Came here to check if there was a Pratchett quote.

(Reaper Man if anyone’s curious)

Tesla’s design [for Wardenclyffe] used a concept of a charged conductive upper layer in the atmosphere, a theory dating back to an 1872 idea for a proposed wireless power system by Mahlon Loomis. Tesla not only believed that he could use this layer as his return path in his electrical conduction system, but that the power flowing through it would make it glow, providing night time lighting for cities and shipping lanes.

It’s a very Victorian / Steampunk idea that is also kind of horrifying. It’s working off theories of what electricity “is” that we now know aren’t accurate, but if you try to scale them to actually working every building and tree and person is now a lightning rod.

Topsy was also electrocuted at the request of the ASPCA because otherwise she was going to be hanged and it was seen as more humane, which always seems to get left out.

To clarify, Edison wasn’t trying to ‘disprove’ Tesla, the War of the Currents was Edison vs Westinghouse. Tesla didn’t invent AC, he would’ve learned about that in engineering school, he invented the 3 phase motor, which made AC significantly more practical. Tesla had an argument with one of Edison’s managers over pay, not with Edison. Tesla and Edison wrote each other letters later on and generally spoke positively of each other in public.

Tesla’s an interesting guy but unfortunately went off the deep end pretty steeply. His ‘death ray’ was a ‘blueprint’ he sold to his landlord instead of paying rent and is basically gibberish. Wardenclyffe tower was doomed by not understanding wireless transmission and is basically a Bond villain device. Turning the Ionosphere and Mantel in to halves of a capacitor would both take more energy than humans have ever generated and be really really really bad for anything tall and conductive, which would be basically everything with the energies involved.

“Don’t want automated looms? Stop buying clothes. Buy material and make your own, as your forefathers did. Surely your neighbors will be open to your message of time and effort instead of ease.”

Stop assuming the tragedy of the commons can be avoided by scolding the people talking about wanting to avoid it.

~2010

I remember them being noticeably louder. Unless you were in a library or a movie theater I don’t know why people cared all that much though.

It applies more. If you borrow $1000 and by the time you pay it back (including interest) you’ve paid $1500, but that would have had the buying power of $2000 today, you’ve made a pretty good deal. If you do that with a trillion dollars, you’ve made a great deal.

National Debt is a weird metric. For the US, the biggest foreign owners are Japan having ~4% and China having ~5% of the debt. The huge majority of the debt is within the US, either to individuals, businesses, or the government itself.

IIRC the speed of the 9th symphony is somewhat controversial because what markings we have on original sheetmusic are significantly faster than it’s normally played.

Symphony music in general is going to vary a decent bit depending on what bpm(s) the conductor is choosing.

What?

Are you trying to say they have no stats on what people stream on their platform if it isn’t connected to an ad? Because that would be completely insane.

Funnily enough the movie they made was supposed to be the intro to a TV show.

Trying to expand Gunslinger to bring in more backstory (and reeeeeeeally messing up the backstory) killed both the movie and the planned TV show. It’s crazy how well their plan could’ve worked if they hadn’t tried to fold too much into the “prequel”. Dark Tower even has the built-in “out” that this is a different turn of the wheel.

I did the math for me and even with the Amazon credit card the service wasn’t worth the price. It’s free shipping over ~$25(?) dollars anyway. “Prime shipping” hasn’t meant anything significant since at least 2020. It’s often the same as non-prime, maybe a day earlier.

If you care about the shows that maybe changes, but they have about 5 and anytime you search for something it’s a tossup whether it will be included with your subscription or only available for buy/rent or on some other platform. It’s even more fun when there’s ‘copy’ of a movie included with Prime, and another available for buy/rent and and buy/rent version is at the top of the search results and the one you already paid for access to you have to scroll to see.

It can be both.

Mechanical/timer versions with auto-shut-off of all of these exist, but you have to touch those.