TIL

[MalkinIsMyHomeboy]

I think I read they had a scene with it from either Billions or Succession but I haven’t watched either

[dodint]

Yeah, Billions Season 3, Episode 6 Recap: Eat or Be Eaten.

I remember watching the episode and reading up on it. Got a bunch of folks' panties in a bunch.

[shafnutz05]

One day on Mercury lasts two Mercury years.

[Gaucho]

[Gaucho]

oh, I get it

[Gaucho]

lazy ass planet

[meow]

Stay sharp, G

[Gaucho]

long day

[Ad@m]

Meggings ?

[King Colby]

long day

2 years?

[King Colby]

One day on Mercury lasts two Mercury years.

Mercury spins slowly on its axis and completes one rotation every 59 Earth days. But when Mercury is moving fastest in its elliptical orbit around the Sun (and it is closest to the Sun), each rotation is not accompanied by sunrise and sunset like it is on most other planets. The morning Sun appears to rise briefly, set, and rise again from some parts of the planet's surface. The same thing happens in reverse at sunset for other parts of the surface. One Mercury solar day (one full day-night cycle) equals 176 Earth days – just over two years on Mercury.

[Gaucho]

long day

2 years?

heh

[dodint]

Monaco has the fastest average internet speed in the world.

Being small with a wealthy population helps.

[tifosi77]

Average Ookla speed in Singapore is almost 240 Mbps, and 80% of the population lives in government-subsidized housing.

[Gaucho]

Astana is no longer Astana. It's been Nur-Sultan since 2019, actually.

[Shyster]

The term "bought the farm" comes from life insurance bought by farmers.

Farmers have extreme seasonality for cash flows, so they are constantly borrowing money on mortgages or other loans to buy farmland, buy seed, plant, and live on while they wait for the harvest. At harvest time, they take their crops to market, and used the money to pay off a portion of the loans. Rather than risk losing the farm if the farmer died before the loans were paid off, farming families going back to before the Civil War would buy life insurance in an amount sufficient to cover the debts. If the farmer died before the loans were paid off, the life insurance company would pay the death benefit to the bank and negate the debts. Thus, though his death, the farmer posthumously "bought the farm" from the bank.

[robbiestoupe]

Astana is no longer Astana. It's been Nur-Sultan since 2019, actually.

So there I am in Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon, looking for 1000 brown M&Ms so Ozzie would go on stage

[tifosi77]

I thought bought the farm was aviation slang for a pilot dying in a crash?

[MalkinIsMyHomeboy]

tif 1 - Shyster 0

It comes from a 1950s-era Air Force term meaning “to crash” or “to be killed in action,” and refers to the desire of many wartime pilots to stop flying, return home, buy a farm, and live peaceably ever after. When they died as a result of a collision or were shot down, their buddies would shake their heads and mutter, “Well, I guess he bought the farm.”

https://www.almanac.com/fact/what-is-me ... ase-bought

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/buy-the-farm/

[tifosi77]

I mean, it could well be that aviators co-opted the phrase from that origin. I've just only ever heard it in the context of flying mishaps.

[iamjs]

TIL that the former Penguins defenseman Robin Burns created the skate company Micron. He also later created itech.

The only condition of him continuing with Micron was that he could switch over to working with itech at 3pm everyday.

[MalkinIsMyHomeboy]

TIL about the "demon core"

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

The Demon Core was a spherical 6.2-kilogram (14 lb) subcritical mass of plutonium 89 millimetres (3.5 in) in diameter, manufactured during World War II by the United States nuclear weapon development effort, the Manhattan Project, as a fissile core for an early atomic bomb. It was involved in two criticality accidents, on August 21, 1945, and May 21, 1946, each of which killed a person.

[shafnutz05]

TIL about the "demon core"

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

The Demon Core was a spherical 6.2-kilogram (14 lb) subcritical mass of plutonium 89 millimetres (3.5 in) in diameter, manufactured during World War II by the United States nuclear weapon development effort, the Manhattan Project, as a fissile core for an early atomic bomb. It was involved in two criticality accidents, on August 21, 1945, and May 21, 1946, each of which killed a person.

This was covered in detail in the Oppenheimer biography I read. Pretty terrifying stuff.

[tifosi77]

I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.

[MalkinIsMyHomeboy]

the part that makes me shake in my skivvies is this description

“Instantly, there was a flash of blue light and a wave of heat across Slotin's skin; the core had become supercritical, releasing an intense burst of neutron radiation estimated to have lasted about a half second.”

almost sounds like something from a sci-fi movie. I am deathly curious what that would’ve looked like in real life (I can’t imagine videos would do it justice)