Hilariously obvious that someone's pet project got tacked on there at the end. Kilometer wide structures please - or alternatively can you make us a tube of bio glue to fix punctures?
A diaeresis signals you pronounce the vowel separately, a trema signals the pronunciation of the previous vowel (e.g. in the French ambiguë), an umlaut changes the sound of the vowel ( the German a sounds a bit like the English a in bat, but ä sounds like the English e in bed).
Notationally I wish the diaeresis was a single dot. It bugs me that we’re using two dots to separate two syllables, yet both dots are over the second syllable. Plus a single dot would avoid ambiguity with the umlaut (though I suppose there are very few words with both features).
A lot of glyph based idiosyncrasies like that in languages scripts are artifacts of the era of physical block types before we had shit like hot cast linotyping where the blocks were made on demand.
What probably happened is umlauts were used a lot in German and some lazy typesetter wasn’t going to waste a perfectly good block sitting around that he could reuse
Wow, there's some serious zeitgeist going on there:
This novel was published almost simultaneously with The Fountains of Paradise by Arthur C. Clarke. Through an amazing coincidence the two novels contained many similarities. Both protagonists are engineers who have built the world's longest bridge using a machine named the "Spider", both of whom are hired to build a space elevator, and both engineers modify their Spiders to produce a crystalline fiber.
It's like the simultaneous invention of calculus. People are conduits for independently-living ideas.
The idea of spider webs in space was explored long before, in the second century AD, by Lucian of Samosata in his _Ἀληθῆ διηγήματα_ or "True Stories." Spiders run webs from the sun (land of the Heliots) and the moon (the Selenites) so that a vast space battle can be waged on a plain between them.
If you have spent time in academia, this concept is ever present.
Somehow all the academics in a particular field all over the world just happen to agree on a narrow set of ideas to explore next.
Most of science happens like this, yes even the Newtons and Einsteins of the world explored ideas in this narrow frontier of next ideas. There used to be exceptions in the distant past but modern science does not tolerate exceptions.
When you say "exceptions" I can't tell if you mean to be hinting toward something like new-agey crystals, or something more like DARPA bio structures, or something else entirely. What is the frontier of unexplored knowledge that is forbidden by academia?
I can't remember the source (xkcd?) that drew any individual scientist's contribution as a tiny little bump on the edge of a huge circle.
It's not talked about it much outside of research groups, but for any field, there is a small number of people who are currently pushing the boundaries, and they all read each other's papers and have a good idea of what the next question to ask is. It can often be a race to engineer an experiment that convinces the reviewers that your article should be published first. It's a sort of cooperation/competition that moves the field forward faster. These areas often move so fast that nobody even bothers to write down the current problems, it's just sort of talked about in person.
Put another way, the successful discoverers are the ones looking for their keys at the end of the streetlight: "Science is a bit like the joke about the drunk who is looking under a lamppost for a key that he has lost on the other side of the street, because that's where the light is. It has no other choice." (Chomsky). Few if anybody looking where there is no light discovers anything (even if it's sitting there in the dark), or at least, nobody believes them unless they provide significant evidence (like building a new lamp)
"Building new lamps" is why the engineers and technicians developing new scientific instruments and experimental processes deserve more credit than they get.
Yes- after many years of being a theory guy I actually did a 180 and started building my own scientific instruments, because the acquisition cost of a research microscope is so high. This allows me to experiment quickly with new ML algorithms, and I've greatly increased my respect for the people who toil to make the hardware for next-generation discovery science.
That's a really nice way to visualize how modern human knowledge is extended through scientific efforts. Thanks for sharing! (thanks also to the GP who introduced the concept)
(1) hep-th had too many people chasing too few problems back then, or
(2) "scalar field with a mexican hat potential" is one of the simplest field theories you can write though it inspires all sorts of ideas like the Higgs Mechanism, Inflation, etc.
Accelerated rate with equivalent integrity probably requires some engineering tricks nature hasn't "figured out" yet. Given nature has had a few billion years of massively parallel processing of the original genetic algorithm, it's unlikely. Especially considering ASI is a pipe dream. Also, sea creatures use buoyancy to their advantage.
Maybe we will find other structure development systems from combining existing pieces of biologic systems. But that's also unlikely, because biologic systems are so incredibly entangled (to use a software concurrency/complexity term).
That said, it is an awesome research direction, just for the novel construction techniques potential.
We kind of have microgravity on Earth under water, which provides apparent reduced weight due to buoyancy. Coral reefs and all that.
Underground root/rhizome structures are also bio structures existing in a kind of microgravity since they are firmly supported by the surrounding soil they are packed into.
Wonder if anyone is looking into splicing those spider silk genes into a fungus. Maybe the mycelium could gain enough tensile strength to hold pressure? Maybe exude the proteins and form strong tubes around itself? Fungal structures are already surprisingly light for how strong they are.
Might it not be possible to "harvest" carbon from sources on e.g. the moon [1], thereby requiring less effort to launch those resources into orbit? Feel free to point out if I'm talking (thinking) nonsense here...
Might also have something to do with the war in Ukraine completely changing our understanding of modern warfare. Defense projects take decades to design and build and now out doctrine is somewhat impacted by how effective drones are proving to be.
Do you discount the impact of drones, or did you put a lot of value in them before the war and still do? I find the tactics around using expendable troops to attrit expensive troops a bit humbling too.
Drones have always been in extensive use during warfare. Though in the past it was only very high altitude gliders of the american military whereas today there are countless low-altitude consumer grade drones.
I think this is a little pedantic or maybe I'm just being too ambiguous lol. I'll try to make my thoughts more clear as it's likely the latter.
You're absolutely right that drones have been used for awhile, but that has mainly been for reconnaissance and some extremely expensive predator drones. The idea of having thousands of small consumer grade drones mass produced cheaply to terrorize a much larger army by dropping grenades on soldiers and live streaming it on the internet is definitely a new development. There are drone swarms covering our major military ships as well and it's unknown whether it's our own military doing it as part of a black ops program (I assume it's possible, but highly unlikely) or a hostile foreign power doing recon. Russian tanks are also getting dissected by RPGs at an unexpected rate. The Ukrainians took out major Russian warships by distracting the ship with drones and then ramming it with a jet ski torpedo.
Modern militaries are scrambling to find new technology and strategies for how to handle these new capabilities.
> Do you discount the impact of drones, or did you put a lot of value in them before the war and still do?
I don't discount the impact of drones, quite the opposite. I did, and still do, put a lot of value in them. Point in fact: I worked in the commercial UAV industry (in the USA) before and during the war, though recently laid off. I feel like I was underutilized.
As a matter of fact, drones aren't being used as much as I expect them to be, nor in all the theatres that I expect them to be.
For air:
UAVs for surveillance? Yes, we've seen plenty of videos of this. But not to the extent that I expect. Color and thermal video? Yup. Ground radar? Not so much. Air radar? Nope. Radio signal extension/repeaters? Sort-of, not really. Decoys? Recently yes but not quite used for the purposes that I expect.
UAVs for dropping bombs? Yes, plenty of this. But the examples I see are typically quite crude compared to what I expect... with an emphasis on cheaply produced vehicles capable of dropping generically-attached bombs. Makes sense given the economics of the war. But these are IMO over-represented compared to what other capabilities UAVs could have. Dropping incendiaries (eg, dragon burning a forest) seems to be an evolution in kind but not really a revolution of new tech.
UAVs for suicidal destruction? Yes, we see this too, mostly against ground vehicles. These are crude, but seem to be quite effective.
UAVs for ground strafing? I see very little, if any, of it. I think this would probably be more effective than dropping grenades (let the computer do the aiming) so I'm surprised I don't see this concept used much.
UAVs for air superiority? Very little, very crude. I don't see many weapons mounted on drones shooting at other manned or unmanned air vehicles. I see more UAVs trying to ram other UAVs instead. I don't see UAVs having missiles mounted on them (though the UAV itself might be a missile...). I think there's a lot of underrepresented opportunity for UAVs to have light missiles for air-to-air capability. Conversely, I do hear a lot of complaints from both sides about the other side's use of UAVs, which tells me that UAV air-to-air capabilities aren't as well developed or deployed as I'd expect.
UAVs for logistics? Some, but it doesn't seem to be as much as I'd expect. Ammunition is too heavy for current generation UAVs to move a meaniningful amount. But I think there's plenty of opportunity for UAVs to move food parcels, medical components, limited amounts of technical components, and limited amounts of water. I suspect that UAVs are under-utilized for this purpose, but I don't have access to battlefield data to understand risk/reward tradeoffs here.
Then, for ground:
UGVs for fire suppression? Some, but not much. Small little rovers mostly and the ones I've seen in public videos seem much more mechanically complicated than a UAV. The biggest limitation here might be fuel or power. Knowing the current state of computer vision, and given that a ground vehicle can be a spectacularly stable platform from which to fire a gun, and a computer can aim quite quickly and precisely from a calibrated and stable platform, I think that unmanned ground vehicles are significantly under-utilized and/or under-developed especially in defensive capabilities.
UGVs for ground-to-air? Significantly less than I expect.
UGVs for ground logistics? Not really much at all. I suppose the amount of materiel (fairly insignificant) they can move around is not worth the cost to build/maintain.
And, for sea:
USVs for naval combat? Less in total numbers than I expect, but the ones I do see seem to have an outsized impact and are far more sophisticated than I expect when compared to other types of unmanned vehicles I see. It seems (from my perspective) that navies have invested significantly into unmanned vehicle capabilities.
More speculation, more research, and with citations, and that would take a couple of weeks at least. Then it's not really something I'd want to put online for free nor for all sides to see.
Starcraft is a real-time strategy game, and Zerg is one of three factions you can play in the game. Zerg units are individually weak but cheap compared to the other factions, so Zerg players typically compose swarms of disposable units when staging and conducting attacks. It’s also quicker to make large swarms, since there isn’t a sequential build queue for Zerg unit construction. It makes for a pretty interesting switch in mindset compared to the other sides, where there is much more emphasis on preserving one’s units. Some of the more obnoxious strategies, like the Zerg rush, have become memes among gamers.
The term "Zerg Rush", or "zerging", is now commonly used to describe sacrificing economic development in favor of using many cheap, yet weak units to overwhelm an enemy by attrition or sheer numbers.
"The Zerg Swarm is a terrifying and ruthless amalgamation of biologically advanced, arthropodal aliens. [...] They are named "the Swarm" per their ability to rapidly create strains, and the relentless assaults they employ to overwhelm their foes."
Any department that is responsible for paying Elon Musk has a better chance than others that stand in his way. USAID was investigating musk and CFPB were in the way of his X Pay nonsense. He gets a lot of money from the DoD so if anything they will have their budget increased.
