MajorasMaskForever

joined 2 years ago
[–] MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world 3 points 10 hours ago

Several states in the US have laws on the books allowing bikers to conditionally ignore stop signs, but typically to "downgrade" a stop sign to a yield sign. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idaho_stop

The basic premise is that because a bike is slow enough, and the stopping distance of a bike at speed is short enough, a bike can approach an intersection, make a judgment call on if they need to stop, and if they don't expect to get hit, they can cross without coming to a full stop first like a car does.

[–] MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world 2 points 18 hours ago

The point I was snarkily trying to make is that lining up tanks and trucks is a nonsense comparison, any point such a comparison attempts to make is based entirely on a knee jerk emotional reaction, one worthy of r/circlejerk

Even comparing kinetic energy of different vehicles is pretty silly, tanks were never designed for nor get used as battering rams, they're a mobile armored gun meant to shoot shit far away. The typical truck on the road today is meant to give suburban dads a delusional sense of masculinity, to the point of sacrificing near vehicle visibility.

One was designed to kill people far away, one kills people nearby due to operator negligence

[–] MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world 3 points 20 hours ago (4 children)

I'm confused, how exactly is a size comparison of two vehicles meant to add anything to the conversation here? Size implies lethality?

A standard city bus is about twice as long as those tanks, so is a bus twice as problematic?

[–] MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world 7 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Still just over 2500 too many

[–] MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago (3 children)

The thinking probably goes along the lines of:

  1. The oil will run out "long" after current oligarchs are dead so they don't care
  2. Even if it is diminishing sooner than anticipated, would you want to be the one to tell oligarch #236311 that his oil fields and money are about to run dry, pissing him off? They're surrounded with sycophants and suck ups who have their own money wells to run dry
  3. Solar and other renewables have just enough real problems with them that aforementioned sycophants can blow it out of proportion and frame them as bad investments.

Systematic capitalism plus human greed heavily incentives short term thinking

Nah, it was a result of the continuing collapse of competition in the defense industry.

Raytheon and United Technology Corporation (UTC) were stagnating so they merged to create Raytheon Technology Corporation in 2020 with the Raytheon brand being split off to a subsidiary, along with Collins Aerospace and Pratt & Whitney. After the merger the new company was being traded under the RTX ticker, which it fully rebranded to in 2023.

I worked for one of their subsidiaries of subsidiaries around that time and rumor mill was the RTX executives were getting pissy about the name Raytheon being used and not the full name, so Raytheon the subsidiary company was getting all the attention from Raytheon Technology Corporation the parent company. So they spent an absurd amount of money on a rebrand and they gave all employees a corporate gift which has this sad little branding on it saying "Raytheon, an RTX company"

[–] MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world 8 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Uhhhhhh did you watch the video?

He goes to great lengths to point out that it isn't an efficiency problem, and despite US residential standard outlets being 120VAC dedicated electric kettles are still the fastest way to boil water given other appliances (though induction cooktops are closing the gap).

The biggest reason dedicated electric kettles are not popular in the US is because we're either boiling water for cooking some meal (pot is already on the stove so why bother with another appliance) or we're making coffee. And the vast majority of coffee makers over here have the exact same circuitry and heating elements as an electric kettle. It's just not standalone

[–] MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world 7 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Working in the aerospace industry has given me a lot of insight into the different ways engineers rationalize the potential for harm that they cause. The most common is wilful ignorance or straight up denial. No, the products I work on can never hurt anyone, it's just xyz I know personally engineers who work on weaponry and fall heavily into that camp and it blows my mind.

Lol whoops yeah, ARRL. I work in aerospace where we love our alphabet soup and I brainfarted AFRL.

I wasn't trying to say that the band plan doesn't exist for a reason, it absolutely does, some reasons which you pointed out exactly. I've definitely been around guys who treat the band plan like it is the law, and I imagine the original commenter had the misfortune of running into one of those guys and believed him at face value. Imho it's one of the reasons ham radio has been dying as a hobby.

Nothing legally stops you from listening. To transmit, you are legally required to have a callsign (which you must broadcast during transmit) and your callsign must be licensed for that frequency.

If you break the law, it's highly unlikely that the FCC themselves will hunt you down and fine you. If you're using it to talk to others on the HAM bands, they'll likely get pissed at you for not being licensed but actually tracking you down is difficult. Using it for your own personal projects, friend groups, etc, it's unlikely anyone would notice you at all.

A license is like $15 for life (just need to occasionally tell the FCC you're still alive), the test will teach you some stuff, I don't see it as that onerous to play by the rules so I'd recommend following them.

[–] MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

A HAM license realistically is for two things:

1 the test teaches you major items you should know about how radio works 2 how to not fuck shit up for everyone else

For the bands allocated to HAM radio in the US, as long as you're not fucking shit up for everyone else the FCC doesn't really care. A good example of that and my personal favorite rule is the power transmission rule of "only enough power to complete the transmission". Functionally it's so vague that I doubt anyone would ever actually get their license suspended over it.

The group ~~AFRL~~ ARRL has a pretty restrictive "band plan" that I think is where the above comment's salt is coming from. A perception I have and have heard others talk about is the HAM community has a tendency to be borderline hostile to newcomers and are very gate-keepy, which ARRL in my experience embodies.

I have a license purely to play by the rules from a legal standpoint when I'm out in the rocky mountains hiking and camping with friends, makes communicating with different groups way easier

Edit: formatting, typoing ARRL

[–] MajorasMaskForever@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

May I present to you:

The Marriam-Webster Dictionary

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/artificial

Definition #3b

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