i should be writing

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Cake day: August 8th, 2023

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  • you don't need a lot of computers there, it all can even work without communication with power company. on medium voltage (15kV) lines, that would be reclosers every few kilometers, and these do trip when short to ground (>0.5A) is detected. but no one does that on low voltage, because potential for damage is much less. the difference between euro and american grids is that americans have medium voltage line going down every single street, and because of low voltages and high power draw conductors would have to be of monstrous size otherwise. i understand that GFCIs are rather uncommon out there, and these aren't usually installed in substations either. there are also lots of smaller transformers in american grid and that would make costs of putting all that protection circuitry even higher (in my home village there was 1 15/0.4kV substation per some 250 people, or 80ish houses. americans can have one transformer per one house) gas line could be plastic, so it would be isolating and so it'd be limited to that one house


  • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.detochapotraphouseWell there's your problem.
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    edit-2
    20 hours ago

    that sounds pretty dangerous and i'm not sure if it would even work, because for it to work it requires line to get shorted somewhere else with better ground resistance, tripping breaker at substation. if it fails, you have now high step voltage on the ground and not just near water pipes underground. or it requires line to be cut, and to be sure you'd need to hit all 4 (euro) or 3 (american) wires or insulators. or you could try to pull out fuses at substation, (with insulated tools, on low voltage side) at least for these that i've seen it's possible (like this one https://www.sonepar.fr/catalog/fr-FR/products/05584019458). if fuses are bolted on tho, shit outta luck. (no idea what americans are using)

    e: the more i read about american electrical code, the more horrified i get. you can get mains voltages of 120v phase-neutral, 208v phase-neutral, 208v interphase, 230v interphase, 240v interphase, 240v phase-neutral, 277v phase-neutral, perhaps 416v phase-neutral, 480v interphase, or perhaps 480v phase-neutral. of which 277v and 480v are for business customers only? (and 347v, 600v in canada)

    this can only be a result of plug manufacturers conspiracy

    Show

    High-leg delta (also known as wild-leg, stinger leg, bastard leg, high-leg, orange-leg, red-leg, dog-leg delta) is a type of electrical service connection for three-phase electric power installations. It is used when both single and three-phase power is desired to be supplied from a three phase transformer (or transformer bank)

    if you want to supply both three-phase and single-phase, supply three-phase as symmetric three-phase + neutral and supply single-phase as phase-to-neutral. it's simple, it's sane, it's standardized, and it's efficient in copper. that way nobody needs 200A circuits, 7kV transmission line running down every damn street and substation every 5 houses because all high power loads are three-phase, that also means no large imbalances in load happen

    it looks like end result of decades of penny pinching managerialism with zero planning for any standardization




  • skillissuer@discuss.tchncs.detochapotraphouseWell there's your problem.
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    edit-2
    23 hours ago

    according to that reddit post, during a storm power line fell on gas meter, energizing gas line. now, that means that current flows bypassing meter and breakers entirely, going to ground via gas line, glowing flex, then water pipes and/or neutral. normal breakers won't trip, because neutral does not have breakers. GFCI should trip, but it does nothing to stop gas pipe from glowing because current that heats it doesn't flow through there. to unfuck this particular situation you'd need to trip breaker at substation, or disconnect power line going to that area

    gas line could be shut off in principle, but it'll be energized, so it's not an option


  • This comes from a long line of shoddy "research" exaggerating potential effects of nuclear war. With MAD in place, like it was for the last 70 years, there's no need to make shit up, it'd be as bad as it can be. At first, they tried to convince people that NOx generated in fireball would strip atmosphere out of ozone; when proven wrong with experimental evidence (supersonic airliners generate some NOx; their output was big enough that it should have some effect on ozone layer according to their model, but it had none) they pivoted to "nuclear winter":

    Although never openly acknowledged by the multi-disciplinary team who authored the most popular 1980s TTAPS model, in 2011 the American Institute of Physics states that the TTAPS team (named for its participants, who had all previously worked on the phenomenon of dust storms on Mars, or in the area of asteroid impact events: Richard P. Turco, Owen Toon, Thomas P. Ackerman, James B. Pollack and Carl Sagan) announcement of their results in 1983 "was with the explicit aim of promoting international arms control".[91] However, "the computer models were so simplified, and the data on smoke and other aerosols were still so poor, that the scientists could say nothing for certain".[91]

    When proven wrong again with empirical evidence of oil fires of 1991 Gulf War, they shut up for some time:

    When Operation Desert Storm began in January 1991, coinciding with the first few oil fires being lit, Dr. S. Fred Singer and Carl Sagan discussed the possible environmental effects of the Kuwaiti petroleum fires on the ABC News program Nightline. Sagan again argued that some of the effects of the smoke could be similar to the effects of a nuclear winter, with smoke lofting into the stratosphere, beginning around 48,000 feet (15,000 m) above sea level in Kuwait, resulting in global effects. He also argued that he believed the net effects would be very similar to the explosion of the Indonesian volcano Tambora in 1815, which resulted in the year 1816 being known as the "Year Without a Summer".

    The idea of oil well and oil reserve smoke pluming into the stratosphere serving as a main contributor to the soot of a nuclear winter was a central idea of the early climatology papers on the hypothesis; they were considered more of a possible contributor than smoke from cities, as the smoke from oil has a higher ratio of black soot, thus absorbing more sunlight.[93][101]

    In a 1992 follow-up, Peter Hobbs and others had observed no appreciable evidence for the nuclear winter team's predicted massive "self-lofting" effect and the oil-fire smoke clouds contained less soot than the nuclear winter modelling team had assumed.[118]

    The atmospheric scientist tasked with studying the atmospheric effect of the Kuwaiti fires by the National Science Foundation, Peter Hobbs, stated that the fires' modest impact suggested that "some numbers [used to support the Nuclear Winter hypothesis]... were probably a little overblown."[119]

    then came back again hoping that someone would not remember the former and believe them. Even one of authors (Owen B. Toon) is the same, they cite their old papers and use old wrong numbers. This is not somebody trying to figure out how reality works, this is somebody trying to sell you a story. That story tries to make them relevant, but they aren't anymore, and more importantly they're wrong

    This all is also before noticing that 70s era nuclear arsenal doesn't even exist anymore, so their predictions lack a plausible starting point in the first place. It's horseshit start to finish



  • one small integer is not enough, two small integers are better (lab journal initials/number and sample number, like AC7-295. something like AC7-295A, then AC7-295B and so on if needed. that's how i do it anyway) this way there's no possibility of mixup with other people's samples and samples described in old lab journals










  • Like, so what if we store our tBuLi with other low-flash point flammables? And pyrophoric oxidizers? In the same bin? That's stuck in a block of ice because in the 30-year-old freezer because it hasn't ever been de-iced?

    That's just bad management and you shouldn't store tBuLi that long anyway because it'll decompose. You shouldn't put it in freezer either

    Oh, while you're here, does this still smell like DCM? I can't tell if I rotavapped it all off and the NMR tubes all need aqua regia (sorry my b).

    just put it on high vacuum

    What are you working with that requires aqua regia to clean NMR tubes? I've only had to use piranha once in a decade, while cleaning things that acetone, DCM, and basic ethanol won't touch, and this was just after moving to another lab




  • i don't think it captures entire picture. it's pete thiel, self hating gay rubbing shoulders with nazis, vanquisher of gawker, surveiller of facebook, all-seeing eye of DoD and so on and so on, at some point figured that he's 50 and won't live forever, and this made him scared. it made him so scared that he bought into transhumanism hook line and sinker, wants to be frozen in liquid nitrogen when that motherfucker finally croaks, but he's also afraid of that, so he also bought into untested life-extension and performance-enhancement supplements as well. because no sane ethical board would allow for clinical trial for these (and it's obviously 1984, not like it would be in his imagined libertarian cyberpunk future) he made enhanced games as a means to source willing participants, so that he will take some of these scam pills only after these are tested on the poors (by his people)