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Cake day: July 19th, 2023

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  • I’m often reminded of a SpaceX render they put up on the 'Tube back when they were still working out the reusability thing. Commenters had a lot of questions about how the particular flight plan impacted on their fuel budget. And so, Elon himself waded in with the answers. Except he was talking about the dollar price it cost to buy the fuel. He was like ‘why are you worried about fuel, it’s not that expensive, guys’ because he didn’t understand the questions. He didn’t understand why the amount of fuel and the mass of the fuel would be significant to anybody. Guys, I think he doesn’t understand the rocket equation. He doesn’t understand the central problem of rocketry. I think the guy might be full of it.












  • You build your track dead straight - like, not conforming to the surface direct through the crust straight. Now the train accelerates downhill for the first half of the journey, and decelerates uphill for the second, neatly coming to a stop at the destination. Oddly enough, in the spherical cow universe where you build this, all the maths cancels such that you get a constant travel time regardless of the start and end locations. On earth it’s about 40 minutes








  • -I cannot allow you before Théoden-King so armed, Gandalf Greyhame. By order of Gríma Wormtongue. Your staff.

    -Hmm? Oh. You would not part an old man from his walking stick?

    -It is not by my choosing. Your staff I judge to be five feet, yet no object greater than four feet in length may be brought before the King.

    -Then I must speak with the town carpenter.

    Later that day, Gandalf brings his staff to the meeting with Théoden. He has not broken any rules, and the staff is unaltered. How did he manage it?