History hasn't ended after all. We now live in a world with robot armies enforcing kill zones across thousands of square kilometers. How long before we all live within their firm embrace? We watch the stage being set for either control or obliteration. I'd say I pity the young but at this rate the old may be around to see too much too.
Human soldiers will continually be seen as the weak link in the kill chain. As technology improves, fewer and fewer humans will be in command, until they start to ‘command’ themselves, and it’s game over.
If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine - Obi-Wan Kenobi (A New Hope, 1977)
It would be extraordinary if Kirk could have grown his organization alive nearly as much as his death has. Here's hoping that the martyr effect becomes strong enough to discourage the creation of more of them. I wish we had learned that from Martin Luther King.
> It would be extraordinary if Kirk could have grown his organization alive nearly as much as his death has.
It would also be extraordinary if his organization could pursue the questions he was asking about Epstein before Trump called him to stop doing so, and then was murdered shortly after.
I had to go look it up, because in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Voldemort orders Cedric's murder with: "Kill the Spare!"
It turns out that Cedric, being superfluous to the "Resurrection Ritual" and Voldemort's plan of revenge, is actually a spare. In fact it was unexpected that two boys get through the whole thing with the Portkey and all. Harry was the only one who was supposed to end up there with the Death Eaters in the first place, so Cedric's appearance was quite unfortunate for everyone involved.
But Cedric's "spareness" certainly didn't have to do with expendability as far as his Dad was concerned, which you can clearly understand once his Dad gets going in the mourning for his death.
I don’t know if you’re being serious, but I wanted at least two so they had another kid to play with at home, and hopefully be on good terms with a family member they can relate to into their old age.
Children are human beings, and are the full range of what humans are. When small, the fun of it is seeing them unfold into that fully formed version- sometimes painfully, sometimes joyfully.
I think I’m between the comments here. I think it’s funny to say we have a spare but I also think it’s not as funny to say “oh you have a spare”. It’s like a fat guy can joke about his fatness but you can’t.
I've got a story of this but backwards. I know a guy, a hiking guru, moderately famous for his backpacks. He's an ultralight long distance enthusiast who designs much of his own equipment. I went to his house for a weekend session with a few people to learn to make our own, and I'm still using the one I made. For a few years he made and sold them out of his living room. Then he sold his brand to an outfit that scaled it up into a decent business.
But the lightweight hiking guru made ultralight backpacks, with thin material and very minimal extras. It was designed to be light by a guy who could sew, so he was happy to fix it as needed on the trail. To him that was a feature not a bug. Meanwhile the company that bought the brand and design necessarily made it more robust, feature-full, and twice as heavy. They were pretty much forced to by the number of returns they were getting.
So now I treasure my old backpack that worseonpurpose would probably deplore, and keep it repaired so that I don't have to make another or go buy one that worseonpurpose would probably like better.
Yep. Ultralight hikers are industrious and good maintainers. They take pride in lightweight bags and making them or acquiring them. Those hikers will deal with a defect on the trail or after they get to port and expect to do so with their pack.
Your average backpack consumer is a different breed. Cosmetic designs, logos, colors, and generic pockets are key marketing traits of consumer backpacks and small rips or tears are seen as reasons to replace the backpack.
I agree. I don't really get worseonpurpose's argument here.
I have two proper backpacks, an old UK made Karimor Jaguar from the late 80s and an OMM Classic 32 I bought recently. Although the Jag is pretty good shape considering its age it's the OMM that I reach for now.
The OMM is actually modern take on an old Karimor design from 1973 but if you take all the removable bits off it comes in at around 380g. That's almost 1.5Kg lighter than my old backpack. For short weekend trips that's a massive saving.
I seem to remember a story about Atom Packs and Aiguille Alpine. Aiguille make really tough packs for mountain rescue teams to throw equipment in. Atom Packs was founded to use slightly less robust but lighter materials for through hikers by a lad who did his apprenticeship Aiguille.
I think their merit in both approaches and I like the trade offs depending on use cases.
EDIT: I've just noticed that Aiguille now do "light" weight versions of their packs in 420D nylon. What I like about that is they are actually cheaper instead of charging a premium for thinner materials (hand made prices but still).
Nice. Karrimor backpacks (or rucksacks/daypacks as we called them back then) were the high water mark--I worked in the industry in the 80s and, in the tone of the article, it's very sad to see what's happened to Karrimor and Berghaus today, but back then they drove one another to new heights. I was always a fan or Lowe's stuff, who were the other UK giant.
All three brands were let down by the waterproof layers whcih after about ten years would degrade in horrible ways. Prior to the 90s this was less of a problem.
Aiguille are great. Probably the best bags around now. They will also make them to fit. When I was selling bags, fit was a big issue and if you made out that one size fitted all that would be seen as a sign of cheapness/cost cutting/lack of attention to detail. Karrimor and Berghaus both did their flagship bags in different back lengths, and companies competed hard on the diffent fitting systems.
> the treatment for methanol poisoning is… ethanol!
My grandpa drank a shot of schnapps every night and called it his medicine. I thought it was a euphemism but apparently he was actually taking an antidote prophylactically. You can't be too careful. He never once got methanol poisoning.
I wonder if juggling positive buoyancy balloons upside down would develop skills transferable to right side up. You can make those as slow as you want. When jugglers juggle balls against the floor I guess they don't start from scratch.
Lol. I’ve juggled non-buoyant, air filled balloons but because of their elasticity they don’t exactly settle into your hand when they land.
In my juggling routine, one of the things I do is transition to lying on my back face up while continuing to juggle. I’m throwing the balls straight up above my head while lying perfectly flat, which feels pretty weird. So I can’t imagine how difficult it would be to be physically upside down while juggling.
And after a hundred generations of this there will be no fusible material left. We can extract energy from rotating black holes until they stop, and then the universe is dead.
So solar energy is renewable over a human lifetime, not renewable over a stellar lifetime, renewable over a stellar formation cycle, not renewable over the lifetime of a universe, and renewable if universes turn out to be cyclical. And all but the first are pendantry in the context of renewable energy conversations.
Clickbait title. The article never gets around to how weekends are under threat. The closest it comes is to say that a lot of us have to check email on Saturdays.
From ~1906 through prohibition the Feds purposely poisoned industrial alcohol with methanol and other chemicals as a deterrent. 100 years ago, in 1926, they increased it, up to as much as 10%. This was true rotgut. Around 10,000 people, mostly poor, died from it. Blindness, organ failure, paralysis. This was legal and regulated by the Volstead Act. It was the primary source of methanol poisoning during prohibition.
This is still routinely done to avoid ethanol taxes. It's called "denatured alcohol". Ethanol that has been poisoned is not considered drinkable alcohol, so not subject to the taxes on drinkable alcohol.
Beyond the recognized "Formulas" such as Formula No. 40-B, there are a number of other "flavors" of denaturants, pages of them starting at section 21.91:
Aren't morals strange? Governments would rather poison and blind those who would imbibe ethanol when it's prohibited or when they do so without paying excise tax.
Morally and ethically such action results in a much worse outcome for society for many reasons. Unfortunately, that's not the view of many or those laws would not have been enacted. Even in our more enlightened times many still hold such punitive beliefs as witnessed by some posts here on HN. It seems to me opinion on whether or not alcoholic beverages ought to be permitted in society has been around so long and yet still remains so divided that the chasm will likely never close.
Fortunately, where I live (Australia) the toxic denaturants in ethanol (methanol (~15℅) and pyridine (~3%)) were removed quite some decades ago and replaced with a nontoxic denaturant—the bitterant denatonium.
We nevertheless still have a lingering reminder of the past: the once non-potable ethanol was called "Methylated Spirits" and its replacement still is! Nowadays, the methanol and pyridine are gone and what's always been colloquially nicknamed "Metho" is still labeled "Methylated Spirits" but now only consists of 95% ethanol and 5% water—the trace amount of denatonium denaturant isn't even mentioned on the label but it's definitely there.
An interesting observation: the old toxic methylated ethanol was emblazoned with the word "POISON" whereas our new Metho sans MeOH is only labeled "CAUTION".
BTW, above I mentioned the chasm never closing, whilst writing this my earlier post has oscillated wildly around a net 0, I now have the same number of votes that I started with before posting. Seems opinions are even more divided on this subject than I'd ever imagined (damn shame HN only tallies totals and not both up and down votes).
Yep, never forget. The government literally poisoned people. Anytime I mention this I get eye rolls and immediate dismissal as a kook. It's quite frustrating.
Note that we are talking about industrial alcohol, which was not made for human consumption but could be distilled to make it palatable (before the toxic additives were added).
They made it sound as if they were poisoning alcohol intended for drinking (looks like it was possibly edited or I missed that it said industrial). Methanol and other additives are still added to most industrial alcohol today.
"Methanol and other additives are still added to most industrial alcohol today."
Depends in which country you reside. Where I am the denaturants methanol and pyridine were removed decades ago and replaced with the nontoxic bitterant denatonium.
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