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Linguofreak

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That does make more sense. :)

I do seem to remember some confusion on my part between the two terms as a small child (both match "e.*ator").

But the confusion didn't have to exist: "Escalator" is a genericized trademark. If society had picked any other company's brand name for the same concept as the one to roll with (e.g, "Motorstair"), the confusion would have been avoided.
 

Notebook

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Luckily no confusion in the UK, we call them "lifts".
I always knew elevators as an American term from films/tv.
 

jedidia

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Finally got around to rewatching the dark crystal after more than 2 decades.
Realised that Kiras "fantasy" language is a Jugoslavian dialect, understood almost every word of it. Since I know that it was originally planned to dubb the entire film with a fantasy language and add subtitles, it makes me wonder if they intended to do the entire thing in Dobardanski... :lol:
 

Linguofreak

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Finally got around to rewatching the dark crystal after more than 2 decades.
Realised that Kiras "fantasy" language is a Jugoslavian dialect, understood almost every word of it. Since I know that it was originally planned to dubb the entire film with a fantasy language and add subtitles, it makes me wonder if they intended to do the entire thing in Dobardanski... :lol:

Kind of like when my brother recommended Eragon to me and I realized fairly quickly that the Ancient Magical Language (TM) of the story was Old Norse with a bad case of apostropheitis (or some such "make it look cool" nonsense).
 

Linguofreak

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Ah! Never read it, but I heard it was pretty good. The movie... not so much.

The book, ehhhhhhh. Your milage may vary, but I found it rather cheesy. Then again, I'm a huge language nerd (see my username), so the issues with the language building started it off on the wrong foot for me.

---------- Post added 10-13-19 at 05:50 ---------- Previous post was 10-12-19 at 10:41 ----------

G-mail is the worst.

I *cannot* get it to deliver my spam folder to one of my e-mail clients over IMAP. Another client will take delivery of the spam folder over IMAP.

In trying to troubleshoot this, I discovered:

Not all available settings show in the "basic HTML" view.

On one mobile browser, the desktop version of the standard view locks up completely.

On another mobile browser, only the mobile version of the standard view will display.

G-mail recognizes "promotional" e-mails, but does *not* default to marking them as spam.

The basic HTML view shows you what e-mails will be matched by an "is:spam" filter.

However, the standard view explicitly tells you that filters with "is:" will match no e-mails, despite the fact that it will happily search for "is:whatever" interactively, so it's not possible to redirect spam to a custom folder that IMAP will pick up.

Once you're in the standard view, there's no straightforward way of getting back to the Basic HTML view. You have to reload the page, then, before it finishes loading, find and click the link to the basic HTML view on the loading page, and any time you switch to standard view (such as to change settings that are only visible there), it resets the default to standard view, so once you get back to Basic HTML you have to reselect it as the default.

:compbash::compbash::compbash::compbash: :compbash2: :compbash2::compbash2::compbash2: :goodnight:

And, of course, I've used my g-mail address for so many things that I can no longer realistically stop using it.
 

Artlav

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May i recommend Fastmail? For a reasonable amount of $30-$50 a year you get a clean, no-nonsense, no-bloat e-mail service.

And yes, getting off Gmail is like quitting a bad habit. The trick is that you don't need to do it all at once, just change over all the easy stuff, start adding the new stuff and slowly work through the hard stuff as need arises.

In my case, i kept all the social media and similar crap over there as a way of separating important and unimportant mail.
 

PhantomCruiser

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Let's restart Chernobyl

Are you volunteering?

As far as I know; units 1 and 3 are viable, but way out of date. The cost of a restart plus updating the safety systems are pretty high. Just finishing WBN2 was 3 billion and 5 years over and beyond estimated cost (and it had already gone through hot functional testing before being put on hold). Just updating WBN1 to meet standards after Fukashima ran a refueling outage over by weeks (and millions), and we had years to prepare for it.

I don't have the numbers for Browns Ferry unit 1 handy, but it far exceeded the initial cost estimates to restart after the fire. But here's a safety tip: When looking for air leaks, don't use a candle... seriously...


Given that small modular reactors seem to be the future, unless there is an extremely high demand for electricity, I doubt that Chernobyl will ever be anything other than a historical site (under constant monitoring) for the next few centuries.
 
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Linguofreak

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Are you volunteering?

As far as I know; units 1 and 3 are viable, but way out of date. The cost of a restart plus updating the safety systems are pretty high.

I don't know. Could an RMBK even be updated to modern safety standards? I assume that the RMBKs still operating are more just grandfathered in than actually running on a design that could get a permit for construction, even in Russia, today.
 

Urwumpe

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I don't know. Could an RMBK even be updated to modern safety standards? I assume that the RMBKs still operating are more just grandfathered in than actually running on a design that could get a permit for construction, even in Russia, today.

Since they attempted it at Ignalina: No.

But the Ignalina powerplant operated with far less incidents than others, despite still being a major health risk for the people around it (like all RBMKs)

I think the problem already starts at the requirement to use a robust, explosion-resistant containment building, especially after Fukushima.
 

Abdullah

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I am not a nuclear scientist.

Surely if a reactor cannot explode it needs no explosion proofing. Well, yeah, if.......the core collapses and forms a critical mass, then we can forget about negative void/power/whatever coefficient.

I just think that Ukraine should make it's next nuclear power plant Chernobyl itself, just with the RBMK replaced by a self-regulating uranium hydride reactor similar in size and looks. The biggest reason is just that it would be a cool way to preserve this historic station. The reactor can't explode, so no need for blast shell. But of course, core collapse and nuclear explosion needs thinking......a reactor that operates on pulses of prompt criticality.....it is already exploding as hard as it can, so no bigger explosion is possible.....can't say
 

Urwumpe

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Surely if a reactor cannot explode it needs no explosion proofing. Well, yeah, if.......the core collapses and forms a critical mass, then we can forget about negative void/power/whatever coefficient.

Are you sure having tons of superheated water around is no explosion hazard?

Remember, in Chernobyl the nuclear reaction produced the energy, but the steam did the work.

German containment buildings have to be large and robust enough that all water inside the reactor vessel could suddenly evaporate without breaking the containment building ("Volldruck-Containment" in German).

While RBMKs only operate at about 7 MPa, its still twice as much as a steam train used to have at the peak of their performance (1.5-2 MPa). (Except the German DR H 02 1001 prototype, which operated at 12 MPa)
 

Abdullah

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If a reactor is physically incapable of providing the energy, then steam is incapable of boiling violently and Chernobyl is incapable of exploding. You know, like a bomb that doesn't work.

That's why I thought, dropping a tiny subcritical ball of uranium in a moderated core and setting it off like a micro-nuke is kinda safe (if it's practical). The reactor is already exploding as hard as it can.
 
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Urwumpe

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If a reactor is physically incapable of providing the energy, then steam is incapable of boiling violently and Chernobyl is incapable of exploding. You know, like a bomb that doesn't work.

But shouldn't the reactor also provide electrical power? How is it supposed to produce electrical power, if there is no thermal power?
 
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