Odd Lots
- ESR did an interesting long-form essay on that very peculiar nootropic drug, Modafinil, which he takes for cerebral palsy. It sounds extremely useful, but for the property that the more you use it, the less effective it is. That’s why most people who use it illegally do so only on exam days, when heightened cognition can literally make or break your future. As always with ESR, it’s worth reading the whole thing, and that includes the comments.
- The Sun has been blank now for five days, and in today’s image I don’t even see any plages, much less spots. The coming solar minimum is going to be early, and from all appearances deep.
- I’m looking for a source of sockets for Ryobi 1 18v rechargable batteries, which are the packs driving most Ryobi cordless hand tools. I want to build my own gadgets using Ryobi 1 packs, and it would be handy to buy sockets rather than having to scavenge dead Ryobi tools. I doubt that Ryobi sells them (having looked at their product line in vain) and I’m now hoping somebody has created them via 3-D printer.
- The American Heart Association says that animal fats can kill you. (These guys actually consider margarine healthier than butter!) Really? Or might it just maybe have something to do with the fact that the AHA takes significant money from major vegetable oil manufacturers? If you see anything from the AHA, pass it by. It’s tainted (if not entirely fake) science.
- Gut biome bacteria may have significant effects on cognition. Numerous crude jokes suggest themselves here, none of which I will make.
- More people are leaving Illinois than moving to it, and the disparity is the greatest in the country. Illinois has some of the highest property taxes in the nation, along with exploding unfunded pension obligations that will drive all taxes higher in the near future. Carol and I are very glad we got out when we did.
- Good summary of recent progress on new designs for nuclear reactors. I’ll be blunt here: If you’re more afrad of nuclear power than global warming, I see no reason to be afraid of global warming at all.
- While researching lucid dreaming for my novel-in-progress, I happened upon a how-to guide for…astral sex. Thanks, but having sex with random astral beings doesn’t sound like an especially good idea to me.
- We’ve seen gadgets that purport to enable lucid dreaming for years, but a new generation is coming, with better tech and probably better chances. Insomniac that I am, I suspect what they do best would be keeping me awake.
- WikiBooks has a book on lucid dreaming induction methods and I’ve found it intriguing. There’s lots to try, but my suspicion is that the best lucid dreamers are probably born with it.
- I don’t often do politics here, but the left-leaning Guardian has a very insightful explanation of why the American media will never make any headway in their desperate (and failing) war against Donald Trump. Basically, journalists here are herd-running tribalists who simply don’t care how they come across to ordinary Americans, who are becoming numb to the topic and ever more frequently tuning them out.
Posted in: Odd Lots.
Tagged: dreams · drugs · food · health · media · science · sleep
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> socket
I needed a socket to take Makita batteries, since I already had some tools that used them. I wound up buying a grossly overpriced Makita flashlight, which, other than the price, provided a convenient battery housing with belt clip.
There are 10A 12v battery connectors on eBay; I bought some recently for a project. You could solder the leads to a bare battery if it would work for your project.
That’s almost the sort of thing a 3D printer would be good for…
What I want (as I explained to Bob Halloran below) is a full mating socket for a Ryobi battery pack, so I can snap a pack into the gadget just as I would into the cordless drill that the pack came with. That is fersure where 3D printers excel, though I don’t have time to fool with one at this time. I’m hoping that somebody will eventually print such a socket and sell it to me, even if I have to make the metal battery contacts for the socket myself. (I can do that.)
> It’s tainted (if not entirely fake) science.
I’ve become suspicious of anything that comes from an “association.” Generally it’s only a matter of time before they get taken over by executives with very different goals than the members might expect…
“Take a respected institution. Kill it. Gut it. Wear its carcass as a skin suit. And demand respect.”
> nuclear reactors.
Never buy a French car or a nuclear power plant.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olkiluoto_Nuclear_Power_Plant#Unit_3
Bah, they’re running a little late. Big deal.
A friend of mine is getting ready to retire. He has spent his entire career as an engineer working on the F-35 fighter.
someone’s done a cap for the Ryobi batteries as a Thingiverse project (www.thingiverse.com/thing:1194867); about what you had in mind?
That would work, but what I was hoping for was a mating socket for the full pack, including flanges for the pack’s grippers to grip. TRX further up the comment line here suggests that this is what 3D printers are for, and I agree–but I don’t have time right now to learn another new technology.
I have a printer sitting here, but the software does things bass-ackwards from the way I learned to do mechanical drawings. And, of course, there’s no documentation, because it’s all “intuitive.”
While there’s a vast amount of discussion on forums, almost all of it is in incomprehensible hip-hop txtspk which isn’t worth my time to parse through.
“More people are leaving Illinois than moving to it…”
In many respects, Illinois looks like a train wreck in progress. I know several people with plans to get out of the state.
So why are some big investors putting up very big money for projects in Illinois? For instance, the $900M Wanda Vista Tower in downtown Chicago, largely funded by a Chinese company?
Too much cash and no place to put it? They should research Nebraska, which no longer has defined-benefit pensions for public employees. Omaha is a very nice place, and if we hadn’t moved to Phoenix we might have moved there. (We could have a pool in Phoenix. And we wouldn’t need snow shovels. Case closed.)
If you’re still interested in a Ryobi clip, 3D printed, look here (I’m printing one now). Comes with a link to the metal clip part that costs like $1-2. There’re others on Thingiverse.com too, if you search for Ryobi and battery. Here’s another one that just uses wires.
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2641307
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1194867