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Cake day: October 4th, 2023

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  • US naval vessels themselves will become targets

    They already have been the target of missiles launched by the Houthis provided by Iran. Thus far, missile defenses have stopped them.

    I suppose that Iran probably has some ability to ramp up how many anti-ship missiles they’re throwing, but the US also has the ability to drastically ramp up the number of bombs being dropped on Iran; I doubt that climbing the escalation ladder is going to be advantageous to Iran.





  • The problem with this is that there’s currently no way to target immune-suppressing drugs to say: “Hey, just stop attacking your own cells, but continue doing everything else an immune system is supposed to do

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allergen_immunotherapy

    Allergen immunotherapy, also known as desensitization or hypo-sensitization, is a medical treatment for environmental allergies (such as insect bites) and asthma.[1][2] Immunotherapy involves exposing people to larger and larger amounts of allergens in an attempt to change the immune system’s response.[1]

    We do have some limited ability to “train” at least some aspects of the immune system not to attack certain things. I’ve no idea whether that approach can be used for something like this.




  • I’ve never seen naptha (i.e. Zippo lighter fluid) do anything to any painted or finished surface, nor any of the plastics I’ve ever tired it on.

    I’d guess that it’s probably bad news for natural rubber. IIRC, naphtha is similar to gasoline, and gasoline will mess natural rubber up.

    That being said, I have a can of naphtha myself.

    kagis

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_rubber

    The two main solvents for rubber are turpentine and naphtha (petroleum). Because rubber does not dissolve easily, the material is finely divided by shredding prior to its immersion.

    Sounds like it.

    One other thing to keep in mind is that it is (obviously, given that that’s how lighters that use it work) quite flammable in vapor form and the fumes aren’t great to breathe, so this is something you’d want to use in a well-ventillated area.

    EDIT:

    https://kleanstrip.com/solvents-and-thinners/vmp-naphtha/

    Klean-Strip® VM&P Naphtha can be used in place of Paint Thinner for oil-based paint, varnish and enamel when a faster drying time is desired.

    So I don’t think I’d want to casually get it on oil-based paint, since it’ll be a solvent for that too.







  • Escape Velocity also had a sequel or two done by Ambrosia Software themselves. I remember playing and enjoying them.

    kagis

    Escape Velocity Override and Escape Velocity Nova.

    It looks like Ambrosia Software’s website is now down, so I assume that one can’t legally purchase it any more.

    It looks like Escape Velocity was never ported to anything outside of classic MacOS, so playing it today probably entails obtaining a classic MacOS emulator and abandonware copies of the binaries.

    While Endless Sky is neat and last I looked still getting expanded, it also didn’t have as much story content as the Escape Velocity series either (again, at least last I looked).

    The image of each planet in Escape Velocity series (not really worth keeping IMHO, as they were saved at 8-bit depth) were done with KPT Bryce, a now out-of-print terrain generation and rendering software package. Probably one of the better-suited applications for it, as it was pretty good at letting one quickly turn out alien-looking landscapes. While there are newer terrain generation software packages, I have to say that Bryce did a lot of neat stuff and I don’t feel that there’s something that quite fills its “exploration” role in modeling and rendering software today. For example, procedural generation of textures using slope and altitude (so, for example, you could get rocky faces where generated terain was steep, or snow at high altitude on mountains).