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The thought of something organic like a string in a ultra high vacuum system makes my stomach turn. But so does the thought of ferret fur in a UHV system. A metal cable could have been installed, but would have required probably some serious design effort for it be stowed during operation and likely it would never be used if things worked the way they expected.

I think too often other constraints limit access and features in vacuum systems. Spending a couple hours hanging upside down trying to grab a fragments of a part with a long flexible tool, blindly because the borescope only fits 90% of the way there, is sometimes easier than making a system that is easy to clean.
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I hope that was intended to be hyperbole, and not a pile of projection and misunderstanding it looks like.

I have and continue to do technical work in both imperial and SI, and also several nonSI metric units. It is all quite functional with only a slight difference in effort. In the grand scheme it doesn't matter too much what units you use as long as you can convey things with necessary consistency and accuracy (hence natural/theorist units that make some fields of physics quite easier to write out than SI...).

There is plenty more in life to worry about than what units other people use. Except for cgs electrical units...those are just smell bad to anyone near by.
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There have been numerous road traffic studies that show methods that improve travel times for everyone involved... but are completely unusable because they will make people feel like they are spending more time waiting. For a lot of systems it isn't about how efficient it actually is, but how people feel.
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They are not photos, they are maps. Yes, with Photoshop you could draw whatever fake image you want, as could a person with a text editor write whatever fake words. You could look at the actual description of how maps were made and consider their provenance:

A light description of exact image used above: https://www.climate.gov/news-features/featured-images/underwater-land-loss-coastal-louisiana-1932

The more detailed report of the source data, including some discussion of comparability of satellite data to pre-satellite data and separate analysis of satellite data only: http://pubs.usgs.gov/sim/3164/
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The place I live is pretty high up and probably the favorite of every place I've lived before in many ways... But also feels crowded and is a struggle to afford even with a way above average salary.
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Scientific glass blowing is a very small field from what I've seen. It used to be a lot bigger many decades ago. But common chemistry glassware products are now mass produced, including some nice modular systems, and physics uses a lot less glass, partially from standardized vacuum components. This leaves just the most custom parts, and sometimes a single shop can supply a whole region.

I tried to actually join an apprenticeship when I was in undergrad, but lost out to essentially a flip of a coin to another student. The glassblower took only a single apprentice every other year and the student would essentially have an extra class for the next 3-4 years. I've met two scientists over the years that did go through an apprenticeship, but neither ended up using it in their career (at least directly, there is a lot of value to knowing how things are made when designing stuff, even if you don't make it yourself). About all they did with it beyond a hobby was sell just enough glass "toys" to pay for their equipment.

The area I work in would probably have used a lot more custom glassware parts 50+ years ago. But the only thing I've gotten from a university glass shop is cut straight tubes because they were cheaper than going out of house and a lot more accurate than trying to do it myself. Modern ceramics and glass optics on the other hand are a different story.
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Your last paragraph is parallel to why the field I work in uses eV for temperature.

A select few special people get rather indignant if you mention that scientists use any non-SI units. It seems amusing some would pick that hill to die on.
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Some such effects get subtle or down right scary once used in marketing, especially ones that still work when you're fully aware of the effect. I wonder if these researchers still go out of their way for free food/coffee even when it isn't worth the time (a common occurrence I still miss from working at a university).
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Why does 99% of species being extinct mean evolution doesn't work? Wouldn't that mean the exact opposite?

This sounds equivalent to saying because 99% of restaurants that ever existed are out of business, therefore food trends don't exist and all restaurants opened the same year.
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That is not a paint you can just buy in a consumer sized can and use like any other paint though. There are several vendors of coatings that are much darker than this, but they require sending your parts to them for coating (or a licensed process that only works for large scale production), are quite expensive, and can have quite a few constraints on what surfaces and shapes get coated. Some coatings, like vantablack, depend on the surface texture/geometry, so they are quite fragile too.

That said, there are off the shelf paints already that push 98% absorption, so I don't know if this is that much darker than what is on the market. There are plenty of applications where paints aren't so good too, as it depends on the chemicals used in the binders and things like temperature range, mechanical strength, how much power it can absorb, etc. At my job I am often stuck using just graphite for as an optically black material, which isn't that dark but meets all of the other requirements.
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At least in my area of the PNW, we have plenty of snow removal equipment and the cities are mostly pretty good about preparing beforehand as much as possible. As long as it doesn't come down too fast, they can get things clear in the night or early morning. That said, they chose not to get winter tires for city buses, so they struggle with any hills in slippery conditions, and an actual storm will still dump snow faster than they can clear.

Also, while somewhat true of the PNW, I found ice to be much worse on parts of the east coast. Several times while living there, I would hear people make jokes about schools closing with less than an inch of snow, but there was nearly half an inch of ice under the snow from the freezing rain before it started to snow. Even many places in the deep blue on that map would shut down with bad ice.
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I've ran out to street parking and rummaged through my car trunk with just shorts in -30/-35 weather, but there was sun and no wind. Wind can make a huge difference, as can standing around vs. walking. I can stand around at a slightly sheltered bus stop for half an hour in that weather, or walk for 30-60 minutes easily, but I simply don't have adequate clothing for hours in such weather.

I've known several people that worked a stint on projects at the South Pole. Even though the temperatures were "only" -20 something in the summer, they were explicitly told not to bring a coat on their first trip as they would be issued an appropriate one. The project really did not want to risk someone underestimating how difficult it would be standing outside in windy conditions doing non-physically intense activity.
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The two writer/directors are Canadian and it was produced by a company out of Montreal that is described as specializing in First Nations productions. A summary lists at least two Canadian musicians: Buffy Sainte-Marie and Robbie Robertson.

Unfortunately the PBS stream doesn't work in Canada.
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I don't think I can compete with the biological sciences in this regard. And probably most of my weirder stuff was biology invading my lab anyway.

Maybe the oddest was having to clean a nest of baby spiders out of a high voltage system. Or cleaning dead birds out of a capacitor bank (the capacitors leak a sticky oil that can act like glue traps). Or running parts from a room sized laser through my home dishwasher, as dish washer soap is great at getting off hard water marks. Or cleaning up the remains of light fixtures that caught fire above a capacitor bank. I guess life story: high voltage systems collect a lot of detritus.

Most other stories involve breaking tools or drinking (but not both... I don't mix things that shouldn't be), which can happen at any job. Surely everyone has screwdrivers that are an inch shorter than when new.
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  • Member Since 2013/02/01


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