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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 24th, 2023

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  • The grenade thing depends on the generation of grenade. Also depends on the country of origin. Assuming we are talking about the American M67 one you see in most movies, there are 3 different generations of safeties.

    Quick basics of an American grenade- the spoon is the handle looking thing that is sticking out the top and runs along the side. Under it in the head of the grenade is a spring that is always trying to push the spoon off its hinge and make it fly off, while then starting the fuse and the whole bang process. The safety pin (a codder pin with a ring on one side to pull on) runs through the head of the spoon and is held in place simply through binding into its hole/channel by tension provided by the spring. For a little bit of extra safety the end of the pin sticks out about a quarter inch and is bent for a little, but easily straightened and pulled out with the ring (look up a picture and you will see what mean).

    The old ones were just the safety pin held in place by the spring/spoon mechanism. But if you had excessive vibration or just enough pressure and you had pre-straightened the safety for pulling ease, it would negate the spring pressure and the safety pin could slip in and out with ease (thus easy to pull with teeth for Rambo effect). People didn’t trust it, so it was typical to then use electrical tape to hold the spoon down wrapped around the full body and then a bit extra folded back to make a quick pull tab. To throw: pull e-tape, pull pin, throw. The army then added a secondary safety to the safety. It was this secondary safety clip that held the spoon down to the head, providing constant tension and stopping the vibration loosening issues. They were also intentionally designed to have to get pulled off in opposite directions. To throw: (I am left handed) sweep safety clip left, pull pin right, throw. This was in my opinion the best setup and my favorite of grenade generations. Apparently this was about 50/50 with other others. So the army then came out with their third generation, the “confidence” thumb guard thing. It is a metal flap switch that locks/latches the safety clip onto the pin ring. I thought it was dumb. Most people hate it. But credit where credit due- it is impossible to fuck it up. Now to throw: thumb/sweep up on confidence latch, sweep left on safety clip, pull right on pin, throw.






  • While China is quickly becoming a global leader in clean energy adoption, it still has some work to do. The nation still relies heavily on coal-fired power plants and will need to retire those facilities in favor of more sustainable options in order to truly offset its CO2 emissions.

    This is a bit of an understatement. China leads the world in both renewable energy usage AND coal use. And by a lot. Then they also lead in steel production with older blast and coke furnaces that are super CO2 intensive. And in concrete production and use, also super CO2 intensive.

    I’m not trying to shit on the progress they have made. It is nice to see them taking this more serious than some others. But this article kind of green washes their energy, overplaying their renewables and not even mentioning their dirty power.



  • Fun fact, in the book Jurassic Park and in the initial script, there was a river boat sequence. It was extensively planned in preproduction and teased as part of the plot. This was spread to the other ‘tie-in’ merchandise and park ride. This is why the universal studio ride is a water ride and why games that timed their release with the movie had river sequences. But as we all from the future know, it never happened. Budget overruns and shooting delays lead to script rewrites to cut out that sequence.



  • Seriously. We are talking about tire tread compared to weight. Both use multiple sizes of tire depending on the year/model. There are a few that overlap in diameter to get the closest to comparison but they still have a very different width. We are talking about a 235/35R18 vs a 235/75R18. That is a huge difference in wall height/aspect ratio and changes how the tire gives under power. Those numbers massively change depending on model as well. Something like an f150 raptor could have a 315/70R17, almost a foot wide. So comparing just the weight and saying they are close enough is far from a fair comparison.





  • While any aircraft sent to ukrane is nice, I sure hope they aren’t paying much for them. That airframe is about 60 years old with the last major design overhaul in 1990 and its last electronics upgrade in 2000. They would be better off buying F15e’s or even the new f15ex. He’ll, even getting some last Gen f16’s or f18’s over there would be as good or better, but cost probably more. The f15 though is probably the best multiroll jet for the cost.

    Now, if we are talking about sending some OG Mirage 2000 fighters over there, then that sounds like the ultimate white elephant gift France could give. The US could sent some F4 phantoms over while we are at it.

    The big news I the training of 4500 pilots. That is huge. If they could do that, then the mirage 2000 could basically turn into their base fighter trainer and use it as the training wheels to get the new pilots experience and into bigger and better things.



  • You are on a nuke loving platform and people are going to downvote anything that isn’t hard pro nuke. But you are correct. I have had this exact same discussion before. The numbers you are looking for are called the LCOE, or the ‘levelized cost of electricity’ where the lifetime of the technology cost if factored in. Offshore wind is currently the lowest followed by solar. Nuke is clost to 10x the cost. There is even an international nuke consortium that has several reports agreeing with exactly what you are saying and basically sum it up as: if you invested in nuke early, then it is cost efficient to just keep upgrading. If you didn’t invest in it early, then the cost to implement it so high that you are better off going wind/solar. Even if you add in the cost of battery systems, it is still cheaper than building a new nuke plant. And more than that, with these new nuke plants you have to upgrade all your infrastructure because your old wires can’t handle the output loads. If you look at the 30+ billion Georgia spent on this plant, they could have simply given out a micro generation grant to everyone to add solar to their roofs, not needed to upgrade the lines, and been far better off. But hey, just like reddit, if you are commenting on lemmy you better be pro nuke only and ignore the other numbers.





  • As much as I say fuck the billionaires, they have actually already had methods of doing this for about 50 years. Only the dumb billionaires who registered the planes in their name were annoyed about the rules. They could have always registered it under a trust, like almost every other rich person private jet out there. People can still figure out the plane tail registration and track you through that, and that will never change. So the billionaires that are happy about this regulation change still have their tail numbers known by the public to be associated with them and can still be tracked. Now they just have to change their tail numbers (giant pain) and wait for people to do slightly more difficult digging to figure out what plane is theirs.