@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.

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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, 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

@nyrath
Kinda surprised that he focused entirely on non-FTL settings here, as I definitely don’t think of that as the default for “galactic empire”–style space opera.

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@Sevoris
I’m not sure I’d agree categorically.

That is, space opera is frequently very hand-wavey about science (not to mention sociology, economics, etc.). But there’s no particular reason it can’t be harder; some iterations of Traveller, for example (and many GMs’ takes on it), make a lot of effort to get the science as hard as possible for the setting, but it’s still very clearly classic space opera.

The hand-waviness isn’t the essence of what makes it space opera.
@nyrath

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@maxthefox
I didn’t really buy his analysis of range of control either: it’s based on a pretty binary, historically unusual understanding of sovereignty, so that you’re either fully under imeprial rule or in rebellion trying to be independent. That’s not how sovereignty worked in premodern states, and I’d expect vast interstellar polities to be very premodern in this respect.

@Sevoris @nyrath

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@maxthefox
Were the Archbishopric of Trier or the Electorate of Hannover or the Imperial City of Bremen sovereign or were they part of the Holy Roman Empire? The answer is ‘yes’ (or ‘it depends’).
@Sevoris @nyrath

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

nyrath, to random
@nyrath@spacey.space avatar

deleted_by_author

    •
    tkinias,
    @tkinias@historians.social avatar

    @michael_w_busch
    Interesting to me that the use of “imminent” in the abstract made me very suspicious, even without reading it or knowing who Gertz is.

    I was under the impression that arXiv did some vetting of uploads to weed out cranks in the absence of peer review. Is that not actually the case?
    @nyrath

    tkinias, to random
    @tkinias@historians.social avatar

    I have some personal news:

    My spouse has accepted a position at the Harry Ransom Center at UT, so I will be moving to Austin and will be teaching for the UT History Dept next year.

    I never in a million years imagined I’d be living in Texas, but this was too big a professional opportunity for my spouse. So as of August, I’ll apparently be a Longhorn 😮

    nyrath, to random
    @nyrath@spacey.space avatar

    From Dr. Philip Metzger. The culmination of 27 years’ work.

    How to design a rocket to land on the Lunar surface WITHOUT the damn engine exhaust excavating a big hole and causing a ship-destroying crash.

    Erosion rate of lunar soil under a landing rocket, part 1: identifying the rate-limiting physics

    Erosion rate of lunar soil under a landing rocket, part 2: benchmarking and predictions

    https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.18583

    https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.18584

    tkinias,
    @tkinias@historians.social avatar

    @nyrath
    BTW has anybody done work on how realistic spacecraft can land on garden worlds without wrecking the landing site?

    I’m thinking of “Scout Service” type craft—if you don’t have magitech, what’s the best propulsion to use if you’re going to land explorers and need to be able to return to orbit? This kinda has to be SSTO, of course...

    I tend to assume water landing is the best way?

    tkinias,
    @tkinias@historians.social avatar

    @michael_w_busch
    “any sort of atmosphere”: I thought the key thing here was moisture?

    That is, you’ll have big dust issues any time there’s no moisture to bind the regolith. I kinda assumed, actually, that the worst dust situation would be on a waterless world with thick atmosphere relative to its gravity, because that would maximize the time the dust takes to settle after disturbance...

    @nyrath

    tkinias,
    @tkinias@historians.social avatar

    @michael_w_busch
    what I’m thinking of as super-Mars planets—waterless, lifeless, but with substantial atmosphere—wind up being fairly common in my current project, so I’ve been thinking about what their conditions will be like...
    @nyrath

    tkinias,
    @tkinias@historians.social avatar

    @michael_w_busch
    Gotcha.

    So, thinking through this, airless means that nothing slows them down and they travel long distances, whereas atmosphere potentially suspends them. The latter can cause problems of visibility, for example, but less damage because they’re not high-velocity particles?
    @nyrath

    tkinias,
    @tkinias@historians.social avatar

    @michael_w_busch
    Is there a straightforward way of calculating stuff like this? Or is the math nontrivial?
    @nyrath

    tkinias,
    @tkinias@historians.social avatar

    @Sevoris
    hmm, that’s an interesting idea—basically your orbital interface shuttle isn’t a lander but just delivers an aircraft to the upper atmosphere?

    then the shuttle doesn’t have to be able to land and the lander doesn’t have to be able to reach orbit...
    @nyrath

    tkinias,
    @tkinias@historians.social avatar

    @isaackuo
    yeah, this is like what @Sevoris was talking about, and it makes sense!
    @nyrath

    tkinias,
    @tkinias@historians.social avatar

    @michael_w_busch
    LOL in re “Dr.”—it’s funny how this works, because other than my students I prefer people to call me by my first name, but if you’re gonna use title+family name, it really is Dr and not Mr
    @nyrath

    tkinias,
    @tkinias@historians.social avatar

    @Sevoris
    Doing it in deep water probably means a lot less ecological damage than on land or coastal waters, but then of course you have the issue that your spaceship just landed 200 km from the shore
    @nyrath

    tkinias,
    @tkinias@historians.social avatar

    @Sevoris
    I’m imagining that I might not enjoy being winched down through the exhaust plume of whatever kind of rocket yields the kind of delta-vee that makes that possible...
    @RogerBW @nyrath

    tkinias,
    @tkinias@historians.social avatar

    @n1vux
    oh, I was just imagining that the ‘safe area’ is likely to be rather smaller if we’re talking about a terawatt fusion drive rather than such chemical thrusters
    @Sevoris @RogerBW @nyrath

    tkinias,
    @tkinias@historians.social avatar

    @n1vux
    yeah, it feels like the universal shuttle or ship’s boat only really works with magitech contragrav or non-fuel-consuming ‘thrusters’ or the like...
    @RogerBW @Sevoris @nyrath

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