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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: August 3rd, 2023

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  • Only if you ignore WHY it has the ability to do that. The reason is the hydroelectric power plant, or more specifically the construction of the plant, required that they divert the falls for a couple years a LONG time ago. They have maintained the capacity to divert the flow of the river to ensure that they are able to perform maintenance on the plant and the various national park infrastructures around the falls. The seasonal diversions are usually to perform said maintenance as well as to protect parts of the power plant from freezing. It is actually one of the great engineering marvals of the early 20th century.








  • Fun exercise… Look at the opening weekend box office numbers and figure out what 90% of it is. That is what the distributor made from the movie for THAT WEEKEND. They will continue to make 90% for at least a week. After that it will drop some. Eventually the theater will actually get the lion’s share of the box office, something like 6-8 weeks after the movie comes out. Do your local theaters a favor, don’t go see movies opening weekend, call the box office each week to find out what movies will be leaving that week and go see it then. Or, if you absolutely feel the need to go see it opening weekend, budget for the largest popcorn and drink you can afford. They are the highest profit margin items on the menu. The tickets may cost 30-45 bucks for a date night, but the theater only sees $3-$4.5 of that at the top end, even less for more anticipated movies. That is why concessions are so expensive, it is literally the only way they can stay afloat and Disney has even tried demanding 50% of opening weekend concessions for some movies.

    This is why so many cinemas are failing, both chains and locals. Spread the word, share this info, save our silver screens and send a message to the big media companies that they are being too greedy.





  • The issue with using the lunar cycle for timekeeping at night is that the moon is not always visible in the sky at night. It is also not at the same spot in the sky every night, so the math on describing the time based on moon position is actually pretty complex, and unreliable for a consistent overnight clock. You might think that tides could be used as well, but it that is even more complex. In fact, some of the first analog computers were created to do the calculus required to solve the question of timing and tides.




  • It’s funny you say candle, because there were actually fire clocks that were very accurate. They couldn’t tell you what time it was, but they could tell you very accurately how long they had been burning. If lit before nightfall and timed with a sundial, they were capable of rather precisely telling what time it was at night.

    Similarly, sand clocks have been a thing for thousands of years. Think hourglass, but with different size holes and made of different materials with larger volumes.






  • Because crypto is a joke and NFTs are vaporware. The concept is honestly laughable. Perfect example for NFTs, my company wanted to advertise that our service could help with the production of NFTs and my boss had put together the ad for it. I advised against it considering the BS and controversy associated with it. It became doubly apparent when I looked at the ad and saw that he had included several of the (in)famous NFTs that had been sold. I point blankly asked him if he had gotten permission to use them. He said no. Then I pointed out that the fact he was able to put them in the ad without asking and paying for the right to to the person who had spent millions on the NFT was exactly my point. NFTs are a scam. Thankfully he saw the light and dropped the whole nonsense.

    As for the blockchain in general, it is unsustainable. It requires enormous amounts of power and computing cycles to maintain which gives it a massive eco-footprint and sucks resources needed by actual industries and individuals to support. If you started attributing it to all digital purchases, including resales, it would expand exponentially. It is fine in concept, and if it could function in a passive state somehow it might see usefulness as a purchase and resale history for digital media, but it can’t. It requires many computers maintaining identical records in active communication with each other.