@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

Frances Scott Key bridge collapse

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath
whereas the actual USS Enterprise (CVN 65) was the yardstick I always used to get a handle on the size of NCC-1701

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath
exactly!

(and I have to confess that I always had a real soft spot for CVN 65 when I was growing up—as weird as it sounds to talk about having an emotional attachment to a machine of war)

tkinias, to random
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

It’s hard to get good numbers on the mass of a loaded merchant ship, because that’s not a figure that’s published. But if we take MV Dalí’s deadweight tonnage as a very rough ballpark, we’re talking about something on the order of 120 million kg. It hit the bridge at 8 kts, or around 4 m/s. That’s roughly the kinetic energy of a 2-tonne automobile at 1000 m/s or 3600 kph (2200 mph)—or a 40-tonne semi truck at around 800 kph (500 mph).

A mind-boggling amount of kinetic energy.

RPBook, (edited ) to random
@RPBook@historians.social avatar

We've started watching . My geek heart was warmed by a brief mention of "Arrakis Prime" at the start of s01e04.

Edit: I misheard, it was Loracus Prime.

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@RPBook
Now you’ve piqued my curiosity, as I don’t remember that mention at all (and I rewatched ENT recently)!

Memory Alpha says that ‘Arakis Prime’ was mentioned in VOY 6x08 ‘One Small Step’, which I also don’t recall, but it’s been longer since I’ve watched that. But that world is supposed to be in the Delta Quadrant, so it shouldn’t be known to Enterprise.

What’s the context of the mention in ENT 1x04?

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@RPBook huh! I need to rewatch that episode!

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@RPBook
well, we can still go back to VOY 6x08 and apparently hear the Doctor talk about going on an away mission to ‘Arakis Prime’...

tkinias, to random
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

It’s amazing—and terrifying—how fast the bridge went down <https://www.npr.org/live-updates/baltimore-bridge-collapse#catastrophic-bridge-collapse-was-caught-on-video>. It looks like something under ten seconds from the moment of impact till the deck hits the water.

Horrible to contemplate how bad this would have been if the collision had happened six hours later...

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath
Yeah, for real.

It’s one thing to grasp something like this conceptually, but quite another to see it actually happen.

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath BTW, do you know if we just got lucky with this happening in the middle of the night, or if ship traffic is deliberately routed under the bridge then?

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath
yeah, for a lot of the twentieth century, 10,000 tonnes DWT was a good-sized freighter—these monsters are just out of all proportion to the scale of older infrastucture
@codrusofathens

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath
I find it nearly impossible to get my head around that kind of momentum or energy, which is why I was playing with the math. A semi—something where I have a sense of its scale—at 800 kph is easier to grok than this monster at 8kts.
@codrusofathens

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@cstross
Yeah, 8 km/s breaks our ability to conceptualize scale in kind of the same way that 120,000 tonnes does.

Putting things another way, the kinetic energy of 120,000 tonnes at 8 kts is roughly the same as 30 kg at 8 km/s.
@nyrath @codrusofathens

nyrath, to random
@nyrath@spacey.space avatar

As scientists find real exoplanets, sci-fi writers change their vision of alien worlds

https://www.space.com/science-fiction-exoplanets-reflect-real-discoveries

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath
I found that article, unfortunately, to be a bit disappointing. It’s a cool idea, but I don’t think their dataset was adequate to the task (AFAICT they just picked what SF works to include—and what worlds within them—basically arbitrarily).

There’s also weirdness like counting BSG’s Caprica twice, once in 1978 and once in 2003.

tkinias, to random
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

them: “Government should operate like a business”

government gives billions of dollars in subsidies to a for-profit corporation

me: “So the government’s getting an equity stake in the business they just capitalized, right?”

them: “OMG no, that would be communism”

nyrath, to random
@nyrath@spacey.space avatar

The Young Adventurer's Pocket Book of Space Travel (1954)

https://dreamsofspace.blogspot.com/2023/05/the-young-adventurers-pocket-book-of.html?m=1

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath
I’m a bit puzzled by the internal layout here: it looks like there’s a spun middle section (with floor=toward outer hull)—but the forward section seems to be oriented airplane-style, with people standing on longitudinal decks?

nyrath, to random
@nyrath@spacey.space avatar
tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath
not gonna lie, there’s something deeply creepy about nuclear weapons as Cheerios-box plastic toys

(although it’s maybe more honest than the more genteel “let’s just not think about the nukes” phase of the Cold War I remember from my own childhood)

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath
no, I don’t recall ever watching it as a kid—though we did still have nuclear drills at school

(fun fact: A nuclear drill was identical to a tornado drill, except that for a tornado drill you opened all the classroom windows so they wouldn’t break, but for a nuclear drill you closed them to protect us from the fallout. I shit you not.)

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@sudnadja
we definitely had war toys and models (and I was the kind of kid who had an intense fascination with tanks and combat aircraft and the like)—but we weren’t playing with toy Titan ICBMs, which I guess would have been a little too on-the-nose
@nyrath

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@isaackuo
of course, now I’m recalling playing Missile Command on the Atari 2600 when I was a kid, and if that’s not grim AF
@nyrath

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath
Did NukeWar have animation? I thought it was only textmode—but I really don’t remember it well.

Missile Command definitely had very low-res animations, though the ICBMs were just single pixels with one-pixel-wide straight lines for contrails...
@isaackuo

bookish, to random
@bookish@historians.social avatar

Doesn't a poster exhibition by definition include “graphic content"?

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@bookish
I love it
@inquiline

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@inquiline
Warning: This podcast contains audio content.
@bookish

nyrath, to random
@nyrath@spacey.space avatar

This what I used to watch on TV when I was a little boy.
Artwork by the legendary Alex Toth.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IbEla3FLDcQ

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath
amazing to see quasi-realistic movement in a children’s cartoon!

(but now I want to know how far 200 astro-leagues is!)

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath
I was thinking of the way the rockets move inertially, but the SyncroVox thing is wild too

nyrath, to random
@nyrath@spacey.space avatar

Space artists might want to look into NASA's JPL modular habitat system. The mix-n-match modules can be shuffled to make a wide variety of spaceships and habitats.

https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/habmod.php#mhs

image/jpeg
image/jpeg
image/jpeg

tkinias,
@tkinias@historians.social avatar

@nyrath
Maybe something worth thinking about for ‘scout service’ type applications as well. The standardized Traveller-esque vehicles become more problematic if you don’t have contragrav, because a flyer for a thick-atmosphere world and a lander for a trace- or no-atmosphere one have very little in common—but maybe you could do something interesting with modular components (e.g., put the crew module in a flyer chassis for this mission and in a retro-rocket chassis for that one)?

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • megavids
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • cisconetworking
  • magazineikmin
  • InstantRegret
  • everett
  • thenastyranch
  • Youngstown
  • rosin
  • slotface
  • khanakhh
  • Durango
  • mdbf
  • JUstTest
  • ethstaker
  • anitta
  • modclub
  • osvaldo12
  • normalnudes
  • ngwrru68w68
  • GTA5RPClips
  • tacticalgear
  • provamag3
  • tester
  • Leos
  • cubers
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •