chemeril's comments

SBF comes to mind.

Thirded, it fundamentally changed the way I understand government. Would also recommended The Road to Unfreedom for some context around current geopolitics.

20 grams of C4 or similar plastic explosive would be more than adequate to produce the effects seen. CL-20 wouldn't be a good choice for this deployment: it's not particularly stable for rough handling even with a good phlegmatizing blend, and tends to decompose at the temps one would expect a pager to be exposed to (hot car, etc).

Absolutely a contributing factor. A decade ago folks in the automotive community were speculating that vehicle bloat and a shift of the landscape to heavy truck/SUV representation would be an outcome and sure enough.

If I pull up behind a modern pickup at a stoplight my car is completely occluded. If I pull up to the passenger's side of a modern pickup the driver has no idea: they cannot see down far enough from the driver's seat to know that there's another vehicle next to them. It's remarkable.

I knew things were off the rails when I parked my beater 2nd-gen Ranger next to a then-new F-250 and couldn't see the top of the Ranger's cab when looking through the F-250's windows.

Last I checked my desktop doesn't slam into pedestrians/bicyclists trying to use what public infrastructure we have in the US. If unbounded vehicle bloat is systematically contributing to the deaths of citizens then yes, we have a collective responsibility to regulate it.

Finally some action from the NHTSA on this. As a driver of tiny Japanese shitboxes my entire life the last ten years of new vehicle development has been terrifying to watch from the driver's seat. Not only are these new (last 10 years) trucks and SUVs absurdly large and growing bigger, the sightlines from their driver seats are so bad pedestrians and small cars are largely invisible. Here's to hoping the car bloat arms race gets damped a bit with legislation stemming from the NHTSA's push.

What you've described is part of the experiment, which asks the question "can/will you focus for ten minutes on something that you did not choose and may not immediately tickle your neurons?". For most the answer is 'no'. The lack of choice is by design.

Notably absent from your comment is what you honestly think caused the disintegration of real-world community. I'd posit that it's an expected systemic outcome of unbounded and undirected capitalism.

I'd keep a house for the skiing at Pajarito too! For those reading along it's certainly worth the trip if you're in the area.

I have a vague recollection of coming across a physical 6x6 chessboard somewhere on lab property and found it a little odd, but never knew it had ties to MANIAC. Lots of history floating around in that place.

I promise people still make piles of money being really good at radio and really good at machining steel. The complexity of the deliverables has increased, yes, but the expertise and technical skill to do modern radio and machining is very much rewarded in the marketplace.

I've worked with these exact parts on a few designs for a large government institution. Exactly as you suspect: couldn't run power/conductive lines to the device on the receiving end for physics reasons. But, did work surprisingly well for the incredibly impractical use case.

I agree! Slack as a utilitarian tool is perfectly fine, in my experience. Not great, but fine enough to be a value-add as a communication platform for business purposes. However, I have found the working culture supported and implicitly enforced by Slack-centered organizations to be rather traumatizing to live with in the day-to-day. The availability of instantaneous, chat-like group communication has led to an expectation of instantaneous responses and giving _anyone_ in the org interrupt priority has completely destroyed my ability to do thoughtful, considerate work. This is not a Slack problem in origin, but the use of Slack is certainly loading and pointing a handgun at actual productivity in an org that uses it heavily for business.

I'm sure that there are plenty of organizations that have found ways to use Slack effectively where it fits. I have not yet found one.

Did some time at LANL as an R&D engineer in the non-global security skunky areas, though wound up leaving for reasons not pertaining to the work. Participated in several projects involving Sandia and LLNL.

Pros: - Pay was excellent, especially for the area - Incredibly beautiful country - Very interesting work - Infinite well of taxpayer dollars for equipment and materials - The best job security one can find - Crippling bureaucracy enforced a remarkably safe work environment

Cons: - Crippling bureaucracy made it difficult to move quickly and hit tight deadlines - Internal politics (intra-lab and inter-lab) often adversely affected decision making and program success - Living in a company town - An inability to remove demonstrably problematic employees - A Q clearance limits certain extracurricular activities

Personal experiences with LANL were all over the place and highly, highly dependent on which group one works with. I was very lucky to get in with a group of wonderful people and immediate management that firewalled most adverse developments from higher up the food chain. This is not a common experience but organizational mobility is relatively free, so you can move to work and groups that are attractive.

Worth noting for those coming from private industry: the national labs are institutions first and foremost, not businesses. Organizationally and operationally they exist in a very different mindset and within very different value systems than FAANG-like orgs. The adjustment can be a bit jarring.

My work at LANL will likely be the most interesting and most fulfilling work I'll have done: every day was an adventure into the unknown. The work/life balance was also excellent. If you're a naturally curious person and have an inclination for basic science I'd recommend taking a look at the labs. If you have specific questions feel free to drop them here!

I moved from the greatest of the plains to the mountains, having now lived in the southern and northern Rockies. Counterintuitively, my world became much much larger after discovering topography.

With no large geographic reference point your experienced world becomes only what you can see to the horizon, often blocked by crops or a section treeline. 3-5 miles out, 8 if you find a hill. And, since it's all patchwork rural farmland, every place you go outside of this radius feels the same. You've seen it before; it's just a rearranging of the same stock roads, treelines, fields, fences, and farm equipment.

Moving to the mountains ruined me for the plains. In a ten-minute walk I can observe a river valley unfold below me with my view uninterrupted until the next mountain group 40 miles away. Ten minutes in the opposite direction and I'm climbing to the top of the world. In the mountains there is always something new to see and another incredible nook to find just around the bend. The topography brings a sense of scale that constantly reminds me just how big and exciting the world actually is.

I was raised on the plains of the Eastern Dakotas. The summers were always noisy: crickets, cicadas, coyotes, prairie dogs, wind, plenty to fill the air. The winters were incredibly austere, sometimes incomprehensibly so to those who haven't experienced them.

On particularly cold and windless days outdoors the silence is almost unbelievable. You hear your heartbeat, the snow underfoot crunches so loudly you cringe, and sounds travels so clearly and without interruption that a half-mile seems within arm's reach. It's absolutely surreal and can be very disorienting, almost like space compresses around you.

It was hard enough to live there in the 90s. I can't imagine how isolating it'd have been on a claim.

GP's comment was referencing nitrocellulose, which is what I was attempting to address but fatfingered to 'nitroglycerin'. Forgive the typo.

It is not. Nitroglycerin doesn't have the capacity to detonate (necessary for triggering the main charge). Detonators (the acceleration charge you mention) are usually an explosive train starting with a sensitive primary like lead azide moving up to a secondary or pseudosecondary output charge like PETN.

Certainly not a plasma. It's a coherent spear of hydrodynamic copper, not a bunch of charged ions floating around.

Yes, that's reasonable. By the time the jet hits the target the explosive provides no motive force whatsoever: it's purely a momentum game.