The Factory Floor

Secret

09:52

https://chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/53206073#53206073
I'll be honest here. Hexapod thinking is very weird

Gryphon

10:06

@Mephistopheles That guy who shot up some politicians at a baseball game a few years back was an avid Bernie Sanders supporter. That doesn't make Bernie responsible, or a bad person, or even mean that what he says is wrong (it is, but not because a lunatic thought it was a rationale for shooting people). You'll find loonies on every side of every argument. The fact that they exist isn't any kind of proof against that side.

@Mephistopheles Ben isn't a nihilist, (and I daresay the vast majority of his listeners aren't either), so there's no cognitive dissonance here. Ben's not Islamaphobic, he just dislikes people who think blowing random stuff up is OK. Unfortunately, many of those people are Muslims, but he's never, to my knowledge, supported anything generically anti-Muslim.

Finally, there is most certainly a set of beliefs (human beings have intrinsic value, human beings should be free to make their own choices, etc.) that became prevalent in "the west" (North America and Europe), and which make up what Ben and many other conservatives term "Western Civilization."

Ah, in regards to your nihilism/pessimism correction, I don't think that Ben's pessimistic about the general trend of history. He's frequently pessimistic about general events, but he's generally optimistic over the long term.

Hosch250

14:24

In other news, Iran admitted they blew the plane up by accident, and now there are a bunch more riots over there.

Gryphon

@Hosch250 I mean, riots in Iran isn't really news per se.

Hosch250

No, just there are more of them.

I really hope they can work things out without us getting involved.

We'd just screw them over like we have Afghanistan and Iraq :(

Gryphon

The problem in most of the middle east is a cultural one, not a regime one. You can take out an evil regime, but if the problems are in the culture, they'll just have a new evil regime by this time next week.

Hosch250

I've heard Iran isn't so much as the other countries. They were more/less a flourishing democracy until the cold war screwed them with both countries manipulating them.

If they could go back to that, it would be great.

TBF, I don't know how much of my information is accurate.

Gryphon

I don't know tons about the region in general. Beyond the fact that the place basically blows up every 5-10 years.

Hosch250

14:31

Either way, though, if they handle it themselves, it'll be a lot more of a cultural shift than if we go in.

Gryphon

Very true. Although there are definitely outside-motivated cultural shifts that have worked extremely well. Post-WWII Japan, for example.

Hosch250

That's one of my biggest issues with our occupation. Even when people over there talk about how we're keeping them free and safe (other than the "front line" villages, more/less), they've shown no collective willingness to take responsibility and keep themselves that way.

There are many cases of individuals doing so, but not enough for it to be a community effort, like it needs to be for them to be able to do it on their own.

AndyD273

I think the real trick is if they can avoid shooting their citizens this time. Maybe with Soleimani out of the picture someone less blood thirsty will be able to hold their fire.

Hosch250

And if they don't even want to do it on their own, why should we do it?

AndyD273

@Hosch250 I agree with this

Hosch250

14:35

@AndyD273 Trump sent a tweet out saying we're watching them and they'd be wise not to start.

AndyD273

Well, considering all of the other nations that had people on that plane, there are quite a few eyes on them

Hosch250

Especially the UK and its satellites Canada and Australia.

Gryphon

@AndyD273 If we had a Prime Minister who was useful for any purpose other than embarrassing us in front of the world, we might actually do something.

@Hosch250 I resent that.

Hosch250

@Gryphon Sorry.

AndyD273

But totalitarian dictators don't usually care about that kind of things, because their citizens aren't people they are resources. If the resources are acting up, shoot them and get the rest of the resources back in line.

Hosch250

14:39

Yeah, the Iranian gov just issued a warning for all protests to shut down or else.

Gryphon

@Hosch250 Just because we're too polite to rebel...

Hosch250

Yeah, in the US, we're all wondering why you haven't yet. You're zillions of times the size of the UK.

Gryphon

@Hosch250 We aren't actually part of them. We don't have to rebel.

Hosch250

> The commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami, said that if he hadn’t suggested the cause of the crash was a missile strike, nobody would have found out.

I wonder if he was the "source" that leaked information to the US, Canada, UK, and Australia...

If he is, we have a pretty powerful ally in a high position.

Gryphon

@Hosch250 Why is it that the part of that my eyes leap to is the fact that the general's name is literally "Salami".

AndyD273

14:42

I was going to joke that the terrorist that got killed was Salami, because I couldn't figure out how to spell his name. Glad I wasn't lazy this time

Gryphon

@AndyD273 I mean, he's basically salami now...

@Hosch250 It's heartening to see that there might at least be someone with a reasonable level of sanity in their government.

AndyD273

15:26

I thought it was interesting that there was a report that the Iranian government put USA and Israel flags on the ground in front of the university, and the students all walked around them, instead of over them like the government intended. It's nice that there are people who respect other people, even if they are supposed to be enemies.

Hosch250

@AndyD273 I saw the video on Reddit. There were a handful of people standing on them, but most were walking around them.

I regret to say that most US students probably wouldn't show the same respect to their flag.

Mephistopheles

@Hosch250 They shouldn't, nothing deserves respect without any merit to back it up

And especially not when the scale tips in the flaws' favour

Gryphon

@Mephistopheles You believe that the US has done more harm than good?

Hosch250

Great Stork Derby

The Great Stork Derby was a contest held from 1926 to 1936, in which women residing in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, competed to produce the most babies in order to qualify for an unusual bequest in a will. The race was the product of a scheme by Charles Vance Millar (1853–1926), a Toronto lawyer, financier, and practical joker, who bequeathed the residue of his significant estate to the woman in Toronto who could produce the most children in the decade following his death.It is one of many unusual bequests listed in the will, along with giving a vacation home in Jamaica to a group of three men who...

LOL

Gryphon

@Hosch250 You'd never heard about that?

I guess it is kinda a Canadian thing.

Hosch250

15:37

No, I hadn't.

Gryphon

He did a bunch of other hilarious stuff in his will too.

Mephistopheles

@Gryphon Yep, usually by not doing anything.

Gryphon

@Mephistopheles That's... not actually doing harm, under the technical definition. But continue your argument.

Mephistopheles

They sat on their ass during the Revolution of 1956

Hungarian Revolution of 1956

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956 (Hungarian: 1956-os forradalom), or the Hungarian Uprising, was a nationwide revolution against the Hungarian People's Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from 23 October until 10 November 1956. Leaderless at the beginning, it was the first major threat to Soviet control since the Red Army drove Nazi Germany from its territory at the End of World War II in Europe. The revolt began as a student protest, which attracted thousands as they marched through central Budapest to the Hungarian Parliament building, calling out on the streets using a van with...

Also, there's Wilson... you can't erase Wilson

Gryphon

@Mephistopheles I mean, they're the ones who did eventually beat the USSR. So they kinda just played the long game. Which is a fair bit better than nuclear war, IMHO.

Mephistopheles

15:44

@Gryphon Then have the basic decency and tell the truth to the Hungarians, that they won't receive help.

Gryphon

@Mephistopheles This is kinda my first time more than vaguely hearing about the whole thing, but if they didn't do that, then they probably should have. Still doesn't outweigh being the largest protector of freedom in the world over the past century.

Mephistopheles

@Gryphon They can't even get gun-crime under control because everyone forgot the REGULATED MILITIA in the Second Amendment (which was written pre-mg-42 and pre-Lolumbine).

Gryphon

@Mephistopheles OK, this one I can't past up. Firstly, the "well-regulated militia" bit is in what's known as the prefatory clause, which means it's the stuff that tells you what the reasoning is, not the actual "this is the law" bit.

Secondly, here is a lovely video of a fully automatic machine gun that was purchased for the war of 1812 (when many of the founders were still alive, the original design was test-fired on the estate of Hamilton). So yeah, gun control laws now would restrict weapons that were unrestricted back in the late 1700s.

Thirdly, if you need more evidence the founders were OK with pretty much anything, here is a letter from Madison to the owner of a ship, basically saying "yeah, you can have a bunch of cannons."

Mephistopheles

@Gryphon That piece of shit? How does that even compare to an AR-15 with a double drum-mag, in terms of CMPM (Children murdered per minute).

Gryphon

Finally, in Canada, we've had very few problems with mass shootings (one in a Mosque quite a while back, and that's about it I can think of). And semi-automatic guns are perfectly legal here. We've got more limits on magazine capacity, but you can get around that by, get this, sticking a screw in any size of magazine so you can't fit more bullets in. Which would take all of 10 seconds in your car to remove before you go shoot up a place.

Mephistopheles

16:00

@Gryphon "There wasn't a catastrophe yet, so it's fine"

Gryphon

@Mephistopheles In terms of CMPM, you've gotta have a pretty fast trigger finger to get 100 rpm out of an AR-15, and accuracy doesn't matter as much if you're 10 feet away from the kids you're murdering. In terms of CMASD (Children murdered after shooter died), it beats the AR quite nicely. Cause the thing just sorta keeps firing. And if you drop it, it'll scoot around on the floor, shooting bullets all over the place.

Boston Massacre

The Boston Massacre, known to the British as the Incident on King Street, was a confrontation on March 5, 1770 in which British soldiers shot and killed several people while being harassed by a mob in Boston. The event was heavily publicized by leading Patriots such as Paul Revere and Samuel Adams. British troops had been stationed in the Province of Massachusetts Bay since 1768 in order to support crown-appointed officials and to enforce unpopular Parliamentary legislation. Amid tense relations between the civilians and the soldiers, a mob formed around a British sentry and verbally abused him...

Six dead, five wounded. Admittedly multiple shooters.

Mephistopheles

@Gryphon Listen, just use AP rounds, aim for the chest and make sure they can't escape, you should be able to get a score of at least 50 before the cops arrive. Brenton managed it on normal difficulty.

Though that was a mosque.

Gryphon

Also, if you want to stop shooting deaths, you'll start by banning handguns. They're far more lethal (both in absolute numbers and even more in terms of percentages of handguns that kill people).

Mephistopheles

If you get shot with an AR, you're toast without armor. With armor, you just whip out your katana and play fruit ninja on the shooter.

Gryphon

CNN source, so if it's biased, it'll be to your side.

@Mephistopheles If you're wearing full body armour, I can run a lot faster than you. You're gonna need more than a katana.

Hosch250

16:12

@Mephistopheles ARs make surprisingly good clubs. You aren't going anywhere with that katana, armor or not.

Gryphon

@Hosch250 There's also the advantage where, if you manage to knock any of the armour off or out of place with your club, you can just shoot the guy.

There's also the more traditional solutions to things with armour, e.g. grenades. Or, easier to acquire, molotov cocktails.

Hosch250

@Gryphon Aren't those basically the same thing?

Gryphon

@Hosch250 I mean, molotovs are a really crappy homemade subtype of incendiary grenades. So, all molotovs are grenades, but not all grenades are molotovs (obviously).

Hosch250

What I meant.

Gryphon

I do have a pretty good idea as to how I'd cobble together a full-on incendiary grenade though. It'd take a bit more time and care than a basic molotov, but I'm reasonably certain I'd retain all fingers and limbs.

I'm less certain as to whether I'd retain my status of not being in jail though.

Hosch250

16:23

Depends how you use it.

Gryphon

@Hosch250 I'm pretty sure just having the thing would break a cornucopia of laws. Of course, they can't arrest you if they don't know you did it, so there is that.

Hosch250

Exactly.

@Gryphon Technically, you should've said it would break a pinata of laws.

Gryphon

Just for the record, do not use the homemade incendiary grenade as a pinata.

Hosch250

That would kind of belong on r/tifu.

Gryphon

The other problem with the whole idea is, I'm fairly certain I couldn't get some of the raw materials up here. I definitely could down in the states, but you might have to actually disassemble cartridges or something up here. Which would probably require a license to get, because Canada.

I know a guy from my high school built a shotgun in his garage, but it wasn't any kind of a standard bore, so he had to disassemble normal shells and repack them to use the thing.

I'm also not clear as to the legality of that particular project, but I don't think he got in trouble.

AndyD273

16:36

I personally think there should be a lot more guns... Take that guy that was going to shoot up a church in Texas a couple weeks ago. Guy pulls out a shotgun, gets two shots off, and then receives a bullet between the eyes from the armed guy 20 yards away. If everyone there had been unarmed, then who knows how many would have died.

Gryphon

@AndyD273 Yeah, apparently there were about half a dozen people pulling out guns when he went down, so even if that one guy who shot him hadn't been there, the guy would still have been stopped quickly.

AndyD273

They were very well trained. All the congregation ducked below the pews for cover, and the security team quickly removed the threat.

Hosch250

And permanently.

Green

@Hosch250 at least in the States, the ATF doesn't care if you own all the makings of explosives, bombs or whatever. It's when you assemble them that they care. I bet Canada is similar.

Ingredients for explosives can be had for cheap on the internet. Owning them isn't illegal. Combining without a license is very illegal.

Hosch250

@Green Technically, they don't care until they get a complaint. Like the Waco guys.

Gryphon

16:51

@Green Canada does tend to be a bit touchy about such things. Certainly touchier than the US, in any case.

Green

@Hosch250 also true.

Hosch250

They got busted because they had a lot of guns, although the official complaint they were busted on wasn't accurate.

Green

@Gryphon I live in Canada too (recent immigrant) but from what I've seen, I believe you.

Hosch250

@Green Wouldn't your reactor be easier to build without interference in the US?

Gryphon

@Green You can generally get pretty much all of the same stuff up here, you just need several kilos of paperwork to go with it.

Or at least, if you can get it without a license in the states, you can usually get it here with a license.

Hosch250

16:54

On a more cheerful topic, don't die alone in the bath. You dissolve very quickly. Thanks, Reddit.

Rory Alsop

@AndyD273 none :-)

I know - but I thought it was a funny joke :-)

Gryphon

@RoryAlsop I mean, presumably the guy would still have started stabbing people or something.

Hosch250

I wonder when the French are going to pass laws making lorries illegal.

Gryphon

I mean, the French have been collectively insane for going on five centuries. It's not exactly a surprise.

Hosch250

At least they were insane enough to help us (the states) win our independence.

AndyD273

17:07

I hear the UK is banning open carry narwhal tusks. Can't have people defend themselves against terrorists.

Hosch250

@AndyD273 I was going to say carry a Kabar, but then I remembered they already banned chef knives.

AndyD273

They were going around confiscating butter knives. *
* slightly hyperbolic. They were confiscating knives. A butter knife just got caught up in the sweep.

Hosch250

I'll just keep mine safely hidden.

It's illegal for me to carry it in our cities too.

AndyD273

One haul

Two of the things are not like the others...

Hosch250

A bunch of chef/fillet/steak knives, a few forks, and a few swords.

AndyD273

17:11

A spoon, and a knife shapener

Gryphon

That's actually a rather nice looking rapier. I wonder what they'll do with it.

AndyD273

I mean, the knife sharpener is slightly pointy... But you gotta be pretty hard pressed to decide to use that. If your opponent has a knife, you're only going to make them more deadly

Hosch250

Support for the royalty must really be weak over there if those things are considered illegal.

OTOH, the way Andrew is carrying on, I'm really not surprised.

Gryphon

What's with that little tiny one slightly to the right of the center, at the top? You're not going to be doing much damage with that one.

@Hosch250 "Of course I didn't rape a bunch of teenagers. I don't sweat, thus QED."

AndyD273

@RoryAlsop I'll grant that point, since my wording was a bit vague. But considering that the guy was a felon, and a mental health case, him having any kind of weapon was double illegal, so adding another gun law would have only made it triple illegal, and I'm not sure even that would have stopped him.

Gryphon

17:17

@AndyD273 We must make it octuple illegal! Nobody will do it then!

Hosch250

18:04

I think I might've invented a new card-based game.

It'll take a certain number of players (I'm thinking about 5 would be good).

Each player draws a card that gives them a skill set.

Each player represents a "nation".

So, one player might pull an "industrialized" nation. Something like Japan, where their specialty is industry. They don't really have a military, but they have the skill to build one if necessary. They don't have a super high population, though, so any losses are hard to recover from.

Another might pull the military/industrial card. Something like USA. This nation is very powerful early in the game, but can be taken down by alliances. To reduce the heavy-hitting threat until alliances can be formed, skills (for all cards, probably) would have to be scaled, so they have the ICBM skill, but can't use it for N terms.

Another might pull the raw-materials and population card. Think China after WWII. Their military and industry were mostly destroyed, but they had the raw population to present a serious fight in Korea.

Each player hides their original skillset, but can develop new skills over periods of turns.

Gryphon

@Hosch250 this is also basically Russia heading into WWI. No real military, just a crapload of soldiers to throw at the enemy.

It sounds like a really neat game though.

Hosch250

For example, they could build a factory (I guess N factories would make a nation "industrialized", so they could eventually unlock that full skillset) if they skipped N turns.

Or they could build an ICBM system if they passed X turns.

Forming an alliance with another nation allows them to pool their resources and unlock capabilities faster.

Any skills built would be public.

So you could deduce who had what by alliances changing the speed new skills are developed at. And when an alliance is formed, each player can choose what capabilities their ally learns they have.

Like, the "USA" card could pretend to be the "Japan" card by only releasing the industry skillset.

The goal of the game is to conquer the other nations.

So there would be an attack mechanism somehow too, that costs resources.

I imagine most games would end up with 2-3 nations fighting it out after mutually knocking the weakest ones out and gaining their skills. Knocking a nation out would result in the same capabilities as an alliance, except across the whole range of the victim's skills (i.e. no hiding).

So they could use those skills to develop them for their own country, but it takes time to rebuild.

In other news, don't get in a car accident at high speed.

I was reading Reddit yesterday.

One person told a story about how one person got blasted into the glovebox. They couldn't find them at first, and thought they'd been thrown out of the car.

Another person felt fine except for a bellyache, opened their jacket, their guts dropped out, and they ended up dead.

Some people got caught on their seatbelt and got torn in two.

Way to re-make me scared of driving. I like it, but knowledge, in this case, is fear.

And don't drive a motorcycle. Great way to become pavement hamburger.

Gryphon

18:26

@Hosch250 Another way to do it would be to have the "who you are" cards open (it's fairly simple for a nation to tell if another one's developed, has a large population, etc.), but secretly draw the skill cards so they don't know whether you got nukes or not, whether you have airbases or tank factories, etc.

Hosch250

True.

But that way, you get the "developed" card, but your skills might all be military--and you aren't supposed to have a major military.

Gryphon

Have a few skill decks. One for military, one for economics, one for culture, etc.

Hosch250

I figured I'd just lock down all skills for about 2-5 turns, and alliances would reveal this stuff.

And then as they started using their skills, more would be revealed, and inside 10 turns, everyone would know who they were.

Could definitely try a few variants and see what works.

Gryphon

@Hosch250 We could probably find some way to play it online if you can't find any/enough live playtesters. I'd help you out if we found a time that works.

Hosch250

Yeah, I just need to finish developing it :)

I'd need to figure out a few more nation types and skill types, and figure out what a turn would involve and develop the attack mechanism, to start.

Gryphon

18:31

@Hosch250 If you want 5 players, you can do 5 nation types, so everyone gets one.

Hosch250

I need at least 5 if I have 5 players.

At least have slight differences between a few, even if they basically end up as an "industrialized" type.

I was thinking 8 would be good so there's some variety and the same game can't just be played each time.

Maybe a weak country type like Luxembourg that has to ally with someone to survive, but played skillfully could expand and win.

Gryphon

How about Industrial (your Japan example), Resourced (Russia/China), Military (Murica), Insurgent (or possibly Fanatical?) (Iran, Veitcong during 'Nam), Wealthy (Switzerland), and Technological (maybe German or something? More advanced techwise in general). That's 6 to start with.

Hosch250

Maybe one country that controls trade and is weak in its own right, but any enemies fall hard if they don't cooperate. Kind of like how overland trade between Europe/Asia routed through the Turkey/Syria region.

@Gryphon Yeah, something like that.

I could build it so "insurgent" was more "developing" and they could either develop militarily or industrially.

Where they'd have an advantage if they focused on one before entering the other.

Gryphon

@Hosch250 My thought was they'd have a strong grassroots/populace support, and maybe terrorists or kamikaze-type stuff.

At least to start, so they don't get overwhelmed early.

And "wealthy" fits quite well in your "controls trade" role.

Hosch250

Yeah, something like that.

Gryphon

18:38

Probably also very versatile in how you develop them.

Hosch250

Although, locking out skills and having skills hidden would potentially help with that.

So, for example, a player of that country could either make some alliances early on.

Gryphon

What exactly do you mean by "locking out" skills?

Hosch250

Or, they could bluff and pretend to be the industrial/military complex type and reject all alliances.

@Gryphon Where a skill can't be used for a certain number of turns.

To prevent things like the military type just insta-nuking an enemy and hoping they also didn't have a military.

Gryphon

Oh yeah, that makes sense. Like what you were saying earlier with ICBMs.

Hosch250

I could also have a pure-military type, like Germany leading up to WWI. I mean, yeah, they had industry, but almost everything was being poured into the military.

So that gives me balanced military/industry, full-industry that could easily build a military, and full-military that could easily build an industry.

AndyD273

18:41

@Hosch250 Kinda like China pretending to be developing for the purposes of the world bank, while also having a huge developed economy, and world colonization goals?

Gryphon

Another possible way to do something similar to skill-locking is to have some kind of "high-tech" deck that nobody gets to draw from at the beginning. Which would have nukes and stuff in it, and you could research stuff from it once you've built up a bit. Not too late, to keep some of the military-industrial guy's advantage.

Hosch250

@AndyD273 I was thinking this would be more like Cuba or NK. Rejecting most aid and pretending to be stronger than they are early in the game while building strength as they can.

Gryphon

@Hosch250 I mean, Cuba was rather accepting of help from certain people. We had a whole crisis named after it.

Hosch250

So, they could either be knocked out early on, but weaken the attacker enough that they risk being knocked out right after by another one.

Or they could be left for last because they don't pose a threat--at which point they kind of do.

Gryphon

@Hosch250 I've been that little guy in Risk before. The Americas vs the Asians, with poor little me stuck in Europe. But if either attacks me, they'll weaken their armies enough that the other can wipe them out.

Hosch250

18:45

Yep.

Hi, @Halfthawed.

Just looked at your profile (yeah, I'm a snoop), and I noticed this: "deconstructive analysis". Does that mean you study things by blowing them up?

Halfthawed

'Sup. Don't let my entrance kill the conversation

I deconstruct in a metaphorical sense, usually.

Gryphon

Aww, that's less exciting.

AndyD273

@Halfthawed Metaphorically blow things up?

Gryphon

Still cool, but less exciting.

Halfthawed

As in, I take a look at a complex object and attempt to break in down into as many small parts as I can manage.

AndyD273

18:49

I introduced a co-worker to the "things I won't work with" blog... she seemed quite excited to go through it later

@Halfthawed So more of a hammer kind of thing

Halfthawed

I'm not averse to blowing things up, but usually that kills the 'analysis' component

Hammer, scalpel, chisel, cheesegrater, whatever works best at the time.

AndyD273

"Well, I grated your video card, and found a loose connection. Here are the shavings."

Halfthawed

Never claimed the ability to be a reconstructive analyst

AndyD273

Speaking of the "things I won't work with", one of the comments on this page about peroxide peroxides had a joke that I'm not getting... I'm hoping someone with chemistry knowledge will help me out:

Two chemists walk into a bar. The first says, “Can I have a glass of H2O.”
The second chemist says “Can I have a glass of water too.”
The first chemist broke down in tears – his assassination attempt had failed.

Hosch250

H2O2 is highly explosive or toxic (forget which).

The second chemist was supposed to say "Can I have a glass of H2O too" and the bartender would provide "H2O2".

AndyD273

18:57

Ah, ok. I know that H2O2 is explosive, but I didn't think of that

Gryphon

It is based on a chemistry joke which goes:

Two chemists walk into a bar. The first says, “Can I have a glass of H2O.”
The second chemist says “Can I have a glass of H2O too.”
The second chemist then dies when he's given a glass of H2O2.

And I've been ninja'd.

AndyD273

Makes sense now

I just didn't make the connection to H2O too, cause my brain immediately jumped to "well, H20 is water, what's dangerous about that?"

Gryphon

@AndyD273 Yeah, if you've never heard the original joke, it'd be pretty hard to make the logical leap to this one.

AndyD273

Well, now I feel more informed, so that's good.

Hosch250

> Anyone ever seen it used for a transformation?
You mean, besides from “lab” to “ruin?”

Gryphon

19:03

The line (from the peroxide peroxides article): "the authors report no safety problems at all" cracked me up. If there had been safety problems, it's rather unlikely that there'd be any authors left to report them.

Hosch250

I just read Max Gergel's books.

I've been thinking--if I'd specialized in chemistry, I'd try to build an automated lab somewhat like the botox lab to create this stuff in very small quantities.

Halfthawed

I mean, why would you want to, though?

Hosch250

To say I could?

Gryphon

"The current thinking is that one of the intermediates is the HOOOOO- anion." Not within a kilometre of me it's not. Two kilometres if I'm downwind. I'm no chem major, but even I know that that's not a thing that will be around for any longer than it absolutely must. And will announce very loudly when it stops being around.

Hosch250

I mean, the government would probably pay me massive sums to do it.

Gryphon

19:06

@Hosch250 If you read Ignition, they were paying massive sums for every other chemical under the sun that had so much as a chance of going boom.

Halfthawed

I enjoy reading about these chemicals as much as the next person, but I'm with the 'Stuff I will not work with' mentality of 'You can go throw rocks at the hornet's nest, and I will be over here in my bunker and cheer you on.'

Hosch250

In his book, he told about the gov trying to get companies to create this highly explosive substance.

It was so touchy even the craziest of techs wouldn't do it.

They built their own lab to do it.

It promptly blew the lab and most of the guys working on it to hell.

(Or heaven...)

My organic chem prof in high school told us about her graduate work on an ozonide (if I’m remembering right—anyway it was something exuberantly reactive). She cooked up a nice sample and brought down the window on the hood to go do something else. That was enough. Fortunately the hood was explosion proof, but whoever put it in didn’t think to make the wall explosion proof too. It’s not every day you see people in the hallway looking out of your hood. The glassware was left in very small pieces.

LOL.

AndyD273

@Hosch250 An automated bunker with very strong walls and very weak ceiling. Like a nitroglycerin plant

Halfthawed

This is why chemists are insane. Not all of them, granted, but you will never catch me trying to whip up chemicals that I know will explode if they get looked at funny.

I'll spend my time trying to distill my coffee to be stronger, thank you. Seems a bit less risky to me to try and cram a few quarts of coffee into a single 8-oz cup than work with that stuff.

Hosch250

> Here’s a tip for ozonizer users, learned from a graduate school labmate: When the oxygen tank runs out, make sure that the tank you replace it with is not a hydrogen tank.

Gryphon

19:11

Apparently back when computers were worth their weight in gold (and they weighed a lot), the Air Force took some computer time and decided to use it to figure out what the best rocket fuels would be. Apparently they came up with some stuff that was a) impossible to synthesize, b) would explode if you so much as looked in its general direction, c) was probably going to be acutely toxic, chronically toxic, and carcinogenic, and d) ate anything you put it into in approximately ten seconds.

Needless to say, they never managed to get anybody to so much as try to synthesize the stuff.

AndyD273

@Gryphon Apparently they didn't do it right. If you add more zeros eventually they'll cure someones sanity. Worked for the UCLA.

Dangit, ACLU, not UCLA

@Halfthawed Hmm, my parents have a freeze dryer... I wonder if you could freeze dry a pot of coffee, rehydrate it just slightly, and make a super strong coffee concentrate.

It looks like that might be how instant coffee is made

Halfthawed

20:55

@AndyD273 More or less, yeah. But I wouldn't recommend eating pure instant coffee. It kind of forms a dense syrup in your mouth upon reacting with your saliva and then just stays there for a while unless you wash it down with water, and once you're doing that anyway, you might as well just add the water beforehand.

Gryphon

@Halfthawed Do I want to know how you discovered that?

Halfthawed

It's pretty simple, I ate instant coffee crystals.

Desperate times and all that.

Gryphon

Uni related?

Or work related?

Halfthawed

Work related.

Gryphon

Then I hope you at least got paid well.

Hosch250

21:23

Everyone nice and calm and relaxed?

82

Q: Firing Community Managers: StackExchange is not interested in cooperating with the community, is it?

Less than a month ago, there was some settling of the incident with firing Monica. It's obvious that there was not a lot of approval from the community on the chosen by SE course of action, and on the settlement as well. Today, we are seeing a new wave of SE actions targeted on work with the com...

They fired Shog9 and Robert Cartaino.

Gryphon

@Hosch250 WHAT!!!

Hosch250

TTGH. Have fun!

Gryphon

I'd already stopped flagging and doing review queues, but now I'm done contributing. I'll still hang around in chat, but no more questions, no more answers, no more votes from me. I wasn't a massive user, I probably only earned SE Inc. a few bucks. But that's more than they deserve, so I'm done.

AndyD273

@Gryphon Yeah. The thing is, I don't know where else to find a good conversation with people that I may not agree with that won't immediately turn into a giant insane brawl, but that isn't also an echo chamber of people that believe exactly what I do. Being able to have civil disagreements is pretty nice.

There are a number of people here I'd buy a coffee and have a long conversation with, if distance weren't a thing.

Gryphon

21:42

@AndyD273 That's why I'm going to hang around in chat. But SE doesn't deserve my work (meager though it may have been) anymore. So they're not going to get it.

Also, just in case anyone hasn't seen it, ya'll should probably go upvote this.

AndyD273

I wonder if there is a way to write them several thousand letters of recommendation from people that have appreciated their work.

Gryphon

@AndyD273 Yeah, I just hope he finds a new job he loves where he can help people. He deserves it. Maybe one that's kinda like what this one was before the company turned into a dumpster fire.

Feeds

I was actually a little relieved when I learned that JPEG2000 was used in the DCI digital cinema standard. I was feeling so bad for it!

Gryphon

22:08

In other examples of insanity, apparently a pedophile who's just been convicted in Michigan decided that he self-identified as an 8-year-old girl. Fortunately, the judge was not completely insane and convicted the dude anyway. Someone is actually taking gender theory to at least one of its logical conclusions.

AndyD273

@Gryphon He's not the first.

Gryphon

@AndyD273 Somebody tried this in court before?

AndyD273

Like the guy in the UK that decided he was female so he could go to a woman's prison, where he proceeded to assault other inmates.

Yeah. Unfortunately the UK is more "enlightened" and fell for it.

theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/11/…

Gryphon

@AndyD273 That's also obviously insane, but I haven't heard of somebody going for the "I'm actually a kid" defence before.

AndyD273

Not in a criminal thing, but I did see a documentary about another guy saying he was a 8 yo girl.

I don't know if he molested any of them.

Gryphon

22:17

I mean, if you're loony enough to claim you are one... there's a pretty good chance.

AndyD273

I'm not going to get out the pitchforks and torches just because.

But there is no possible way I'd set up a play date either, and I'd be judgmental of any other parent that did.

Gryphon

@AndyD273 I'm not going to get out the pitchforks and torches, but I am gonna say these people belong in an institution.

AndyD273

I won't argue with that

But I must go home

Gryphon

Have a safe drive.

Or walk or whatever you do.

Mithrandir24601

@Gryphon I did read a comment or something somewhere that had the idea that perhaps it's time to start treating paedophilia as exactly that - a mental illness, in the same way that psychopathy is

Gryphon

22:39

@Mithrandir24601 If that means we put them in an institution away from kids, sounds good to me.

Mithrandir24601

23:07

@Hosch250 I feel a need to say something here. I'm so lost for words, I don't know what to say. Robert was amazing. Shog though... Shog... Without Shog9, SE just isn't the same any more

Gryphon

@Mithrandir24601 I get the feeling that SE hasn't been the same for a while now. We're just getting increasingly visible manifestations of it as we move along.

3

Mithrandir24601

@Gryphon Yeah, something like that

It's just that... As a mod, it's incredibly obvious to me how invaluable Shog is as a person and employee

Mithrandir24601

23:23

13

A: Thank you, Shog9

Shog, I first heard of you many years ago when I started being active on SE. Anyone who came anywhere near meta would inevitably stumble upon one of your many thoughtful, insightful and just damned fun posts. You were instrumental in setting the tone of SE and defining the way we, the community, ...

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