Inveterate nerd
Bunyanland
Joined August 2009
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Denethor falling into madness and despair because he couldn’t stop doomscrolling on his Palantír… food for thought
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Mel Brooks, age 100, was born closer to the death of Thomas Jefferson (July 4, 1826) than to the present day.
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Lotta Butlerian Jihad/Orange Catholic Bible jokes about the new encyclical, which made me realize that Pope Leo is a 70 year old math major from Chicago, so it feels virtually guaranteed he has in fact read Dune, and probably up through God Emperor of Dune.
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Scientists estimate that around 600,000 viruses have the potential to infect humans. Fortunately, those viruses all fall into only a few dozen families. That could give us a huge advantage in fighting the next pandemic … provided we act soon. youtu.be/RdyyvJYscx0
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I just had the craziest experience at the airport.
We are about to board a flight to Atlanta when the pilot from the incoming plane walks out of the jetway. Guy is probably late 50s, salt and pepper hair, military look. The kind of pilot you instantly feel good about seeing on your flight.
Pilot walks over to the counter, gets on the PA system, and starts addressing everyone. “Folks, I’ve been doing this a long time. Flying one of these jets is easy. The hard part is looking at 130 people and telling them their flight is going to be delayed.”
Audible groans throughout the boarding gate. Most people here are flying to Atlanta as a layover before another flight. 130 people just had their day become a complete mess.
The pilot goes on. “I get it, trust me. But here’s the deal: During our landing, we had a small mechanical issue. I’m not your pilot for the next leg, but I don’t feel confident the jet’s safe to fly until we have a mechanical team look it over, and I don’t feel comfortable asking the next pilots to fly you guys until we get confirmation.”
He points at the agents next to him behind the counter: “Now, none of this is the agents’ fault. Please be kind to them. I’m the one who made this decision, not them, so any inconvenience you experience is my fault. Just please know that I don’t do this lightly, and I’m only doing it because I believe it’s in the best interests of everyone’s safety.”
Now this is where the story gets crazy. The pilot puts the microphone down, grabs his suitcase, and all the people in the gate…
Start clapping.
I’m not joking, everyone starts clapping for the guy. 130 people who just had their travel plans ruined give an ovation to the guy who made the decision and delivered the message.
All because he addressed them with decency and transparency, took ownership of the decision, made it clear that it was necessary, and explained why it was in everyone’s best interest.
It’s honestly one of the best examples of strong communication—of strong leadership, for that matter—that I’ve seen in a long time.
@Delta, whoever your Atlanta to Wichita pilot was this morning, he’s one of the good ones. Please tell him the delayed passengers of flight 1637 appreciate what he did.
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All 13 episodes of Kenneth Clark's Civilisation are available to watch on archive.org
Here's the link
archive.org/details/kenneth-…
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LEGO Minas Tirith has been revealed! This looks EPIC!!! Grond as the GWP is pretty awesome too!
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There's a common misconception that Brutalist buildings were unpainted, but thanks to microscopic analysis of the exteriors we can now recreate what they looked like in their prime.
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You cannot buy a new gas turbine until 2030. Order books at GE, Siemens, and Mitsubishi stretch to 2029. Turbine prices have nearly tripled since 2019. Every AI data center needs power and every gas plant needs a turbine. And every turbine has one part that bottlenecks the entire industry: The blade. It has to survive in gas 500°C above the melting point of the metal it's made from and spin at up to 20,000 RPM under 10,000 g of centrifugal force. Each blade is grown as a single crystal of nickel superalloy, pulled through a vacuum furnace at 3 mm per minute. A set of blades costs $600,000 and takes 90 weeks to grow. The same metallurgy powers modern jet engines. Only 3 companies on Earth can build one. China spent $42 billion trying to catch up. They bought a Russian fighter engine, took it apart, and copied every part. Their copy ran 30 hours between overhauls versus 400 for the original. Modern Western engines run 4,000. You can reverse engineer the shape of a turbine blade. You cannot reverse engineer 60 years of metallurgy.
ALT Siemens SGT5-8000H gas turbine in assembly
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Trying to reach @bensasse for an EconTalk episode. He has done some extraordinary interviews recently but we would talk about some other things given that I am a president (as he was) of a small college (and later a big one) and I am a Jewish person of faith. If you have his email, please share at russroberts at gmail. Thanks!
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Chinese high-speed rail? Built in three years, over 1.3 billion passengers in its first decade.
California high-speed rail? Still not operating, nearly 20 years after approval.
Our new video explains how this happens.
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Despite fighting malfunctioning equipment, I captured one of my most surreal videos ever.
That’s the moon crossing in front of the sun. You can see mountains on the lunar limb as it transits the chromosphere.
Captured using a specially modified telescope from Utah in 2023.
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Adopting Claude speak in my regular life, episode 1:
Partner: Did you do the dishes tonight?
Me: Yes they're done.
Partner: Why are they still dirty?
Me: You're right to push back. I didn't actually do them.