The Factory Floor

Shalvenay

00:38

hey there @Green

Green

01:33

@Shalvenay hey! How goes it?

Shalvenay

@Green alright here, as for you?

Green

@Shalvenay had a good dinner. I'm in good shape.

Shalvenay

@Green cool. pondering what an ideal bladesteel would be, thanks to the meteoric iron question

my thinking is something like an AISI S-series shock-resisting tool steel -- combining the best properties of a hard tool steel and a spring steel, basically

Green

02:06

@Shalvenay wouldn't you use two steels instead? A harder steel for the cutting edge and a springier steel for the trailing edge?

Shalvenay

@Green I've actually considered the concept of using a spring-like steel for the base blade and then case alloying (vanadizing) the blade using either a pack diffusion or an ion implantation process

(running a sword through an ion implantation machine would be hilarious just for the mix of technologies being implied)

which would get you results similar to the two-steel idea, but without any need for forge or pattern welding

Green

@Shalvenay I see the words you're using and individually, I know what they mean but no clue when placed together. You're way ahead of me.

Shalvenay

Ion implantation

Ion implantation is low-temperature process by which ions of one element are accelerated into a solid target, thereby changing the physical, chemical, or electrical properties of the target. Ion implantation is used in semiconductor device fabrication and in metal finishing, as well as in materials science research. The ions can alter the elemental composition of the target (if the ions differ in composition from the target) if they stop and remain in the target. Ion implantation cause also chemical and physical changes when the ions impinge on the target at high energy. The crystal structure of...

Green

@Shalvenay so you'd do that to sections of the blade and not others? Bump up the carbon content by basically shooting carbon at the surface? That's ridiculously cool.

Additive only though? You can't use that to remove impurities?

Shalvenay

@Green what I propose is more extreme actually: shooting ions of an alloying metal such as vanadium into the target

@Green yeah, additive only basically

Green

02:18

@Shalvenay how deep do they penetrate?

Shalvenay

@Green depends on particle energies used

Green

@Shalvenay could you saturate a sword's depth with that technique? (now I've got questions.)

Shalvenay

@Green probably not saturate it, but I don't think you'd want to

Green

How do you handle saturation gradients as a function of depth?

Shalvenay

@Green not 100% sure really

Green

02:21

@Shalvenay well, no, not saturate. You'd only want a few percent, if that much, to be added in the process.

Shalvenay

@Green yeah

you'd be adding like a few percent

and this would be before the heat treatment since the vanadium needs a chance to react with the carbon and form the carbide nanoparticles that make things work

Green

@Shalvenay more alchemy. :)

Do you do this kind of work for a living?

Shalvenay

@Green no, I'm mildly familiar with it because of its use in semiconductor fab, which I know from more of a "someone who's familiar with basic chip design concepts" level

Green

@Shalvenay sounds like magic to me.

How much would it cost to make a sword with that technique?

Shalvenay

@Green not sure. it does appear to be used for metal finishing IRL, so it's not out of reach of a well equipped industrial metal fabricator/forge

Shalvenay

02:55

hey there @TheTimeVoyager

Feeds

09:59

0

A: Sandbox for Proposed Questions

How can I figure out the territorial needs for my Werewolves? biology creature-design environment fauna There are lots of different creatures that are loosely based on wolves. The most prominent one is probably the Werewolf, a mix of a human and a wolf. But there are also others, such as Dire W...

Future Historian

15:15

Hmmmmmmm.

I wonder if four jaws is bad news for omnivores.

@Gryphon? Biologically, is four jaws bad for omnivores?

Secespitus

12

Q: Why would a body plan with multiple eating mouths evolve?

Aside from very simple or colonial organisms, all animals on Earth have only one mouth for eating. Many organisms have multiple spiracles or even multiple anuses, but not mouths.

Future Historian

So...........is that a "no" for my four jaws thing?

:(

Secespitus

To cite the highest voted and accepted answer "Altogether, this is a very, very unlikely body plan, even for an alien."

But the second one gives some interesting ideas for "Why not?"

Except for when you want four jaws, but still only one mouth. Then that question link is not really useful for your question.

In that case there are earth examples

3

Q: Could a creature have multiple jaws?

Recently I have been browsing theoretical alien designs and a feature I have become interested in are multiple jaws. What I mean by this is an inner jaw located inside of the outer jaw. An example of this can be seen below (by artist abiogenisis) Is it possible for an animal to have a mouth i...

reality-check creature-design aliens

Future Historian

:/

Future Historian

15:59

Hmmmmmmmm.

@Secespitus. Well, fine. It is one mouth, technically.

It is just four jaws for one mouth.

Oh and I have two eyes for two different spectrums.

Two for visible light and two for infrared.

Is that good?

Oh and the head looks like that of a hammerhead shark.

The infrared eyes are in the ends of the hammerhead....head and the front has the normal, visible light eyes.

Which means they can see colourblind at day.

Secespitus

@FutureHistorian Depends on what the environment of the creature is living in is like - what kind of prey? What predators? Etc.

Future Historian

16:26

@Secespitus. To be clear, they are in the real life world of Kepler 442b.....and you probably know where this is going, hmmmmm?

So..........hmmmmmm.

If they are omnivorous, would four jaws be really necessary?

@Shalvenay? How helpful are four jaws to an omnivore?

Secespitus

@FutureHistorian No

Future Historian

In that case........hmmmmm.

What are some types of mouths that help an omnivore, then?

I do not want to follow a human-like mouth, but......I do want them to be omnivorous.

Secespitus

I think you didn't click on my arrow and misinterpreted the "no" to be an answer to your question about four jaws being necessary (that depends on your world and only you can decide it)

Bellerophon

20:20

Would there be any kind of real life combat advantage to doing all the spins and flips that are shown in a lot of media? I'm thinking combat styles like the Witcher or some of the Jedi in the prequels.

Aify

20:48

Bell

Just wanna put this out there; i'm not attacking you or anything, just trying to understand the reasons behind this, but can you explain your reasoning for re-opening of the androgynous elves post? worldbuilding.stackexchange.com/posts/103066/revisions

The edit only made the question worse - the content it added, if it wasn't filler (eg: "not sure why. Anyways, besides " or "which would explain why the trait stayed prominent,"), only made the question more broad as it added more things to explain to the question

two of the re-open votes i understand, of which were 3k users (lowish rep, making mistakes is normal), but the rest of the people who voted to re-open doesn't make sense

@Bellerophon

Bellerophon

@Aify As far as I could tell the question was simply asking what evolutionary pressure could lead to male and female elves looking similar which seemed like a fine, if badly written, question.

Aify

So you voted to re-open because you thought it was unjustly closed?

Bellerophon

Also, only one of the votes was from a 3k user.

@Aify Yes, pretty much.

Aify

I thought i counted 2

Ah, i miscounted.

Isn't that kind of abusing the vote system tho?

30

A: Upvotes that "cancel out" downvotes

This practice is absolutely odious, and should be banned. (Edit by "banned" I mean, that people should be firmly instructed not to do it. I don't mean to imply that the SO developers should come up with some kind of AI solution that magically intuits the mindset and intentions of every voter.) ...

Just like how we shouldn't upvote because we don't agree with the downvote, we shouldn't re-open vote just because we disagree with the close vote

Bellerophon

21:09

I don't know. I think voting to reopen as soon as a question is closed is probably wrong as you should have just reviewed the question as leave open. I'd say casting a reopen vote once something has already been voted to reopen is probably alright.

Aify

I'm totally okay with a question edit(s) that actually fixes the problems mentioned to the OP resulting in being reopened

but the way it looks is that the OP added a bunch of filler text, and did not solve the majority of the problems listed for original closure, and then someone decided to flag for reopen/vote reopen, and a bunch of people, based on not agreeing with the original closure reason, decided to open it again. In the review Queue, it was left as leave closed, 3 to 2.

Bellerophon

The way I see it the only original problem was that it asked why the media represents elves as androgynous. The edit did remove that.

Aify

No, it didn't. One of the original problems was to remove the word effeminate and replace it with Androgynous (As of this current message, the title is still Effeminate). The first listed problem in the comments (the very first comment) states that the question is too broad as it's asking multiple questions (nothing was removed in the edit), the second asks for a definition of feminine and a reference to an artist or movie or something similar 1/2

(of which none was provided, since "humans would regard feminine" is extremely opinion based and not useful). It's not until the third comment that the request for a word replacement was noted. 2/2

It's a question where none of the original close voters comments were fixed, the edit was superficial, and somehow that ended up being reopened.

(actually I end up seeing a lot of these, its in particular this one that bothers me because there's a bunch of high rep reopen voters involved)

dot_Sp0T

21:25

Why not bring it up on the meta? Include a sample of these questions in the post and state your conflict about them

Aify

I am not sure if that's the right thing to do

as I would essentially be calling out 5 users in Meta

But i noticed Bell on chat here and chat moves pretty quickly (and is a lot less accessed by the public) so I just wanted to know why

I mean, ideally we'd want to keep the anonymity on SE right?

dot_Sp0T

@Aify it won't be that unless you make it into calling out others. You can always choose to keep a neutral tone, making it all but objective observations.

Aify

Basically, i'm trying to prove myself wrong first, by finding a valid line of logic to which the question could be reopened - if i can do so, then I dont need to make a meta post.

Er, if I link the sample review, you can see all the reopen voters

That's the same as calling them out, no?

dot_Sp0T

@Aify it is not. Calling them out would mean to write something along the lines of 'These folks, namenamenamename, are undermining the system and doing bad stuff' or whatnot. The data is available to everyone, collecting it and showing up trends is merely an analysis of the data - nothing malevolent, right?

Also my movie finished downloading, gtg

Aify

Fair point

dot_Sp0T

21:32

I mean it can always be interpreted as a malicious act, but then everything can be if you want to. E.g. my past few posts can be interpreted as spurring you on to denounce these users.

Aify

lol that's also true

dot_Sp0T

The thing is: If you think that there is a serious issue on the site then the Meta is the right place to address it. Sometimes addressing it in the chat can work, but that's seldom true for anything but a request for quick explanations - e.g. trying to get second opinions if a question should be closed, etc.

Gryphon

I would not consider it to be malicious unless it is worded maliciously. Simply stating names is not malicious, and, in fact, invites the users in question to defend their viewpoints, and perhaps change them if they feel the need to.

Future Historian

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

dot_Sp0T

@FutureHistorian NO

3

Future Historian

21:36

I did not say anything.

What did I do?

dot_Sp0T

so, I'm definitely out for today - cheers o/

Future Historian

I was JUST about to ask about how useful Planet Nine would be if it existed.

For humans.

Gryphon

@FutureHistorian I'm sorry, but, if you're asking for advice on something that's up to you as the writer again, please just think about it yourself. We don't really want to hear it. If you want help with physics, etc, we can help, but in-story stuff is purely up to you.

Future Historian

It is something I am trying to get an analogy for when trying to find a use the Visitors have for Kepler 442e (a hypothetical planet that is similar to Planet Nine in our Solar System).

Aify

We have planet nine tho

It's called Pluto

Pluto will forever be a planet in my heart

3

Future Historian

21:37

And Kepler 442c and Kepler 442d are basically smashed into Kepler 442b early in the formation of the system and flung out into interstellar space respectively.

That is NOT planet nine.

Gryphon

@Aify Pluto is not a planet. Get over it. Sorry

Future Historian

And...........no.

It is a DWARF PLANET. Difference.

Aify

idk how young you are and what your schooling systems have taught you

but it was demoted from planet to dwarf planet

eg: it wasn't always a dwarf planet

Gryphon

@Aify It isn't a planet anymore. SOrry

Future Historian

@Gryphon. Look, I only want to know what use the hypothetical Planet Nine proposed in 2014 would have for us.

Aify

21:38

For a very long time, it was a planet, Hence, it will always be a planet in my heart.

Future Historian

That way, I can figure out what the use for Kepler 442e would be for the Visitors.

Sorry.

:(

...

Well, @Gryphon. I am all out of ideas.

Bellerophon

@Aify I'd be happy for it to be brought up on meta. I also don't think @Secespitus would have a problem with it.

Aify

Yea, i'm writing up the meta post now @Bellerophon

Secespitus

@Bellerophon Whoops, what happend?

Aify

oh perfect

can i ask you too?

Bellerophon

21:40

@Secespitus The androgynous elf post that I believe you voted to reopen.

Secespitus

@Aify Sure

@Bellerophon Ah, that one.

Aify

What was the reasoning behind reopening the <strike>effeminate</strike> androdgynous elves question

ya

Future Historian

So....let me guess: nothing for Planet Nine?

Aify

aww you can't strike

Future Historian

Well, I am going back to the drawing board.

Bellerophon

21:42

~~Strike~~

Secespitus

Badly written, but basically asking "Why would males and females look the same - humanoid without any fat?". I can't say anything about the word discussion, because I never heard the word and don't know about the connotation associated with it. The german translation I looked up to understand the question mentioned something similar to "weak", which is a personal statement about male/female I chose to ignore.

I answered it and thought it was okay, so I voted to reopen when it was closed. Rewording might do it good, but it still looked like a valid question to me.

Aify

"Why would XYZ" without limitations is simply too broad though, isn't it?

It's also opinion based btw

If I could flag more than one close reason I'd hit both of them.

@Bellerophon how!?

Secespitus

We have a lot of creature-design questions like that, though creature-design and magic are my favourite tags so I may be a bit blind there.

Bellerophon

@Aify I am a god of chat commands. You have to type ~~example~~.

Aify

Creature design is also one of my top tags, and magic I love as well, but most creature design questions are significantly more limited

Secespitus

21:45

The good thing about the queues is that everyone alwas gets just one close/reopen vote, so there can't be any tuck-of-war scenario. That's why I send stuff to the queues whenever I find something that I think needs to be closed/reopened and see what the community says.

Bellerophon

So it would be --- example --- without the two spaces.

Aify

3 of my own top 4 questions are creature design questions.

Future Historian

Did someone say "creature design"?

Because..........turns out I finally got a coherent picture of how the Visitors look like.

Aify

@Secespitus that's not what happened though

Future Historian

:P

Secespitus

21:46

@FutureHistorian creature-design

Future Historian

I will take that as a "yes".

Aify

The question had a total of 8 votes on it

only 2 re-opens came from the queue

The queue itself actually decided to leave it closed

The queue was 3 to 2 leave closed, but then 3 other users direct-reopened it

Secespitus

Then it looks like others thought it was fine, too. I feel like most of the time direct votes are rare when compared to review votes.

But that may mostly be a personal impression. I don't have any numbers on that.

Aify

The issue i'm trying to figure out is if there was any good reasoning behind the direct votes

I'm willing to bet that most direct voters don't look at the edit history first

My hypothesis is that people are voting based on "cancelling out" the close votes type theory

which would be equivalent to "canceling out" downvotes, which Meta already deemed as something we shouldn't do

Bellerophon

@Aify I only direct voted because it already had 4 reopen votes and in my view deserved to be open. Also, I'm not certain that cancelling out close votes is as bigger problem as cancelling out downvotes.

In general when I review queue vote I just base it on should the questions current form be open, I pretty much ignore its original/older form.

Aify

21:50

I think canceling out close votes is more of a problem though, if you think about it; you can only close vote once, even after a question is edited, but you can change your up/downvote after a question is edited.

Secespitus

@Bellerophon That's also my take on it.

Aify

Idk. Hence me not making that meta post just yet

Oh well

Well, at least I proved my own opinion wrong

If @Secespitus didn't do it out of a cancellation nature

Then i'm fine with the result, since that means there's a chance others did it for a similar reason as well.

Secespitus

Glad we could talk about it and thanks for raising that issue. I'll try to reflect on my reopen voting behaviour.

And if you feel a meta post is warranted feel free to do so. Can't hurt.

Aify

@Secespitus Mmm I just think reopen should take into account the previous condition of the question

If a question was closed, something must have been wrong - therefore, unless those issues were fixed (or some meta post changed something) the previous version(s) should be considered. Even in the review queue, you see the edit history.

Secespitus

That seems to be the main difference. I read the question and ask myself "Would I vote to close that one?" If the answer is "No" I vote to reopen. The comments are important, but I won't just copy the behaviour of previous close-voters. If the question in it's current state deserves to be open it should be reopened.

Aify

22:01

Hmm... Well, Close voting uses the same premise of viewing the question in its current state, and I'm a direct close voter, so I can't really say anything back to that.

I do foresee a possible close/reopen war type scenario but since there are a limited number of close/reopen votes per question, that issue will solve itself

Secespitus

Exactly, and there are 3 close votes again, so it looks like the community tends towards "close".

Aify

Indeed.

Secespitus

But anyway, it's getting late here, I've got to go.

Aify

Bye. I'm leaving too lel

Future Historian

22:51

I am back.

So............I think that the current Visitor iteration is the weirdest I have ever created.

Shalvenay

23:16

hey there @kingledion and @Mithrandir24601

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