@tkinias@historians.social
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

tkinias

@tkinias@historians.social

Assistant professor of history & #histodon. Research race and whiteness in the British Empire (especially Queensland & British Columbia). Teach European & world history with a focus on colonialism & empire.

Previous careers include teaching English as a foreign language and a variety of IT jobs (from Web dev to pulling cables).

Linux geek & SF nerd.

Views my own and probably ill-informed.

He/him.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

nyrath, to random
@nyrath@spacey.space avatar

I built the goofy-light kit when I was a little boy

https://hackaday.com/2018/12/14/retrotechtacular-remembering-radio-shack-p-box-kits/

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath
I got a toy circuit-board setup as a gift somewhere around 1980. It was kinda crappy, though, and most of the things it came with instructions to build simply didn’t work.

I sometimes wonder how my interest in electronics might have developed differently if my first experiences as a kid had been with a kit where the circuits actually worked.

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@glitzersachen
oh, I have no idea what brand it was—I mean, Brezhnev was still alive! my memory of pretty much everything back then is hazy...
@nyrath

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@yonder
now that looks properly cool!
@glitzersachen @nyrath

StillIRise1963, to random
@StillIRise1963@mastodon.world avatar

Anyway, whatever. If not for white women, Trump NEVER would have been president. So, white people, get yourselves together.

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@StillIRise1963
looks at Pew data

98% of Black women voted for Clinton and a fraction of a percent for Trump; against that, the 47%–45% split of white women in favor of Trump sure does seem to be telling us something

@Pagan_Animist @Okanogen

nyrath, to random
@nyrath@spacey.space avatar

New Moon: Lutecia in orbit

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/9xLWN

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@isaackuo
To me, it’s more important that e.g. rockets basically work like rockets than that somebody has calculated transfer orbits and fuel fractions for every movement (or that fuel reqs are strictly realistic). Like IIRC the HEPlaR engines in Traveller New Era were impossibly efficient, but using them still made Traveller a lot harder.

Which gets to the other thing: it’s not IMO a binary hard-or-not thing.
@nyrath @maxthefox @sudnadja @RogerBW @michael_w_busch

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@isaackuo
Hmm, maybe that’s generally a fix for magic no-fuel thrusters breaking a setting? That is, if they have really enormous power requirements and your physics is otherwise hard, then using them to accelerate hard is going to light up your radiators so that you’re a really bright IR source with a fast-changing orbit, something quite easily detected by space-NORAD.
@maxthefox @nyrath @sudnadja @RogerBW @michael_w_busch

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@maxthefox
You can be self-consistent within a set of rules that are at odds with the way physics as we know it works, and that can contribute to a harder feel. I’m thinking here of Starfire, where, where the consequences of warp point–based FTL are really thought through (space combat is basically all siege warfare and fortification assaults). That makes things feel more realistic, even if the physics is pretty soft.
@isaackuo @nyrath @sudnadja @RogerBW @michael_w_busch

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@isaackuo
I’m assuming “thrust plates” don’t necessary have the equivalent of an exhaust plume, and even a bright-colored object that’s only 30m long might be hard to pick out against a busy background of shipping traffic and small planetoids by just reflected light...
@maxthefox @nyrath @sudnadja @RogerBW @michael_w_busch

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@isaackuo
Yeah, that’s an interesting point. Incidentally, I read “The Cold Equations” with students last year, and they were... unimpressed.
@maxthefox @nyrath @sudnadja @RogerBW @michael_w_busch

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@isaackuo
BTW I haven’t read The Killing Star and just looked it up to refresh my memory about the context here, and discovered that the Wikipedia page links to Atomic Rockets as a source 🙂
@maxthefox @nyrath @sudnadja @RogerBW @michael_w_busch

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@isaackuo
I think about them mostly because Traveller was the SF setting I spent the most time in for a number of years when I was young (and the first one where I did a lot of worldbuilding and ship design).

On the detection thing, I’d assumed that finding things that size in the outer system was still a nontrivial task (as opposed to detecting them nearby, which might be too late for interception if they’re moving fast).
@maxthefox @nyrath @sudnadja @RogerBW @michael_w_busch

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath
You are a Reputable Source™ 😉
@isaackuo @maxthefox @sudnadja @RogerBW @michael_w_busch

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath
for some reason I’m imagining a

for (i=0; i<STARS_IN_GALAXY; i++)

loop, and it’s making me laugh-cry

@isaackuo @cstross @maxthefox @sudnadja @RogerBW @michael_w_busch

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@sudnadja
given that this object is probably a bit larger than the classic ‘free trader’ starship, that does suggest that visual detection of a civilian vessel in the near-outer system might be nontrivial...
@isaackuo @maxthefox @nyrath @RogerBW @michael_w_busch

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@sudnadja
If you’re getting ~150 W/m2 insolation out around 3 AU, then you’re maybe reflecting something like 20 kW for a 200 dT with moderate albedo. But if we assume realistic thermodynamics, you could be having to dump waste heat in the hundreds of MW range if you’re using Traveller-style thrusters. It’s a whole different ball game if we’re worrying about waste heat rather than just reflected light.
@isaackuo @maxthefox @nyrath @RogerBW @michael_w_busch

nyrath, to random
@nyrath@spacey.space avatar

Boy, my 12 year old great-nephew just made me feel totally inadequate.

Apparently he listens to podcasts while simultaneously reading technical books on totally different topics. His father (my nephew) has given him tests and his comprehension of both cast and text are excellent.

As a drawback, he does suffer from severe ADHD. His mental world is like he is surrounded by falling scraps of book pages, and he has to read each one before they hit the ground.

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath
I really struggle to comprehend how one can do that. I’m totally unable to have two language streams in my sensoria at the same time—to the extent that if there’s a TV on in the room, I can’t follow a conversation, or if someone’s talking on the phone next to me I can’t read.

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath
I’ll sometimes listen to podcasts or audiobooks while doing nonlinguistic work (which can include working on images or doing math or coding), but if I have to write any text I have to stop the audio to be able to concentrate on it. I can’t even listen to music with comprehensible lyrics while writing.

jovikowi, to random
@jovikowi@spacey.space avatar

@nyrath @TheSpaceshipper @dgfitch @njvack

Pretty sure there is already a word for this, but defenestration via airlock? Throwing someone out of an airlock?

de + fenestra -> de + aer cincinno?

Decincinnaeration? That's a mouthful.

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@Minimus
I think the sense of ‘lock’ here is like in a canal, and for that the Latin would be ‘exclusa’. There would be a pretty simple verb to correspond with that: ‘excludo’ (i.e., ‘exclude’).

And I actually kinda like that as a euphemism: “Management regrets the necessity of excluding the striking asteroid miners.”
@SkipHuffman @isaackuo @jovikowi @nyrath @TheSpaceshipper @dgfitch @njvack

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@Minimus
And, fun fact that I just learned: Latin ‘exclusa’ yields French ‘écluse’, whence English ‘sluice’.
@SkipHuffman @isaackuo @jovikowi @nyrath @TheSpaceshipper @dgfitch @njvack

tkinias, to random
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

Musing about academic life: How do you protect your time when you teach evening courses?

Maybe it’s a ‘getting old’ thing, but man, I get really wiped out when I teach evening classes—because it’s so hard to be like “sorry I’m not available before noon” so it too often winds up being 10 or 12 hour days...

nyrath, (edited ) to random
@nyrath@spacey.space avatar

Hexgrid
Online utility for table top wargamers and RPGers to generate numbered hex grids.

https://hamhambone.github.io/hexgrid/

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath
did they originate the numbered-hex norm?
@CWilbur

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@CWilbur
Oh yeah, of course AH was doing it before SPI. I was tired and got my chronology a bit mixed up...
@nyrath

nyrath, to random
@nyrath@spacey.space avatar

https://youtu.be/1aCwPF7QmGA?feature=shared

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@RogerBW
The Trav Imperium works a bit like the British Empire—if we only include the settler Dominions (Aus/Can/NZ) and ignore their Indigenous peoples. That is, there are some baseline things you can’t do, but otherwise the colonial society is self-governing and the governor is essentially a liaison between the colonial and Imperial govt.
@maxthefox @Sevoris @nyrath

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@RogerBW
The difference, of course, is that the Trav Imperium is mostly comprised of the equivalent of Dominions, while the British Empire was mostly comprised of non-self-governing colonies, protectorates, etc.
@maxthefox @Sevoris @nyrath

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@RogerBW
Yeah, that’s also how I tended to understand the 3I.

And in the British Empire the main reason a Dominion would draw Imperial intervention in their affairs is jeopardizing Imperial security: e.g. being so overtly racist toward Japanese that the Empire’s alliance with Japan was endangered, or being so overtly racist toward South Asians that the stability of British India was threatened.
@maxthefox @Sevoris @nyrath

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