy, in your possession of material objects, but if anything happens that forces the law to cast its glaring gaze upon our lives they have the power to take everything from both of us.
"It is NOT your fault, but nevertheless we are both hostages until you are emancipated either by the clock running out or by legal declaration. I tell you this not to demoralized you but to prepare you. I do not want you to roll over; I would hope that you might find some way instead to steal your resolve. But the fact is, the society in which we live creates a toxic power dynamic between us. They stand above us, point at me, and command that I must be an adversary to you lest THEY need to step in and become your adversary, and they will be much more painful to deal with than me. This world is a prison and has forced upon me the role as YOUR warden, and if I fail to perform that role to the satisfaction of the authorities, they WILL punish us both.
“I need you to be vigilant. I need you to take care around me. I need you to minimize our household’s exposure to liability. But as long as you do that, I will endeavor to stay out of your business. As long as I am not provided a motive upon which I am forced to act, I would like to never have to go into your room or go through your personal effects. I need plausible deniability so that I do not haver to LIE at a jury trial when a judge turns to me and asks ‘and you knowingly let this happen under your own roof?’ - and even then it’s almost equally damning if the legal system has any excuse to accuse of me ‘you didn’t know this was happening right under your nose!’. But until or unless our camouflage is compromised, I will ensure that you have access to shelter, sustenance, privacy, and dignity.”

And if your reaction to the prospect of admitting all this to “just a child” is revulsion and dread… THAT very reaction is why we don’t treat children like people.

The reaction for which a nuclear reactor is named is the atoms of unstable substances rupturing on a subatomic level.

Every substance is made of atoms.

Atoms that share the same number of protons in their nucleus are the same element. The protons are all ‘positively’ charged and want to repel each other and fly apart, but they cannot because neutrons got them stuck together. The combined positive charge of the neutrons, though, attracts and captures electrons (which are negatively charged) in their orbit.

Sidebar: it is the interactions between the electron shells of atoms that allow atoms to stick together to form molecules. For instance, water is one hydrogen atom and two oxygen atoms.

Atoms with one proton in the middle are hydrogen. Atoms with two protons are helium. Atoms with three are lithium, beryllium has 4, boron has 5, carbon has 6, atoms with seven protons are nitrogen, atoms with eight protons are oxygen. And so on. The entire list of all known atoms is the periodic table of elements, and the atomic number of each element is how many protons it has in its nucleus.

Another sidebar: atoms can sometimes have an extra electron, or be missing an electron. These are “negative” and “positive” ions. Lithium ion batteries, for instance, operate on a principle of chemical reactions that can store extra electrons when charged, and strip those electrons off and release them when discharged.

Less of a sidebar because this bit is getting relevant to nuclear/atomic energy: atoms can have a varying number of neutrons too. Hydrogen only has one proton so it doesn’t even necessarily NEED a neutron. If it has a neutron, it is significantly heavier than a hydrogen atom that doesn’t have a neutron, and we call it deuterium. It can even have TWO neutrons, and be nearly three times as heavy as a result of the extra particle, and we call it tritium. the varying numbers of neutrons in an atom’s nucleus are isotopes of an element.

Recap:

• An elemental unit of matter is an atom and it is almost always made of protons, neutrons, and electrons.
• What that matter “is” and what that matter “does” is determined by the number of protons.
• Protons are positively charged, electrons are negatively charged, and neutrons have no charge.
• Neutrons bind protons together at the nucleus so their positive charge doesn’t make them fly apart.
• The number of electrons orbiting the nucleus can vary, and when it’s not equal to the charge of the protons, the atom has been “ionized” and is called an “ion” of that element.
• • if there are extra electrons, it’s a negative ion; and if there is a deficit of electrons, it is a positive ion.
• The number of neutrons inside the nucleus can vary, and each neutron has a significant mass, comparable to the mass of the protons.
• • The total number of particles (neutrons plus protons) in the nucleus of an atom has a significant influence on the mass of the atom.
• • We call the different counts of total nucleus particles for the same number of protons “isotopes”.

Now I can finally tell you what nuclear fission and nuclear fusion are about.

Fusion is when atoms (usually very light ones) under titanic, gargantuan, nigh incomprehensible pressure are forced together so close, under so much force that it overcomes the negative-to-negative electrostatic repulsion of their electron shells, that the nuclei of the atoms get close enough that they suddenly stick together, merging their assemblages of neutrons and protons into a single nucleus and the electrons all sharing that orbit.

Very light atoms such as hydrogen and helium can have an easier time fusing if there are more neutrons present in their nuclei, assisting with the ‘stickiness’ (not a technical term) of each atom’s nucleus to stick to each other. When we do fusion here on earth, we can’t achieve the pressures necessary for regular hydrogen or helium to fuse, so we use deuterium or tritium to do it instead.

Meanwhile, Fission is when atoms (usually very heavy ones with lots of extra neutrons) break apart. Isotopes of very heavy elements with abnormally high numbers of neutrons behave differently from their more stablely balanced ‘not too many neutrons’ related isotopes. The nucleus can become ‘unstable’ and prone to breaking. You could imagine this, metaphorically speaking, as a physics engine that’s having to deal with too many rigidbody collisions between too many objects in a tight space, with the objects clipping into each other and building up incredible amounts of un-accounted-for forces which, when crossing an escape threshold, cause the pile of objects to break apart.

If you have a relatively stable isotope that will become a very UNSTABLE one if you just add another neutron, then you can cause it to break apart (fission) by shooting a neutron at it. And actually hitting. Now, if you have a whole crapton of these relatively stable atomic isotopes collected together (refined into nuclear fuel), you can shoot a neutron at that blob of atoms and statistically ONE of them is gonna get hit with that neutron and break apart.

When an atom breaks apart, it basically explodes very fast and that’s a lot of kinetic energy. Kinetic energy on an atomic level, well, it hits other atoms which hit other atoms and they all vibrate and that’s what we call heat.

But that’s not all. When the atom breaks, it will release extra neutrons that it can no longer hold onto. IF it releases more than 2.1 neutrons on average when it breaks, those two neutrons will go flying off and statistically at least one of them will hit another atom of the same substance, the same isotope, with the same ‘just on the cusp of blowing apart’ situation, causing IT to fission too, and ALSO shoot off a few neutrons. Those also hit barely stable atoms that become unstable and fission releasing neutrons which then destabilize other atoms which fission and shoot off neutrons which then fission other atoms that fission other atoms… This is called criticality and it’s the tipping point at which a nuclear fission reaction can sustain itself.

In order to sustain this reaction, we build a structure that we put the fissile fuel into, a structure specifically designed–with specific materials specifically shaped–to reflect the neutrons back into the fuel so that the reaction can keep going. This is a nuclear reactor core. By inserting substances, meanwhile, that will absorb neutrons and slow the effect down OR by withdrawing the fuel rods from the ‘sweet spot’ in the reactor core, we can control the intensity of the reaction so it doesn’t blow up EVEN BIGGER, and therefore we call these Control Rods.

And that’s the essential fissile chain-reaction that is core to the operation of a nuclear power plant. Every single one of those fissioning atoms releases a bunch of heat and that heat adds up. A thermal transfer fluid of some kind surrounding the core will absorb allllll that heat, and carry it to a heat exchanger that dumps all that heat into yet another working fluid, this one whose job is to boil FURIOUSLY when it gets hot enough and generate a crapton of vapor pressure, which then is allowed to blow through and thereby push turbines.

That’s fission nuclear reactor power!

Needs euthanization

it’s an illustration of what it’s like to have a conservative “friend” whose disagreement with you is your right to exist.

it’s a starch-based polymer, isn’t it? it will be readily metabolized by the various ubiquitous species populating our biosphere. i suppose it’s a good thing. possibly the only microplastic that doesn’t suck

yeah please actually fucking do this. men have had it too easy. it’s time to stop appeasing them(us?). Yes patriarchy harms men quite a bit and they(we?) were already among its victims, but molly coddling men has clearly not worked.

this body i’m in, people see it and presume it’s white, cis, and male, so i say this while fully understanding that women following 4B would treat me even less human than they already do. But frankly, every single aspect of me that has ever been ‘masculine’ feels less human already so i can’t blame them. it would feel right. it would be eminently fair. i’m sick of being associated with the depravity of the misogynistic paradigm. i’d rather be completely ostracized and socially isolated than know that this shit is still going on. end it. fucking end it. please.

most people are familiar with “fight or flight” Acute Stress Responses, but when one neither fighting nor fleeing are viable options, there are other modalities that kick in for the sake of one’s survival.

Namely, Freeze and Fawn: get small, be non-threatening, attempt to appease the assailant.

You did what you had to in order to get through that, and while nonetheless horrific and brutal, the fact that you came out of this alive is a testament to your resiliency. I wish you could get justice… hell I wish you could get vengeance. But I’m just glad you’re still here at all.

that was a thousand years? dang, reich-years make dog-years look like an eternity!

I’ve been channeling my anxiety into, upon recognizing that I cannot escape this sinking ship, that I might actually be able to help others escape with their lives, should it come to that. In fact, several times PER DAY over the past week, it was the reminder that other people need me more than ever right now and that I can’t help anyone if I’m gone that has become the most reliable terminator for self-destructive ideations.

OP, if you hear about anything like an “Underground Railroad” network forming to assist people in evacuating the united states, please keep me in mind and let me know. I’m no Oskar Schindler myself, but if someone is stepping up into that role, I want to be working with them. We can’t save everyone but we can save some and that will have to be worthy enough.

The modern Reichstag hasn’t burned yet… but we will not get any more warnings between now and when it does. Mean time, I’m sure it’s crossed your mind, and I can only offer preparation encouragement:

• Cancel all entertainment subscriptions, embargo your household against restaurants and fast food, and shun all luxuries, throw every last penny you can into the survival fund.
• Make sure the identification documents for every member of your household are in order at hand
• Acquire and/or ensure maintenance is up to date on personal defense equipment.
• Pack a go-bag for all household members with all essential “restart our lives from scratch” supplies.
• Optionally, establish mustering/rallying points with family or other households you trust.

Goodness forbid it should ever be necessary… hopefully by the time the brownshirts come knocking, you and yours will be somewhere they can’t find you.

Didn’t germany also experience severe brain drain around, oh, the late 1930s or so?

Something about … people with the common sense and sufficient means to survive elsewhere fleeing in droves because they saw the writing on the wall and knew shit was about to get ugly?

Thank you kindly! :D

I fully expect to come back to lemmy in 48 hours to find a fascinatingly detailed and viciously incisive rebuttal that calls me at least three slurs in the first paragraph, sprinkles additional passive aggressive repudiations of my character throughout, and finishes with a tactical f-bomb too :D

Consider the amount of air its wings must displace in order to stay aloft. An equal quantity of mass at least. It’s passing through that air and, partly pushing it down, but also partially scraping it thin over the bowed top surface of the wing (the Bernoulli principle) which creates a pressure differential that lifts the wing, pulling it upward through suction, and thus the plane. That’s why the plane must go fast to fly, and why it “stalls” and falls if it isn’t moving through enough air. It’s also how turbulence affects a plane. Differences in air pressure mean that in pockets of low pressure there isn’t as much mass being displaced by the wings, not enough lift so it falls.

Now, it’s quite likely that my layman’s comprehension of this is flawed. But I’m sure it’s entirely possible that someone will correct me soon :3