The Factory Floor

12:26 PM

@Gryphon It's the Aify super position, where Aify is simultaneously here and gone at the same time

3

1:46 PM

I got stuck in the middle of some dialog. Please help.

♦ Story-go-round

Lets write a story together. Meta: worldbuilding.meta.stackexc...

1:57 PM

How do you stop dialog without just saying "Let's do X" (so-and-so starts doing/does X)?

@Hosch250 Have something interrupt the dialog?

@AndyD273 Note to self, possible exploit as a method of making copies of myself to serve as minions?

'AAAAEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!' They both jumped and whipped into defensive postures as the attackers charged out of the haze again.

(Apparently, they re-invented the rebel yell.)

heh

@AndyD273 Was that in response to my comment, or Hosch's?

Little of both

@Gryphon I think the trick would be to put yourself into a superposition, and then split the wave into an entangled pair.

2:05 PM

@Gryphon Posted. Thanks for the help

@Hosch250 That's a good question... Maybe have them start doing X while also talking. It's pretty rare to have situations where you either only talk, or only take action. Lots of time people talk and walk at the same time.

@AndyD273 Now I just have to build a machine to do that, and I can proceed with taking over the world.

@Gry LOL

Want me to star that?

Jk, jk

You may if you wish.

You can take the nobel prize money for putting a macro scale object into a super position and use that to fund your conquest

2

2:09 PM

What would it take to seriously capture a fire-oozing animal with primitive tech?

I think that would make a good question here, sort of.

It would also effectively prevent anyone else from finishing the challenge ;)

@Hosch250 I was just about to ask you that. A giant slug thats is huge, and also on fire...

@Hosch250 If there is only one

True.

That's why I put "quipped". It's a joke for now.

And also we know that at some point later the others find a slug (as this chapter is technically happening before the previous one)

True.

I was just thinking that it would be fun if they found some slug eggs

2:12 PM

Well, maybe they found it before they get back to the slug.

But that might be a bit too much deus ex machina

Also, now I'm imagining the slug coming into heat and them being surrounded by a million fighting male fire slugs trying to get to the female :P

Well, one group is missing two phylacteries, and the other group is missing one jar of fire slug slime... But since we don't know how these objects are going to be used, it gives them an opportunity for some creative problem solving later on

A: Sandbox for Proposed Questions

Ohhh, you just gave me an idea.

We can have someone (accidentally) break a phylactery over an enemy's head and have them have severe radiation poisoning to dispose of them.

Feeds 4026

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I have a slug. Not an ordinary garden slug; this slug is special. This slug's slime is violently reactive with the atmosphere on my planet, and explodes into flame on contact with the air. I also have a hero or two who are considering capturing this slug and transporting it with them for at leas...

2:27 PM

@Hosch250 From the part earlier, it sounded like it might be like hitting them over the head with a live grenade...

@AndyD273 LOL, that works!

Maybe next time Hemdul throws his phylactery at them :P

Thinking about asking a question on comment ettiquite when responding to a comment that unbuilds a premise that is not strictly important to your question--not a "reality-check style this won't work" but something that focuses on a part of the premise you stated you won't discuss or has been solved in the question--something that doesn't contribute anything useful.

Opinions?

I really want to know what the next challenges are going to be. I'm thinking if the slime is high in pure sodium (which would make it react to the atmosphere), then the challenge could involve burning/destroying something under water. As to the phylactery, it could be a power source, or light source, or it could have something to do with the way it somehow dampens the part of the brain that allows for shadows. Maybe a harmonic kind of thing...

@FoxElemental That certainly happens a lot, but I feel the better response, in general, is to just let it lie. The most likely scenario is that you comment saying that comment is spurious, then they respond either arguing or agreeing but either way, further cluttering the comments. And now instead of one irrelevant comment, you have many.

They have to go under water to a certain cavern to destroy their phylactery and come back in the dark.

There. I worked all three of your ideas in :P

2:37 PM

@Mike Okay. So modify question to mention you're not discussing mainly irrelevant parts of the premise, and then flag as no longer needed when applicable?

Oh, hmm, so if the phylactery somehow uses some kind of harmonic to dampen those brain waves, what if there was a way to tune it so that instead of suppressing them, it amplifies them...

@AndyD273 Then you become a shadow and have to obey other people?

That's actually kind of creepy.

@FoxElemental If the comment's existence bothers you that much then yes, I guess you could flag it for removal. But then you are creating work for the moderators and you run the risk of upsetting the original commenter. I don't think the comments do that much harm, but if they are seriously derailing your answers then maybe just edit something into your question.

Thanks

@Gryphon Liquid science? AAAH! MY SCIENCE IS MELTING!

@FoxElemental This is what you say when you accidentally spill HCl on your Chem. textbook.

2:41 PM

Yes

Or, you know, flouroantimonic acid

But that's near-alkahest

@FoxElemental How the heck did you get your hands on flouroantimonic acid?

Q: How could an acid-cow make a barrier against acidic milk by synthesizing PTFE, and what would it line?

My acid cow

Duh

10

Info I'm designing a breed of cow that produces acid instead of milk. Part of the reason this is useful for my story is that the cows produce as much acid as a dairy cow would milk (through selective breeding/genetic modification.) Now, the dairy industry in 2013 produced 769 million tonnes of ...

science-based reality-check biology creature-design anatomy

It produces a 1:1:1 blend of flouroantimonic acid,

aqua regia

and perchloric acid

DON'T try making ice cream with this stuff

brb

@FoxElemental To be clear, for your recent question, you're interested only in those four stars?

@Hosch250 Or it just allows for really strong shadows? Since the whole point of this challenge is to try to get on a space ship, wouldn't it be useful to have a way to do repair EVA's without actually having to go outside, since shadows don't need to breath, and might not care about gravity (or the lack thereof). It would make for a really useful tool

Hmm, that would be cool.

Although, TBH, they seem strong enough already.

My coworkers probably think I'm not working given how much I'm giggling over here about that slug and cow.

Of course, they'd be right.

2:56 PM

@Hosch250 Darn it, I missed an opportunity... Hold on, let me get my asbestos underpants, then we ride to war! Very slowly...

3:08 PM

@FoxElemental I answered your question. Remind me not to visit your planet.

2

@HDE226868 Sounds like he no longer has a planet...

I, regrettably, am not made of unobtanium.

2

@Hosch250 Very true.

Also, the supernova the O-type star will undergo in ~5 million years won't be fun at that distance.

Oh, and the strong stellar winds from the O star, with associated x-ray emission.

Ah, yes, and the orbital instability that could be caused by what is an extremely compact system.

Maybe instead of redefining world, he needs to redefine star.

Might just make things simpler.

Or just remove that one altogether. . . The other stars listed are pretty benign.

I wouldn't expect to see any major stellar activity from those three. And they'll live for a long time. Low luminosities and relatively safe emission.

3:39 PM

@HDE Thankfully, I'm working on protecting the planet from the radiation via . . . magic-related means that should make for some pretty spectacular light shows. And don't worry about supernovae--I've got that, uh, "fixed" as well.

Though you still might want to avoid the planet, because it's still under development (see the construction signs?) and because it's infested with, among other things, sun-worshiping angels with extremely pointy swords.

But yes. I needed to know the radiation levels so I could check how much my magnetic field would need to be enhanced and my ozone layer. Should make pretty auroras.

@FoxElemental You don't need swords unless you plan to kill something with them.

@Hosch250 ominous tones exactly

regrettably that means innocent humans

But such is life, or, as it were, not.

At least on a fictional planet in a fictional 27 sun solar system in a fictional light plane that makes all stars near-immortal and makes light do weird and scary things to laws like, as a random example, the Theory of Relativity.

But such is worldbuilding

@FoxElemental I . . . think that makes me feel better?

(Disclaimer: This unconventional view of angels is not meant to offend any religious persons, simply to provide a . . . different perspective.)

@HDE it should! Because it means the planet will survive and my creatures on it will survive . . . and you'll either get sacrificed to the O2 star, Tey, by the angels, or shredded by glitter-light, or blown apart by Light Roil, or . . . um . . .

Yeah, don't visit

Oops. Internet error there

Very nice answer, though. My +1.

@FoxElemental Those are demons. Not angels.

Good "angel" == angel, bad "angel" == demon.

3:51 PM

@Hosch250 You know . . . funnily enough, the word "evil" is the same word as "angel" in my conlang.

In other words, you have no "angels", just "demons"?

So, they don't need a word for "good angel"?

Ash

@Hosch250 Unless you're in the Supernatural fandom in which case we love Lucifer and angels are (almost) all dicks.

No. Translated, that's "Good evil." Complete contradiction

OK, I guess I'm just confused. I'll leave you to your construction.

Also, I think I'll go see the FedEx NASCAR car they are bringing to work today.

Mmkay

3:56 PM

What the heck, it's just a souped-up Camry :(

Oh . . . kay?

@Hosch250 Lame

@James What is?

It sounds loud enough. They are running it outside.

I just looked it up on their website.

They'll be here for 4 hours, so I'm going to wait until the crowd thins a bit to go look.

@Ash Just wanted to say I find it very interesting and somewhat humorous that your answer and BKlassen's answer to my question, which were posted minutes apart and contained almost the same information have such a huge discrepancy in votes. Says something about voting patterns I think.

4:14 PM

I have to go for a while

4:40 PM

Anyone interested in helping me compile examples of good questions for the help page?

Is it just me or should the following apply to basically every question on the site?

o Context: What are you trying to accomplish
o Restrictions: What will make one answer better than another
o Already accomplished research: What have you tried or looked into already

@AndyD273 @Green Opinion ^

@Aify You too

Secespitus

@James Yes, those things should apply to every question on the site. For which topic are you searching questions?

@Secespitus Looking for one each on: flora and fauna, languages and cultures, buildings and infrastructure, religions and history, technology and magic

@James Seems reasonable. any chance that we can get that short list on the "Ask a Question" page?

@AndyD273 That's actually what I am working on, updating the whole page.

Secespitus

For language maybe How can I make my languages structurally less like English?

4:50 PM

@Secespitus Good choice.

Secespitus

How do I protect my shop from teleporters? does a good job explaining the magic system relevant for the question

For Fauna maybe Designing an animal that wants to be eaten, which shows parallels to flora as research and real-world cases of animals that "want to be eaten"

@Secespitus I was selfishly thinking of my sonic cat question :D though that's good too.

5:09 PM

@Secespitus Oh, wow, that was a loooooong time ago.

Ash

@MikeNichols Yeah that happens sometimes I don't think there's any particular reason just that some people find one answer more accessible I suppose.

scohe001

5:44 PM

If anyone has a second, can I get some eyeballs on this sandbox? I'm hoping to post tomorrow morning if I can get it on topic (which seems to be up in the air atm)

@scohe001 Looking forward to that.

Why do I get the feeling people downvote questions if they disagree/don't like them, instead of following the "Downvote: This question shows lack of research effort; it is unclear or not useful" guideline? They're not for if you don't like something, people, they're for when something needs to be improved. I've seen it on tons of q's now that I can see vote counts.

scohe001

@Hosch250 Haha you already have an idea for an answer?

No, I want to see the answers.

scohe001

You're not the only one!

5:54 PM

@HDE226868 I've been thinking. A) if you were made of unobtanium, it would, by definition, not be unobtanium anymore, and B) if you were made of unobtanium, most governments would have a vested interest in making life interesting for you.

6:08 PM

@Ash I find myself wondering if the comments had anything to do with it. The other answer has a highly upvoted comment beneath it which makes me think maybe good comments on answers would correlate with more votes for that answer. Of course, once an answer has a slight lead we would expect a runaway effect because people read it first. Perhaps it was merely random chance.

@James Nuance to your propsoal. Every question must have a two of the three things in each question.

Ash

@MikeNichols Could be, it's probably a combination of small effects leading to a large difference.

You must have a starting state, a transition function and an end state.

@Green Pondering that idea...

Your context feels a lot like an odd mix of starting state (you used the word 'context') but then mention an end state.

To respond to a question, we who answer, can only work on one of those three. Asking us to answer two of the three should be closed under too broad, idea generation, opinion-based etc, etc.

So each question should have three of the following four elements: Two of the three from [start state, transition function, end state] and prior research.

@James does that help?

Granted, I'm in a very simulation based mindset at the moment because I'm trying to learn computational fluid dynamics (and it's a huge field with tons of math I've never touched before.)

6:17 PM

@Green Yes. I am including something similar (and linking to a meta answer you wrote) in the section that talks about asking questions related to events/activities

@James what's the answer I wrote?

rather, where is it so I can go read it again?

Q: Finding a more objective way to identify questions that are too broad

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This is an attempt to settle a discussion started by Mourdos almost a year ago. I would like to know what others think of this. There is the full version here but I made some modifications to the proposition, see below. I believe this could help people write their questions and help users deter...

discussion on-topic too-broad

@James That's a good answer if I do say so myself. :)

I agree.

6:33 PM

@James There's another keyword set used in software testing. It uses the keywords GIVEN, WHEN, THEN

GIVEN a situation

WHEN an event happens

THEN a new situation appears or something results.

Bingo

Bingo to what?

Constraints can be added to any of those three keywords.

A more complex situation would be written.

GIVEN real world physics

AND slightly slower speed of light

WHEN a war starts

AND the combatants are medievel Europe kings

THEN what happens?

Hi @HDE226868

@Green Hey!

@HDE226868 how goes school?

@Green It's good! A month and a day until I go back, although I'm doing research there now.

6:39 PM

@HDE226868 what's your research on?

I had reason to touch high energy plasma physics this last weekend. Holy crap, that's complicated stuff.

The stellar winds of hot O-type star - studying the x-rays emitted from the winds.

@HDE226868 sounds fun! How much data is there on hot O-type stars?

is this spectra analysis?

afk for a few.

Yeah, x-ray spectra - mostly data from Chandra.

adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2010ApJ...719.1767L should give you an idea of what we're doing; many of the coauthors are in our group. Although at Swarthmore it's just the three of us this summer.

6:55 PM

What is a 'partially optically thick stellar wind'?

@Green It's optically thick at the base, near where it's emitted, and optically thing in the outer portions

Wow. That's a crazy strong solar wind. So dense at the start it's translucent.

Does that mean you can see it at the base, and it just kind of thins/fades/disperses as it goes out?

In this case, though, we're talking about being optically thick/thin for x-rays, not necessarily visible light.

It doesn't enshroud the star like a Wolf-Rayet star's wind might.

So that means really dense electron clouds?

7:01 PM

Eh. Not hugely dense. The density at a radius $r$ is equal to the mass-loss rate divided by ($4\pi r^2 v(r)$), with $v$ the velocity at $r$. Calculating the density from that gives you . . . let me check.

Well, for Zeta Puppis, at two stellar radii away, you're looking at a density of 10^-13 kg/m^3-ish.

Which is actually much greater than the solar wind at comparable distances.

@Green Wanna bet nothing changes?

@Hosch250 No bet :)

@Green Select * From Answers Where Physics like 'real world' And C = C*.8 And War = 1 And Combatants In (Select * From Kings Where Region like 'Europe' And Era like 'medieval')

7:16 PM

@AndyD273 Precisely!

I've been doing a lot of SQL today...

@AndyD273 Me too!

I'm redoing the aforementioned leaderboard logic to support filtering over string "descriptor" values.

Performance enhancements included, hopefully.

Aify

@James that looks good to me

The requirements that you stated. Every question should have all three of those.

7:51 PM

@AndyD273 You may have a cyclic variable declaration in there with 'C=C*0.8'. Something like 'WorldC = C *0.8' would avoid that problem ;)

Though it's a where clause, not a variable declaration. I'm not setting C to C*0.8, I'm looking for worlds where C = C*0.8
Though a between statement does make more sense. "Where C Between C*0.7 And C*0.9"

Hey @Green, You're on Conlang, right? Mind giving me some feedback on something?

@FoxElemental I know very little about conlangs but I'll have a look.

Sure, thanks. It's over in Conlang chat--the latest message is mine, and I'd like help on how to make it a little less broad/POB. It's the basis of a question I want to ask.

@Green You need a link?

@FoxElemental that would be most helpful, thank you.

8:03 PM

Here

sciencealert.com/…

@AndyD273 MeerKAT is so exciting! I'm really happy for when the Square Kilometer Array - MeerKAT's successor - sees first light within the next decade. There's so much progress to be made.

@HDE226868 I wonder what it would look like in the visible spectrum. Still fun though

@AndyD273 The galactic center?

yeah. At that kind of detail

8:11 PM

It's largely obscured by a whole lot of dust at visible wavelengths, unfortunately, so we'll likely never get optical images that good.

Darn dust

Yup. So that's partly why those images are so cool.

@HDE226868 Psssh. We just need a little FTL to get above the galactic plane then we can see the core as clearly as we want ;)

@Green That would be awesome.

Let me know if you get that to work. :-)

@HDE226868 I sure will.

8:27 PM

@HDE226868 The whole world will know.

Maybe I'll just invent a torchship. FTL seems a bit difficult. Torchships seem much easier.

@Green The Bussard Ramjet always seemed like a fun idea...

@AndyD273 Maybe use that for long distance cruise mode.

Has anyone seen meta proposals for a close reason called "poorly researched"?

I think I'd prefer "did you even try to look this up on your own?"

with the understanding that google does not give the same results to everyone for the same search string

@AndyD273 As in that feeling when your malicious half-sibling watches so much illegal porn that that's all Google shows?

You know, that reminds me. Apparently Lichess has a mode for just cheaters. If your account is flagged, you only get to interact with other cheaters.

I think more websites need that.

@Hosch250 Sounds like someone need to teach someone else about incognito mode.

8:38 PM

@AndyD273 LOL.

Google still watches you, you know, if you are using Chrome.

TFW Spotify pops an ad in the middle of the aria.

I mean, I only use incognito mode to watch those clickbait youtube videos without having to worry about them showing up in my watch history and affecting my recommendations. I really wish they had a built in "I really don't like this video, but it looks like it might be a train wreck so I kinda want to see if it turns out the way I think it will, but I don't want to watch anything else like it ever again" mode.