That sounds similar to this quote:

“It is practically impossible to teach good programming to students that have had a prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration.” — Edsger Dijkstra, 1975

But there’s been a good deal of programmers who have said that BASIC, and its ease of use and seeing almost instant results is extremely useful to not turn people off learning to code to begin with. Python is functionally the new BASIC in that regard, and while the language itself may not teach you to become an expert programmer, it may have gotten more people in the door than otherwise would have.

But that’s just my 2 cents.

Ahh, the ol put the rum in the banana shipment from Karamja method. A classic.

I also ______

At least for steel plate, it should work without any supporting material.

Kevlar around it would help catch spalling from a bullet flattening out and spraying little bits of shrapnel out across the surface, but since these ones aren’t actually stopping the bullets, there is no spalling to catch.

If it is for hand guns, then it’s almost completely a waste, since the only pistol caliber guns I’ve seen in this war are only issued to Civil guard there, way behind the frontlines.

Ah, didn’t think of that, probably so.

Interesting to think that the U.S. has spent so much money to develop and test a new bullet and rifle combo specifically to beat Russian body armor, all for naught.

That steel plate in the vest should absolutely be stopping those rifle rounds, that is their main purpose (shrapnel can be stopped with much lighter and more flexible Kevlar).

The fact that these are failing to stop those rounds shows that the steel is likely not heat treated correctly to the proper hardness. Considering how much weight those add to a loadout, if the rest of the vest is Kevlar, those soldiers would likely have a higher survival rate by ditching the ineffective plates entirely in exchange for better mobility.

Regarding decentralized internet, your idea is being enacted! I posted a couple short docs about that over on !breadtube@slrpnk.net

Here’s the first one, I’ll go hunt down the second.

Edit: found it!

Matrix is the closest replacement, and XMPP can replicate some functionality too.

Fahrenheit 451 is certainly worth a read. I read it late in life, and could see immediately why it’s so often read in schools. Very well written, and a compelling story.

Another book that you may find quite personally compelling is The Chrysalids by John Wyndham (Archive.org has a free audio book version), due to the themes it covers.

If your main value is small government, have you looked into classical anarchism?

The information I’ve seen regarding deep discharge life-cycle for sodium ion is that the latest tech is actually extremely good, at least according to this. I don’t see how the lower voltage is a problem, since for grid situations you’ll have step-up transformers anyway, and the batteries can just be hooked up in series to increase the voltage.

They use abundant materials, will be much cheaper than lithium ion, don’t need to be actively cooled, and massively lessen the risk of rupture and fires.

The low density per unit of weight isn’t relevant for grid storage, so they seem pretty ideal.

Sodium batteries require very little rare earths in comparison to lithium batteries.

Sodium electric batteries, like the type that CATL developed? Or do you mean hot molten salt thermal batteries? Because I think the other poster is referring to the first kind.

Curious how much that still applies, being a decade old now.

Rock’n’roll racing got a pretty solid GBA port, it’s a fantastic little isometric battle racer from the 90’s

It’s extremely difficult for me to enjoy most 8-bit games, as there’s very little there to intrigue my tastes. However, there are a few standouts that I still play to this day on an emulator handheld, like H.E.R.O. or Mr. Do!

The good ones generally have a really solid little gameplay loop that’s quick to get into, with tight controls that let you get into a flow-state easily, and a difficulty curve that isn’t infuriating (something far too common from that era). The story heavy games from that era usually had mediocre or terrible writing paired with repetitive grinding gameplay, so the classics like Final Fantasy are sadly off limits for me.

H.E.R.O. is one of my favorites since it has somewhat uncommon gameplay where you control a man with a helicopter pack in a mine, avoiding various hazards to rescue a trapped miner at the end of each level. It rewards memorization, which is a knock against it, but even though I’ve played it heavily, I keep coming back to it as I never can quite remember the layouts of the later levels, and once control of the backpack is mastered, it just feels good to zip around all of these creatures and caverns of instant death without nicking yourself. I’m not sure how someone who has never played it before would feel about it, since it can take a while to get the hang of the controls, but I think it holds up pretty well from that era.

It also received a pretty massive number of ports to various consoles and home computers. The original Atari 2600 version is good, but personally I found the MSX port to be the most polished, and it adds some nice additional graphics as well.

Open source software in general. Seeing Blender become an industry standard was awesome, and it looks like the Godot engine may do the same for gaming. Krita has evolved into a truly wonderful painting program (and not half bad as a Photoshop replacement), and Linux itself has come so far, having become a genuine gaming platform.

Quite happy about all of that. :)

I used to see hordes of these around my house growing up, until we finally decided to do something. We put up a bunch of beetle trap bags and caught hundreds, and (perhaps more importantly) treated the yard to eliminate their eggs.

After that, I didn’t see more than 2 or 3 beetles.