Rings Of Power Finale - The Final Insult (15:06) ~ The Critical Drinker

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I am probably the biggest Tolkien nerd on this entire platform. RoP was the most offensive thing I have seen in a long time.

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Please give me an example.

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You should be ashamed for trying to spread this sort of rhetoric. Please educate yourself before spewing such stupifying ignorance.

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shall we have a fight, my phd vs yours?

Arguments from authority are obviously pointless but be honest, you threw the first jab in the first line of your response. I responded in kind.

Metaphorical fisticuffs aside, the politicical history that led to the modern ERCOT is complicated and nuanced. I am not going to claim to know all of the details but I am aware of a longstanding drive to circumvent federal regulations to save $$. This has been pushed in both private and public sectors in TX for decades. There are definitely some very sound financial reasons for this push but regardless of the logic behind the decision making, the reality of the situation is that most of TX faces higher annualized risk of financial losses from power grid failure than most of the rest of the country (CA is much worse actually but for different reasons). This could be addressed by either improving the reliability of the existing decentralized grid or by tapping into the main western or eastern grids. Most ASCE committees I have participated in advocate for a combination of both approaches. Generally, the US assumes way too much risk of this sort too.

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I am a licensed civil engineer with a phd and I probably make more than you ever will. Any power grid without enough redundancy to withstand 20 faults, let alone 4, is inadequate.

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No. It was the decision to separate the Texas energy grid from the rest of the nation. They would have had the redundancy to avoid much of this catastrophe had they stayed connected.

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The more disconnected a person is from needing to produce genuine value to survive, the more insane the ideas that person will be open to accepting.

This is one of the most insightful things I have read on this site in awhile. Thanks.

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Holy crap OP. You cannot seriously be this stupid.

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Umm... No. What if the person talking to you is indeed a scientist who practices in a relevant field?

Suggesting people ought to jump to conclusions whenever they hear a particular phrase is embarrassingly childish. This is a supid meme.

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I tend to agree with this approach but perhaps there is some value in the childhood experience of learning adults can lie about something like santa? I'm on the fence still I guess.

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You must be either muslim or mormon. You should go suck off Joseph Smith no matter what though. Derka derka, muhammad jihad.

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I'd expect #21 to filter out around 99% of applicants at my current firm :/

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This is actually pretty damn good.

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I think you just associated yourself with Islam.

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Hah. I just finished a 60-core pi cluster last weekend. Definitely recommend if you have a use case for it.

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Yep, it's saddening.

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Can we just have ranked choice already and be done with the two party system? It's the elephant in the room in this entire thread and especially this discussion.

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I was paying attention when this happened. Fuck corrupt politicians.

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Truth.

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Thank you for the salient argument. Your logic is so air tight there is no counterpoint to be made.

This one guy tried but I'm sure you will easily dismantle everything he has to say: https://youtu.be/uQ7GvwUsJ7w

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I would pay about tree fiddy to watch you debate Richard Dawkins. He would eat you alive.

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If you actually believe this, then you are an imbecile.

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You are calculating the energy of the building when it finally reaches the ground. But during the fall, there is no energy lost.

Energy is never lost ya ding dong. Unless you think conservation of energy is a hoax too that is.

All energy goes into the kinetic energy, the acceleration. This is what you missed in your calculation.

Haha, no I did not miss the kinetic energy. Re-read my last reply. It is clearly stated that all gravitational potential energy is converted to kinetic energy during the collapse. I am not sure you have done enough reading on how kinetic energy would be dissipated is such a situation (or in general for that matter).

You need the energy of the dynamics of the fall.

You might be referring to the turbulence of the falling objects. This is typically manifested as a dissipation of rotational kinetic energy as members spin around and bang into each other. Again, I clearly did not miss this.

The architects and engineers do know. Just check their website. The link I provided above explains it very clearly, much better than me.

You did not provide a link. I am sure architects and engineers (again, I am an engineer) could describe this better than you can though.

You need to be more wary of confirmation bias. Everything else you just said is irrelevant or nonsensical.

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Feel free to do the calculations and tests, but your "engineering view" is very wrong.

I feel I have done this already and I am not sure you have backed up your claim properly. I am a licensed civil engineer with extensive experience designing and analyzing tall buildings. During my phd studies, I actually modeled impact loading and progressive collapse of tall strucutres using the finite element method combined with an averaged langragian-eulerian coordinate system approach to handle the large displacements and deformations. The analyses considered nonlinear deformation patterns, stress and temperature dependency, and a myriad of other factors. I could go on but the point is, I am not afraid to do these calculations myself and I am not ignorant on this topic.

Just do a simple energy-analysis. Where does the energy come from that destroys and pulverises all the concrete and (some) steel. If the buildings falls down near gravity acceleration, there is no energy to draw from it.

Wrong. The gravitational potential energy of the static structure is converted to kinetic energy during the collapse which is dissipated through collisions between falling elements (turbulence) and between falling elements and the ground. The total energy drawn from these collisions is equal to the height of the center of mass times the weight of the mass that is falling (i.e. PE=mgh). Even if we only consider the portion of the building above the impact zone, the energy involved is more than enough to melt steel, pulverize concrete, and even cause a shockwave in the ground that can be measured by seismometers from other states. These towers were about 210m tall and 500000t each! Any "explosion" more energetic would have been obvious for anyone to see I would think.

In actual demolitions, this gradual collapse is sometimes used. And it shows a far slower acceleration, that falls down to zero acceleration (=constant speed). They reach some kind of terminal velocity. In these demolitions, they need to carefully prepare the collapse and remove almost all underlying carrying structures. Because anything off centre creates an imbalance that increases with each step. This often causes the building to fall sideways, instead of downwards. Or just get stuck half-way.

No. I am embarrassed for you after reading this part.

The planes are just a distraction, only capable of starting severe fires. Just like in a plane crash, we get a fireball and then a quick fire that exhausts all the fuel. According to the firemen the fires were under control, until (according to them) everything suddenly exploded. And if you look more into the planes, you will see that there has been some major mix-up with military hijacking simulations. And the remains of the planes that hit the buildings, were traced back to military versions of planes.

What evidence do you have of these claims?

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