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If you haven't experienced a spinthariscope, I can highly recommend it. I bought one as a Christmas present for a buddy and we both enjoy its demonstration of radioactivity.

UnitedNuclear has these and a bunch of other interesting tidbits if anyone wants to give it a try. I bought a small bottle of heavy water as well, which I of course sampled and can confirm it has a slightly sweet taste to it.

You really have to get your eyes adjusted to the dark to see anything with the spinthariscope. It ends up looking mostly like static on a green crt, but if your only reference frame is a cloud chamber, the volume of particles that are emitted from such a weak source is pretty remarkable.


Or wait 20 years for the panels to degrade...


Two things

1. It’s closer to 50 years, and even a partially degraded panel will work, just with less output

2. Even if we say 20 years, that means that you only need to buy panels once every 20 years! Not continuously. A complete and total interruption of solar panel production lasting 4 years will only mildly interrupt current output. How long can we last with a total disruption to oil supply chains?


The long operating life of a solar panel compared to a barrel of oil is a selling point when it comes to self-sufficiency. With 20 years of warning, any country that pretends to be a globally-relevant power can get itself to the point of producing acceptable solar panels if its survival depends on it.


More than enough time to stand up a domestic PV industry.


Swiss measurement of 30 year old panels showed 20% degradation.


All of the material in those panels is still there. You can break them down and build new panels out of their parts.


POSIWID, the Purpose Of a System Is What It Does. A quick way to cut through bullshit and "But I meant for X to do Y"


Claude will routinely tell me to get some sleep and cuddle with my dog. I may mention the time offhandedly or say I'm winding down, but at least it will include conversation stoppers and decrease engagement.


from my (limited) experience of ChatGPT versus Claude, i get the same. ChatGPT will always add another "prompt" sentence at the end like "Do you want me to X?" while Claude just answers what i ask.

looking at my history recently, Claude's most recent response is literally just "Exactly the right move honestly — that's the whole point."


It'll ask if you're eating properly too! It's like a virtual mom! :-P


>Sooner or later one of them will hurt a human, and then what do we do?

Considering this took place before I was born, you might not be aware of the multiple times it's already occurred.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Williams_(robot_fatalit...


Thank you, I do, many thanks for the link. It is at that point exactly that we should have stopped and taken better stock of our situation. The companies involved drug the case through courts for a decade and paid a pittance. We decided years ago that companies are allowed to purchase a license for robots to kill humans. It’s gross.


Typically you use a pulse train and filter your train from the noise


I believe The Light of Other Days has slow-glass that you expose to a scene, it drinks it in, and then plays it back later.


If I recall correctly they didn't miss Mars. Quite the opposite, really.


Mars missed them?


The Purpose Of a System Is What It Does. Whether it is stated (or even designed) to protect kids, if it does anything more or different from that goal, it will perform those actions regardless of what is said about what the System should be doing.


Instead of building common cause among your allies, got it. Thankfully I presume you are not in a position where your decisions drive policy.


Allies, eh?

I defer to Sir Humphrey on these matters:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVYqB0uTKlE

"To create a disunited Europe"


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