Joining The Herd Of Lemmings

I’ve had cause to consider a few things. Maybe we’re going about it the wrong way, and we need to ditch Trump

Yeah, NO

Trump all the way! Why? Because being hated by the people who hate him is a sign of impeccable character, that’s why.

The haters can go fuck themselves with rusty twelve gauge bore brushes. I’d prefer ten gauge but that’s kind of scarce, so…I’m willing to compromise.

The RINO’s Dilemma

The RINOs who who have burrowed in and taken over most GOP organizations, from the state down to local organizations, have quite a dilemma on their hands, and most of them have their heads too far up their asses to realize it.

OK, I’m not talking about the liberal in a Republican area, who knows they’re in the wrong party, but is there because it’s the only game in their town; they hope to capture a nomination someday, at which point they’re guaranteed to be elected…otherwise, they never will be. These people are a hazard in any heavily conservative area.

No, I’m talking about the guys who are a little bit conservative and want to do some good by going into politics, and they’re in a closely matched area, closely enough that they can join the party they are most aligned with and still have a chance. They think the Democrats…particularly the ones who end up running for office…are nuts.

They don’t think much better of the Deplorable types, either. A bunch of bumpkins whose hearts are in the right place, mostly…OK a bit extreme. But they think Deplorables can’t understand that first you have to get elected, then work within the system to change things…a slow process. They genuinely want many of the things Deplorables want…just not as much. The government is spending too much. Or they need to spend money on highways instead of welfare for illegal immigrants. But they want to work within the system to get these things done.

Or maybe they think things are pretty close to ideal right now, and they want to nail it in place.

The problem is, that means they don’t stand for anything in particular. And it shows. They’re about as unappetizing to the electorate as a puddle of dog vomit. The folks in the middle, who they think they are appealing to because they themselves are not extreme, would honestly prefer a clear-spoken radical to someone who qualifies everything they say to the point where they sound like they don’t believe anything at all.

The problem these “Mild RINOs” have, is they just can’t see that. And the reason they just can’t see that, is their entire sense of self-worth is tied up in not seeing that. In their minds, they’ve worked tirelessly for their party, to keep those crazy Democrats out…only to have to constantly fight with a small number of crazy Republicans–who are only liabilities if they end up as candidates. They’ve fought the good fight, and if they can just find the right candidate, someone with some charisma, they might stop the crazies…without being too beholden to the OTHER crazies. In the meantime it’s not working. What’s a responsible guy in politics to do?

They simply cannot understand that the Republicans can’t succeed as the party of nothing in particular. Not really in the past, and certainly not today when people are starting to realize that no matter what they do in the voting booth, the country is still about to fly off a precipice. If they did see it, they’d suddenly have two choices: Go away and let the GOP succeed, or stay and fight. But “go away” isn’t really an option, because what’s the point of having a party now owned by the crazies, win?

Well, they have a dilemma…and WE, therefore have a problem. And we would have that problem even IF they realized that they had a problem…that they were the problem.

No one ever thinks they are the bad guy. Even Epstein probably thought he was the good guy. Right up to the moment where he didn’t kill himself.

So if you ever wonder why these unappetizing dufuses cling on even when their fingernails are being left behind…that’s why. They don’t understand no one wants them, and can’t imagine that no one should want them. And oftentimes their greatest pride is in all the hard work they’ve done for the party. They’re not going to give that up; it’d be psychological suicide.

If you’ve worked with these people, there’s a good chance you like them and consider some of them your friends. But even if so…we’re going to have to give them a good, hard shove. Because America is more important than those milquetoasts’ egos.

Justice Must Be Done

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Spot (i.e., paper) Prices

Last week:

Gold $1,991.60
Silver $25.15
Platinum $1,084.00
Palladium $1,588.00
Rhodium $9,300.00

This week, 3PM Mountain Time, markets have closed for the weekend.

Gold $2,018.60
Silver $25.77
Platinum $1070.00
Palladium $1,567.00
Rhodium $8,600.00

Gold came within ten dollars of its all time high close on Thursday, it was in the $2050+ range. It got pushed down HARD for Friday.

Fuck Joe B*d*n

Due to complaints about foul language, I’ve censored the most objectionable word in the title of this section.

B*d*n, you don’t even get ONE scoop of ice cream today.

(Please post this somewhere permanent, as it will continue to be true; the SOB will never deserve a scoop.)

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

Remember Hong Kong!!!

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!

McCarthy 2.0 seems a vast improvement over Speaker Dungsmear. So here’s the question. Was he once a conservative with a little fire in the belly that got captured by the system and now is finding the bellyfire again? Or is this all completely under duress?

For the moment, it doesn’t matter which one. But some day it will matter, and we will have our answer.

Lenin’s Birthday

By the old Julian Calendar in effect when and where he was born, Vladimir Illyich Ulyanov was born on 22 April (Old Style), 1879 in the town of Simbirsk in Russia. Alexander II (the LIberator, for he freed the serfs) was tsar of Russia. Before Ulyanov was done, his name had become Lenin, Russia was becoming a charnel house, terrorized into submission to Marxism, and the stage was set for Stalin (formerly Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili).

And that town of Simbirsk is still named Ulyanovsk in Lenin’s honor. The constant hagiography under the Bolsheviks has resulted in many Russians continuing to regard Ulyanov as a hero.

The 20th was Hitler’s birthday; it’s rather amusing that Queen Elizabeth II and Catherine the Great both are wedged in between and have their birthday on the 21st (in Catherine’s case, again Old Style).

RINOs an Endangered Species?
If Only!

According to Wikipoo, et. al., the Northern White Rhinoceros (Ceratotherium simum cottoni) is a critically endangered species. Apparently two females live on a wildlife preserve in Sudan, and no males are known to be alive. So basically, this species is dead as soon as the females die of old age. Presently they are watched over by armed guards 24/7.

Biologists have been trying to cross them with the other subspecies, Southern White Rhinoceroses (Rhinoceri?) without success; and some genetic analyses suggest that perhaps they aren’t two subspecies at all, but two distinct species, which would make the whole project a lot more difficult.

I should hope if the American RINO (Parasitus rectum pseudoconservativum) is ever this endangered, there will be heroic efforts not to save the species, but rather to push the remainder off a cliff. Onto punji sticks. With feces smeared on them. Failing that a good bath in red fuming nitric acid will do.

But I’m not done ranting about RINOs.

The RINOs (if they are capable of any introspection whatsoever) probably wonder why they constantly have to deal with “populist” eruptions like the Trump-led MAGA movement. That would be because the so-called populists stand for absolutely nothing except for going along to get along. That allows the Left to drive the culture and politics.

Given the results of our most recent elections, the Left will now push harder, and the RINOs will now turn even squishier than they were before.

I well remember 1989-1990 in my state when the RINO establishment started preaching the message that a conservative simply couldn’t win in Colorado. Never mind the fact that Reagan had won the state TWICE (in 1984 bringing in a veto-proof state house and senate with him) and GHWB had won after (falsely!) assuring everyone that a vote for him was a vote for Reagan’s third term.

This is how the RINOs function. They push, push, push the line that only a “moderate” can get elected. Stomp them when they pull that shit. Tell everyone in ear shot that that’s exactly what the Left wants you to think, and oh-by-the-way-Mister-RINO if you’re in this party selling the same message as the Left…well, whythefuckexactly are you in this party, you lying piece of rancid weasel shit?

In Defense of Ranked Choice Voting

One of the biggest obstacles to direly-needed change is RINOs, and one of the weapons in their arsenal is the “Wasted Vote” argument.

Periodically a third party has arisen, trying to hold RINOs to account by putting pressure on them from outside of the party, since doing so from the inside has historically done very little good. But, even if you find a third party candidate who perfectly reflects your views, you’re likely to vote for the RINO anyway. Why? Because if you don’t, the Democrat might win, and that would be even worse. So if you vote for that third party (that few will vote for), you’re throwing your vote away and increasing the likelihood of the Democrat winning. (It’s half as much a gain for the Democrat, as actually voting for the Democrat would be. Not as much, but half as much. Because although you denied the R your vote, you did not flip your vote to the Democrat.)

The Republican Party Establishment knows you don’t love them. But they know you hate the Democrats worse, and they use that to continue to herd you into supporting them. With gritted teeth you cast your vote, but your vote counts the same whether you cast it enthusiastically. And the other alternative, pissing on the voting apparatus to express your actual feelings, is probably a felony.

But what if you could vote for that third party without increasing the chances of the Dem walking away with the prize?

This is what ranked choice voting, or instant runoff voting, can do provided it is properly implemented. (And this includes the votes, and only genuine votes, being counted honestly, of course. However, I’m going to compare it to what we have today, and pretend that is honestly done too. RCV can’t work if it’s not honestly administered, just like our current system isn’t working because it isn’t honestly administered.)

The idea behind RCV is to vote by expressing your order of preference. You could vote for the Patriot Party, then for the RINO Party as your second choice (and ignore the Democrat, the Green, the Overt Socialist Schmuckmonkey Party, etc).

What does this do? It nullifies the wasted vote argument. Your vote will be counted for the Patriot party, first, then instead of it being “wasted” when the Patriot Party loses, it ends up going to the RINO. Actually, it’s just barely possible that the Patriot Party would actually beat the RINO, if people weren’t all individually afraid to vote for it.

It’s just like the famous “Prisoner’s Dilemma” where your fear of other peoples’ actions prevents you from doing the optimal thing–and vice-versa. As long as Job Lowe is afraid to vote Patriot because he’s afraid you’ll vote RINO, you’ll have to vote RINO because you fear that Job Lowe will, because he fears you will.

So on the whole I like RCV. It gives you a no-risk way to vote against the RINO scum, and in favor of someone who deserves your vote.

The problem is, as done here in the US, it comes packaged with a “jungle primary.” A bunch of candidates get to put their name out there, and the top four (or so) candidates get onto the “main” ballot. This gives party establishments their way around the threat of a good third party bumping them off. Because they know that few people bother with primaries, and third parties don’t have the resources to run in a primary…so they throw two or three establishment hacks into the primary and they will probably beat the third party. The result is the RINOs end up with two of the four slots in the general election, and the Dems get the other two. Now there’s suddenly no third party candidate on the ballot at all.

If we were to combine RCV with the present system where each party could nominate exactly one candidate to appear on the November ballot, or at the very least, ensure minor parties could get onto the ballot with at least one candidate regardless of the primary, we would be getting somewhere, but the establishment is smarter than we like to give them credit for. They will support the jungle primary + RCV “solution” rather than the more appropriate one-candidate-per-party + RCV solution.

It’s not RCV that is the problem, it’s the primary structure grafted onto it.

Justice

It says “Justice” on the picture.

And I’m sure someone will post the standard joke about what the fish thinks about the situation.

But what is it?

Here’s a take, from a different context: It’s about how you do justice, not the justice that must be done to our massively corrupt government and media. You must properly identify the nature of a person, before you can do him justice.

Ayn Rand, On Justice (speaking through her character John Galt, in Atlas Shrugged):

Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification—that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly, that just as you do not pay a higher price for a rusty chunk of scrap than for a piece of shining metal, so you do not value a rotter above a hero—that your moral appraisal is the coin paying men for their virtues or vices, and this payment demands of you as scrupulous an honor as you bring to financial transactions—that to withhold your contempt from men’s vices is an act of moral counterfeiting, and to withhold your admiration from their virtues is an act of moral embezzlement—that to place any other concern higher than justice is to devaluate your moral currency and defraud the good in favor of the evil, since only the good can lose by a default of justice and only the evil can profit—and that the bottom of the pit at the end of that road, the act of moral bankruptcy, is to punish men for their virtues and reward them for their vices, that that is the collapse to full depravity, the Black Mass of the worship of death, the dedication of your consciousness to the destruction of existence.

Ayn Rand identified seven virtues, chief among them rationality. The other six, including justice, she considered subsidiary because they are essentially different aspects and applications of rationality.

—Ayn Rand Lexicon (aynrandlexicon.com)

Justice Must Be Done.

Trump, it is supposed, had some documents.

Biden and company stole the country.

I’m sure enough of this that I put my money where my mouth is.

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system. (This doesn’t necessarily include deposing Joe and Hoe and putting Trump where he belongs, but it would certainly be a lot easier to fix our broken electoral system with the right people in charge.)

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is pointless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud in the system is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

This will necessarily be piecemeal, state by state, which is why I am encouraged by those states working to change their laws to alleviate the fraud both via computer and via bogus voters. If enough states do that we might end up with a working majority in Congress and that would be something Trump never really had.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

Spot Prices

Last week:

Gold $2,005
Silver $25.42
Platinum $1,056.00
Palladium $1,589.00
Rhodium $8,450.00

This week, 3 PM MT on Friday, markets closed for the weekend

Gold $1,984.90
Silver $25.17
Platinum $1,134.00
Palladium $1,682.00
Rhodium $9,000.00

Gold was above 2000 still as of Friday morning, and got pushed down 21 dollars worth on Friday. Silver lost 21 cents on Friday. What I find interesting is the platinum group metals are starting to climb again.

Rocket Science

I’ve been exposed to rocket science in a formal setting. And I’ve been exposed to quantum mechanics. And many aspects of electrical engineering.

And I am here to tell you, rocket science ain’t rocket science, at least not by comparison.

A lot of what people call “rocket science” is really engineering, building devices that will work in a hostile environment. Hard vacuum (more of a vacuum than we can create here on Earth), radiation (both cosmic and solar-based), and temperature extremes. The simplest-seeming things can fail under those circumstances. And many materials we think of as “inert” will turn into bearded dragon poo up there. (No, not literally but you get my meaning.) Add people into the mix and then zero g –ahem, microgravity–becomes an issue, and the radiation protection becomes even more critical. And with people you have to build a pressurized environment, an enclosure strong enough to withstand an an enormous amount of outward force. 15 pounds per square inch doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s a ton per square foot. Every square foot. Yes, they can breathe a richer atmosphere at lower pressure, but the issue remains.

And all this has to be done as lightweight as possible. Which means, basically, that the Apollo astronauts landed on the moon in an aluminum “tin” can.

Why is weight an issue?

That goes back to actual rocket science.

By now I hope it’s abundantly clear that out in space, Newton’s first and second laws (objects in motion will remain in motion (and objects at rest will remain at rest) until acted on by an external force; and the force is proportional to the mass times the acceleration) are not just approximations. They hold. (And even here they do, but friction and a solid surface to stop our response to gravity and thus provide the sensation of weight introduce complications.)

Which means if you want to quit going endlessly around the same orbit, and want to go somewhere, you must apply a force in order to accelerate and change your speed.

By far the most common way to do this is with a rocket. There are solar sails and ion propulsion units, and they can be much more efficient than a rocket, but they must necessarily operate much, much more slowly. They can’t be used to go into orbit from the surface of the earth, because they don’t work fast enough to overcome the effects of the 1g pull near the surface. To go up, you need more than 1 g acceleration upwards; one g of it cancels gravity, the rest goes into increasing your speed. Solar sails and ion propulsion won’t do that.

The force usually ends up being supplied by a rocket; a rocket will change your velocity nearly instantaneously, which is how you change which orbit you’re in (if you’re in orbit) or accelerate to a speed high enough to be in orbit (if you’re not). It’s essentially a deliberate perturbation of an orbit.

People often wonder how a rocket can work out in the vacuum of space when there’s “nothing to push against,” in fact this is a common (and specious) argument in the quiver of those who deny the moon landings ever happened. The objection actually gets partial credit, because it acknowledges (even if it mis-applies) Newton’s third law of motion, which is that every action has an equal but opposite reaction. If you push against something, both you and it feel a push, in opposite directions; if you happen to be on roller skates you move away from what you pushed.

The fact is that the rocket moves forward simply because it flings its own exhaust out its tail end. The act of pushing the exhaust out, pushes the rocket forward; it changes speed in that forward direction.

It doesn’t have to be “exhaust” by the way; pushing any mass out the back will do the job. However, it happens that exhaust of burning fuel is by far the easiest thing to arrange for. When they want to be generic, they talk of “reaction mass” being the mass you push against to change your speed.

So let’s say you are sitting in a space capsule in orbit, and you want to change to a different orbit…and after doing all of the calculations, you find you must change your velocity by exactly one kilometer per second.

You and your capsule put together mass one metric ton, 1,000 kilograms or about 2200 pounds (mass). And let’s say this mass does not include the mass of the rocket fuel you happen to be carrying. So what if you have a metric ton of rocket fuel with you? If you can shove it away at 1 km/sec, you will also move at 1 km/second away from where you shoved it. On the other hand, if you only have half a metric ton of reaction mass…you gotta push it away at 2 km/sec.

This is from conservation of momentum. The mass of the fuel, times its velocity after the maneuver, must equal the mass of your craft, times its velocity. The two velocities will be in opposite directions, so they cancel each other. Zero total momentum before (0x0+0x0=0), zero momentum afterwards (1×1000+ -1×1000=0 or 2×500 + -1×1000=0).

But there’s a gigantic gaping hole in this analysis. And that is the fact that we can’t accelerate all of the fuel at once. We have to do it a kilogram at a time. So, returning to our metric ton of fuel at one kilometer a second, we’d expect each kilogram to speed us up by 1 meter per second; all 1000 kilograms would therefore give us one thousand meters, or one kilometer, per second.

Right?

WRONG.

The first kilogram of fuel, pushed out the back of the rocket at 1 km/sec, is having to push a spacecraft with a mass of 1,999 kg…the actual spacecraft plus the fuel that hasn’t been burned yet. NOT 1,000 kg. So it will barely accelerate the spacecraft half a meter per second! The second kilogram will have to accelerate a 1,998 kg spacecraft, and will do a little better as a consequence.

Only the last kilogram will produce the full 1 meter/second of change in velocity.

So we need more than a metric ton of fuel to do this, even if the exhaust velocity is 1 km/second.

And actually even this isn’t quite right becuase you can subdivide the kilograms into grams, each with a very slightly different effect; you can subdivide the grams into milligrams…you’ll get more accurate results, the lower you go, but honestly the only perfectly accurate answer is some sort of continuous calculation.

That sounds really, really hard. It’s like that numerical integration I was talking about a few weeks ago, with smaller and smaller step sizes. And indeed you could solve this that way, but you don’t have to. There’s a closed form solution.

But to see how that is, let’s work the problem in reverse.

Let’s start with the empty (or “dry”) spacecraft, 1000 kg. We know that at one km/second exhaust speed, it will take ever so slightly more than one kilogram of fuel to change our speed by 1 meter/second. To compute what it will take to do two meters per second, you can work it backwards: Assume your rocket is already doing one meter per second when you burn that kilogram+ of fuel to add on the second meter per second. But realize at the start of that your mass is 1,001+ kilograms, so in order to have done that first meter per second, you need enough fuel to accelerate 1001 kilograms; that will be 1.001+ kilograms of fuel.

You can imagine doing this a thousand times, adding a tenth of a percent of the mass of what you’ve already got to figure out what that particular meter per second of change in velocity is going to cost.

Now that I’ve phrased it that way…doesn’t that sound like compound interest?

We know how to handle that. In fact, we know how to handle continuously compounded interest (rather than periodic, step by step) so we can solve the issue of having to think about what each microgram of fuel does.

And it turns out, therefore, that to accelerate your spacecraft 1 km/second with fuel that has an exhaust velocity of 1km/second…you need not just 1,500 kg of fuel, no, you need 1,718.281828 kilograms of fuel.

YIKES! Almost two times as much fuel as actual spacecraft!

And it’s worse than that. You’re going to need a BIG tank to hold all that fuel, and the tank itself adds to the weight–or alternately, reduces the weight you can use for the astronaut, his life support, his food…and so on.

Well, I’ve talked around it a bit…but here it is. The equation at the heart of all of this is known, quite simply, as “the rocket equation.” There are several equivalent forms, which are solved for different things, but we’re interested in the mass of the fuel in this scenario, so let’s use this one:

This is usually credited to Константи́н Эдуа́рдович Циолко́вский…er, Konstantin Eduardovich Tsiolkovskiy (usually spelled Tsiolkovsky but the Russian ends with their “iy” so I’ll stick with that…see my rant about Chaikovskiy a few weeks ago). [And yes, that’s a TS at the front so you will probably have this insane urge to make the T silent.] He derived the formula in 1903.

OK, let me unpack this a bit. Δv is the desired change in the rocket’s velocity (1 km/sec). [the triangle is the Greek letter delta and is commonly used in mathematics and science to indicate “change.” So the change in the rocket’s velocity is often called “delta-vee.”] That’s divided by v_e, the exhaust velocity (also 1 km/sec). The result of that division is 1, so you are now raising the mathematical constant e to the first power…which is just e. That is 2.718281828…it’s a transcendental number like pi (π) is, never falling into an endlessly repeating sequence and never ending. It’s a little bit easier to memorize the first few digits of, though, because the 1828 repeats itself (once) .

Now m_f can either be a reference to a RINO politician (I may not have made myself clear on how much I despise them), or it could be the “final” mass, i.e., the mass of the spacecraft after all the fuel is burned. And m₀ is the “starting” mass. The mass of the fuel is the difference between the two m numbers. So our final mass is 1,000 kg, and that must be multiplied by e to get the initial mass, which is 2,718.281828 kilograms. Subtract 1000 from that number to get 1,718.281828 kilograms fuel mass.

Now picture what happens with a mission where there are two 1 km/second burns. For the later of the two burns, you must start with 2,718+ kilograms total weight…so that is m_f for the first burn. Which means the total mass before the first burn must be e times that. Well, that’s e² times the original thousand kilogram dry weight of the spacecraft…which is 7,389+ kilograms, subtract a thousand for the dry spacecraft weight and you now need 6.398 tons of fuel. You get the same result, by the way, for a single 2 km/second “burn”; just put 2 in for Δv keeping v_e as 1, and you see you have an e² in the formula. That’s important: Many small burns (delta-vees) are the same as one big delta-V equal to the sum of all the small delta-vees. (If you think about it, that makes sense. Why does it matter to the rocket whether it fires continuously or intermittently to do the same job?)

You can see this is going in a really, really bad direction. The more delta-vee you need the more fuel you need…and it mounts up quickly! This is where compounding works against you, and believe me it sucks to be on the brown smelly end of that stick.

(If you’re thinking that (in spite of what I said about rocket science not really being rocket science) this sounds like pretty complex math, it is nothing compared to general relativity. Or quantum mechanics. Or electrical engineering. Where, OBTW it’s possible to raise e to a complex power involving the square root of minus 1…and some reaaaaally interesting stuff happens when you do that.)

There are some ways to mitigate this. Obviously…anything you can do to reduce the weight pays big dividends in reducing fuel mass. And if you can figure out a way to do your mission with a smaller delta-vee, that’s great too…this is why NASA loves gravity assists. Every bit of speed they can get out of a gravity assist allows them to make the spacecraft bigger–read, pack more scientific instruments on the spacecraft, OR use less fuel (a smaller rocket). Or some combination of the two. And this is why NASA sends returning astronauts through a fireball re-entry too: No fuel is used to slow down. Apollo would not have been possible if they had needed a 25,000 mile per hour delta-vee in fuel to land on Earth at the end…think about how that would affect the rocket equation!

But the most potent method is to increase the exhaust velocity. If you can make your exhaust velocity 2 kilometers/second, then going back to the first problem where you want to change your spacecraft’s velocity by 1 km/sec, you now have Δv/v_e = 1.0 km/sec divided by 2.0 km/sec and you’re now raising e to the 1/2th power (e^1/2)…which is to say you take the square root of e, and multiply your 1000 kg dry mass by that. The square root of e is 1.64872+. The initial mass of your spacecraft is now 1,648+ kilograms, not 2,718+ kilograms, and your fuel mass is 648+ kg, not 1,718+kg. Wow, you’ve saved over 62 percent of your fuel mass (almost exactly 5/8ths in fact), and you can have a smaller fuel tank or more other things in that spacecraft.

Of course when you decide to do a 2 km/sec delta vee, you’re back to needing 1,718 kg of fuel…but that’s much better than 6,398 kg!

Basically if you increase the exhaust velocity by some amount…you’ve increased the amount of delta vee from the same amount of fuel by the same percentage.

This is why rocket scientists…er, engineers, will sell their left testicle or ovary for a faster exhaust velocity.

OK so how do you do that? Your taking a mass (the mass of your rocket exhaust) and speeding it up. That’s kinetic energy, and thanks to conservation of energy, that energy must come from somewhere.

In a rocket, that comes from simple chemical energy. You burn the fuel. If your fuel is kerosene, and you burn it (with oxygen) your exhaust has a lot of energy in it, it will want to expand, the pressure builds…and you give it a nozzle to squirt out of. Voila! Exhaust velocity.

Robert Goddard used kerosene and liquid oxygen. (And, note: You have to carry the oxygen with you into space [which rather conspicuously has very little oxygen ready for use] not just the stuff you’re lighting on fire. Fortunately the oxygen counts towards the mass of the exhaust so it doesn’t really matter how much is oxidizer and how much is “fuel.”)

It turns out that what the fuel is makes a great big difference. You can calculate how much total momentum change (“impulse”) a certain weight of fuel (and oxidizer) will produce, and that becomes the “specific impulse” which is symbolized I_sp (not to be confused with an internet service provider). By the time you fiddle around with unit analysis, it ends up being measured in seconds. Yes, just plain seconds. But you can also look at it as the amount of time a certain weight of fuel can provide a thrust equal to that weight, which is seconds, also. The longer it does that, the more delta-vee it can impart to whatever it’s pushing.

You can in fact take the rocket equation, and work the opposite problem: If I have a certain amount of fuel, how much delta vee will it give me? You can rearrange and solve the above and get the other commonly seen form of the rocket equation.

The first two terms (to the left of the second equals sign) are the rearrangement (ln is the “natural log,” the reverse operation to raising e to a power). The second expresses v_e in terms of the I_sp of the fuel, instead of the exhaust velocity. g₀ is standard gravity (9.8 meters/second/second, or 32 feet/second/second) since the thrust is in pounds weight instead of pounds mass.

So I_sp makes a big difference, because exhaust velocity makes a big difference. What has the best I_sp out there?

There is often a theoretical maximum, but just simple inefficiencies sap it…so that’s something else rocket engineers can work on. But the best rocket fuel out there is liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, with a specific impulse of 450 seconds. This is what NASA used in the Saturn V, and in the Space Shuttle main engines (and is using in Artemis). It can be expensive to liquefy hydrogen–then you have to engineer systems that can take that cold as well as the heat from the burning fuel, but when you absolutely, positively have to wring everything out of a BIG rocket, it’s the way to go.

Other fuels do less. The solid rocket boosters on the shuttle had specific impulses of 250 seconds. Solid rocket boosters generally have low ISPs but they are dead simple, have a long shelf life (unlike liquid hydrogen, where if you scrub the mission you must de-fuel the rocket because you cannot refrigerate it in the tank…because refrigeration is heavy).

I’ve now explained why NASA aerobrakes, and does gravity assists. It’s not a virtuosic stunt, it’s absolutely necessary to maximize the amount of “stuff” you can send to Jupiter or Mercury or the Parker solar probe or…Apollo 11, where you can’t exactly reduce the weight of the astronauts to save fuel. [I’m sure they were encouraged to hit the restroom right before launch though.] The more you can do that sort of thing the better; which is why the advent of cheap computing has been a huge bonus…those seven-gravity-assist missions couldn’t have been planned with a slide rule.

One last thing…and hopefully by now it’s obvious. Why do rockets have stages?

Remember what I said about the (literally) exponentially increasing amount of fuel requiring bigger and bigger tanks? Well, there’s one way to mitigate that. And that’s to put the fuel in several tanks, and throw them away as you empty them since once they’re empty they’re just dead weight you do not want to have to push.

This works, and works well. We could not get to orbit, much less the moon, without doing this. The problem is, it’s expensive. You either throw away the rocket (old school) or recover the parts and rebuild it (new school, complicated work). It’d sure be nice if the rocket stayed intact going up and back down again, and just needed to be inspected and refueled…like an airliner. And it seems like we can almost do this.

But alas, we need more specific impulse. But 450 is as good as we’re going to get by chemical means. It turns out that specific impulse is higher the lighter the molecule of exhaust is, and you’re just not going to get anything lighter than water out of liquid propellants. So liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen for the win!

But I said, by chemical means.

Experiments have been done in using a nuclear reactor to heat hydrogen (by itself) and of course hydrogen (by itself) will have a much higher specific impulse. Testing in the 1960s gave a specific impulse of 850 seconds! BUT…the reactor is heavy and it would really suck if one of those blew up in flight, say shortly after launch or shortly before landing. So we’ve been reluctant to pursue that further. There are other more pie-in-the-sky technologies with much higher specific impulses, but in general they tend to be very low thrust. (The fuel can change the delta v a lot…but it will take a long time…and we can’t use that to boost from the surface to Earth orbit. These would be great, though for use in spacecraft once they are out in space and have the luxury of time.)

OK, so there’s an introduction to rocket science and engineering.

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

To conclude: My standard Public Service Announcement. We don’t want to forget this!!!

Remember Hong Kong!!!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=L3tnH4FGbd0

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!

News Flash

Today, it is still the case that Joe Biden didn’t Win.

I realize that to some readers, this might be a shock; surely at some point things must change and Biden will have actually won.

But the past cannot actually be changed.

It will always and forever be the case that Joe Biden didn’t win.

And if you, Leftist Lurker, want to dismiss it as dead white cis-male logic…well, you can call it what you want, but then please just go fuck off. No one here buys that bullshit–logic is logic and facts are facts regardless of skin color–and if you gave it a moment’s rational thought, you wouldn’t either. Of course your worthless education never included being able to actually reason–or detect problems with false reasoning–so I don’t imagine you’ll actually wake up as opposed to being woke.

As Ayn Rand would sometimes point out: Yes, you are free to evade reality. What you cannot do is evade the consequences of evading reality. Or to put it concretely: You can ignore the Mack truck bearing down on you as you play in the middle of the street, you won’t be able to ignore the consequences of ignoring the Mack truck.

And Ayn Rand also pointed out that existence (i.e., the sum total of everything that exists) precedes consciousness–our consciousnesses are a part of existence, not outside of it–therefore reality cannot be a “social construct” as so many of you fucked-up-in-the-head people seem to think.

So much for Leftist douchebag lurkers. For the rest of you, the regular readers and those lurkers who understand such things: I continue to carry the banner once also carried by Wheatie. His Fraudulency didn’t win.

Let’s Go, Brandon!!

Hey China!

Or rather, “Hey Chinese Communist Party and your entire array of servitors, ass-wipers, and fellators!”

You’re not even worth my time this week. When you decide to act like civilized people, maybe I’ll give you a lesson or two in how non-barbarians behave.

Hey BiteMe!
(Or, Whoever Has Their Hand Rammed Up That Putrefying Meat Puppet’s Ass)

[Language warning]

You and yours have caused a lot of injury. Literal injury with your war on people who don’t want to take an untested vaccine. When people die in an emergency room because a hospital won’t admit them because they haven’t had their clot shot, that’s a crime.

I’m going to address here the insult on top of the injury, because I am among the insulted. I still have my health but apparently you want me to live under the 8th Street Bridge (which actually isn’t on 8th Street, but whatever, that’s what the I-25 overpass over Cimarron is called), so maybe if you have your way that won’t be true for long. Dreadful time of year to become homeless.

No, you’re just trying to make me unemployed, because I won’t take your fucking shots.

Well, that threat is NOT going to work. I. Won’t. Take. Your. Fucking. Shots.

And it looks like enough people agree, that you’re having to back down, you worthless asswipe.

You’re LOSING.

You LOSER.

You Chinese-bought ratfucking traitor.

I would love to see you die an agonizing, humiliating death. (This isn’t a threat, because I am not threatening to cause that death. I am just announcing my intention to party if it happens.) It would be just recompense for the way you’re killing America…and millions of Americans.

His Fraudulency

Joe Biteme, properly styled His Fraudulency, continues to infest the White House, we haven’t heard much from the person who should have been declared the victor, and hopium is still being dispensed even as our military appears to have joined the political establishment in knuckling under to the fraud.

One can hope that all is not as it seems.

I’d love to feast on that crow.

(I’d like to add, I find it entirely plausible, even likely, that His Fraudulency is also His Figureheadedness. (Apparently that wasn’t a word; it got a red underline. Well it is now.) Where I differ with the hopium addicts is on the subject of who is really in charge. It ain’t anyone we like.)

Justice Must Be Done.

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

The Former Tax Day

Today used to be Tax Day. An abomination, to be sure. The Income Tax was one of a number of nearly simultaneous factors that came together in the 19-teens to push us further into decline (others being the Fed and direct election of senators). Oh, the Regressive Era. (No I didn’t misspell that. It was deliberate.)

But it seems like nowadays taxes are never due on the 15th. It used to be that they’d only slip it one day if it was a Sunday (Post Office won’t postmark it on a Sunday). Now it seems like it’s routinely the 18th, largely because of some special holiday in DC (that somehow affects the whole country anyway even though DC could practically fit in my back yard…or the back yard of someone living in Rhode Island even after I park my truck in it).

Tranheuser Busch

Those asshats either get the world, all time record for obtuseness…or this is deliberate somehow. And their namby pamby non-apology that amounts to a “We’re sorry you’re too much of a knuckledragger to appreciate what we did” simply underscores the stupid. It’d be like a 400 pound golfer wearing spikes tromping on your instep and being utterly clueless why you are screaming in pain.

Me Ducking Out On Doing A Science Post

Been hectic here; likely to continue to be. I’ll still be posting but “extra” content is likely to be more limited, at times even I can’t predict.

Someone on Friday posted a video that is part of a playlist titled “The Entire History of the Universe.”

It has largely (so far) concerned itself with the earliest times of the Universe, and a lot of the episodes are good discussions about things like string theory, brane theory and so forth–stuff I considered too speculative to cover in the physics posts.

But this one (until recently the latest) is a fairly good discussion of light.

Spot Prices.

Kitco Ask. Last week:

Gold $2,008.60
Silver $25.07
Platinum $1,017.00
Palladium $1,550.00
Rhodium $8,900.00

This week, markets closed as of 3PM MT.

Gold $2,005
Silver $25.42
Platinum $1,056.00
Palladium $1,589.00
Rhodium $8,450.00

Gold was as high as $2,040 yesterday while I was looking. This morning it dropped below $2K for a while but has worked its way back over the $2K threshold to close.

Rhodium behaved almost the opposite, dropping during the week and then net climbing @250 on the last day, but (here the dissimilarity ends) also in this case ending below the prior week’s level.

Platinum and palladium, the two cobalt congeners, both a bit up. Silver, up. I get the sense that people are waiting to see if this really takes off…or doesn’t. I know on Friday someone posted a rumor that the organic fertilizer will be impacting the rotating ventilation device within the next couple of weeks.

DEAR MAGA: TGIF Open Thread 20230414

https://www.theqtree.com/2023/04/14/dear-maga-tgif-open-thread-20230414/#comment-1082026

Tense!

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

Remember Hong Kong!!!

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!

Language Warning

In the next piece I had to discuss a particular topic. Unfortunately, I couldn’t discuss it without naming it. Therefore I apologize in advance for having to do so, and apologize to anyone offended by the sight of the name.

RINO McDaniel

RINO McDaniel continues to infest the GOP. But RINO McDaniel isn’t the problem.

Let me be crystal clear on this, RINO McDaniel is a lower-than-whale-shit, piss guzzling ratfucking shit eating traitorous rancid syphillitic cunt. Her worth as a human being is substantially less than zero, any oxygen sucked into her lungs is wasted, and it would be, no matter what job she had.

I fear I haven’t been clear enough, but that will have to suffice.

But she is not the problem…or rather, she would not be a problem were it not for others. She’d still be as I have described, but we wouldn’t know who she is and would not care, because she could do no damage. She’d just be anonymous human refuse.

No, the real problem is the fact that a majority of the 168 top GOP people voted for her. And now that has happened five times so they cannot claim they didn’t know what she was.

In spite of the fact that under her “leadership” the party has deliberately sabotaged the will of its base, has deliberately refused to challenge blatant election fraud, had gone out of its way to ensure certain candidates do not get nominated, has diverted donor money to namby-pamby candidates who have all the electoral appeal of a puddle of dog vomit…and in general has done nothing whatsoever to help fix the problems that plague America.

However that last is to be expected; I cannot expect anyone who IS the problem to help FIX the problem.

RINO McDaniel would be powerless without an entire party leadership of the same mind as her. They want this dismal performance; they want to ignore the party base.

If she were to drop dead this instant, it would solve nothing as someone just like her would be elected by those same pustulous people.

According to Charlie Kirk, about 55 people voted against her, 10-12 wanted something different but were too chickenshit to do the right thing, and roughly 100 people voted for her enthusiastically, and even had the unmitigated gall to complain to Kirk about US. Fuck ’em. Rusty 12 gauge bore brushes would be too good for these arrogant pricks and cunts.

Every single one of those hundred is just as bad as she is. In other words, they are all worse than I described at the beginning of this piece. And no doubt those people in turn have people who supported them to be state party chairs and whateveritis they call the other two people from each state and territory who were voting.

It’s time to face up to the fact that the Republican party is effectively owned by the shit-eating RINOs. We’ve got more work to do, a lot more work, to make the GOP an instrument for the restoration of the United States of America. And that’s in addition to cleaning up our elections.

There’s no point in cleaning up elections just to elect ratfucking RINOs.

OK, hopefully now you will have some inkling of my true attitude towards RINOs. Sorry that words were inadequate to give you the full picture.

The Real Fascist is His Fraudulency Joe Biden*

*Or whoever has his hand rammed up that meat puppet’s ass.

Brandon (which I will use as a term for whoever is the power behind the Porcelain Throne) has thrown down the gauntlet…but in a way where most of America will never see it. The networks didn’t carry his tirade. CNN air brushed it (or whatever you call editing the red background) for its five viewers (who aren’t trapped in airports).

Luckily for me I live in Colorado, and therefore, despite my best efforts, I probably didn’t vote for Donald Trump.

Of course, for this purpose who I actually did try to vote for will be essential, and they undoubtedly know.

Come and get us, asswipes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h6ZZ28QtX4

Justice Must Be Done.

The prior election must be acknowledged as fraudulent, and steps must be taken to prosecute the fraudsters and restore integrity to the system.

Nothing else matters at this point. Talking about trying again in 2022 or 2024 is hopeless otherwise. Which is not to say one must never talk about this, but rather that one must account for this in ones planning; if fixing the fraud is not part of the plan, you have no plan.

Small Government?

Many times conservatives (real and fake) speak of “small government” being the goal.

This sounds good, and mostly is good, but it misses the essential point. The important thing here isn’t the size, but rather the purpose, of government. We could have a cheap, small tyranny. After all our government spends most of its revenue on payments to individuals and foreign aid, neither of which is part of the tyrannical apparatus trying to keep us locked down and censored. What parts of the government would be necessary for a tyranny? It’d be a lot smaller than what we have now. We could shrink the government and nevertheless find it more tyrannical than it is today.

No, what we want is a limited government, limited not in size, but rather in scope. Limited, that is, in what it’s allowed to do. Under current circumstances, such a government would also be much smaller, but that’s a side effect. If we were in a World War II sort of war, an existential fight against nasty dictatorships on the brink of world conquest, that would be very expensive and would require a gargantuan government, but that would be what the government should be doing. That would be a large, but still limited government, since it’d be working to protect our rights.

World War II would have been the wrong time to squawk about “small government,” but it wasn’t (and never is) a bad time to demand limited government. Today would be a better time to ask for a small government–at least the job it should be doing is small today–but it misses the essential point; we want government to not do certain things. Many of those things we don’t want it doing are expensive but many of them are quite eminently doable by a smaller government than the one we have today. Small, but still exceeding proper limits.

So be careful what you ask for. You might get it and find you asked for the wrong thing.

Political Science In Summation

It’s really just a matter of people who can’t be happy unless they control others…versus those who want to be left alone. The oldest conflict within mankind. Government is necessary, but government attracts the assholes (a highly technical term for the control freaks).

A Few Things We Cannot Blame on His Fraudulency

I am pretty sure Joe Biden had nothing whatsoever to do with the 30 Years War that ran from 1618-1648 and probably killed about a third of the people then living in what is now Germany.

Nor did he cause the collapse of either Roman empire (Western, 476 CE, Eastern 1453 CE). Nor the ignominious failure of most of the Crusades. Nor the collapse of Bronze Age civilization around 1200 BCE (including the collapse of the Minoans and the blowup of Santorini).

However, my utter lack of ability to imagine how he could possibly be responsible for these things is not a valid argument against them, so I await correction if appropriate.

His Truth?

Again we saw an instance of “It might be true for Billy, but it’s not true for Bob” logic this week.

I hear this often, and it’s usually harmless. As when it’s describing differing circumstances, not different facts. “Housing is unaffordable” can be true for one person, but not for another who makes ten times as much.

But sometimes the speaker means it literally. Something like 2+2=4 is asserted to be true for Billy but not for Bob. (And when it’s literal, it’s usually Bob saying it.) And in that sense, it’s nonsense, dangerous nonsense. There is ONE reality, and it exists independent of our desires and our perceptions. It would go on existing if we weren’t here. We exist in it. It does not exist in our heads. It’s not a personal construct, and it isn’t a social construct. If there were no society, reality would continue to be what it is, it wouldn’t vanish…which it would have to do, if it were a social construct.

Now what can change from person to person is the perception of reality. We see that all the time. And people will, of course, act on those perceptions. They will vote for Trump (or try to) if their perception is close to mine, and vote against Trump (and certainly succeed at doing so) if their perception is distant from mine (and therefore, if I do say so, wrong). I have heard people say “perception is reality” and usually, that’s what they’re trying to say–your perception of reality is, as far as you know, an accurate representation of reality, or you’d change it.

But I really wish they’d say it differently. And sometimes, to get back to Billy and Bob, the person who says they have different truths is really saying they have different perceptions of reality–different worldviews. I can’t argue with the latter. But I sure wish they’d say it better. That way I’d know that someone who blabbers about two different truths is delusional and not worth my time, at least not until he passes kindergarten-level metaphysics on his umpteenth attempt.

Lawyer Appeasement Section

OK now for the fine print.

This is the WQTH Daily Thread. You know the drill. There’s no Poltical correctness, but civility is a requirement. There are Important Guidelines,  here, with an addendum on 20191110.

We have a new board – called The U Tree – where people can take each other to the woodshed without fear of censorship or moderation.

And remember Wheatie’s Rules:

1. No food fights
2. No running with scissors.
3. If you bring snacks, bring enough for everyone.
4. Zeroth rule of gun safety: Don’t let the government get your guns.
5. Rule one of gun safety: The gun is always loaded.
5a. If you actually want the gun to be loaded, like because you’re checking out a bump in the night, then it’s empty.
6. Rule two of gun safety: Never point the gun at anything you’re not willing to destroy.
7. Rule three: Keep your finger off the trigger until ready to fire.
8. Rule the fourth: Be sure of your target and what is behind it.

(Hmm a few extras seem to have crept in.)

(Paper) Spot Prices

Kitco “Ask” prices. Last week:

Gold $1,970.70
Silver $24.17
Platinum $1000.00
Palladium $1,551.00
Rhodium $8,000.00

This week, 3PM Mountain Time, markets have closed for the weekend. (This week they had the day off on Friday for Good Friday. Kudos to them for not even attempting to salvage a Monday by moving the holiday around, by the way. All that does is dump all the Monday suckage onto Tuesday.)

Gold $2,008.60
Silver $25.07
Platinum $1,017.00
Palladium $1,550.00
Rhodium $8,900.00

Yes. GOLD HAS BROKEN $2,000. It did so earlier this week, reaching as much as 2,030 or so, very close to the all-time record. It actually closed down on Friday-I-mean-Thursday and it is still above that psychological mark.

This could be the sign of really, really bad times. Yes, I have a fair quantity of metals that would hurt to drop on my foot because they’re heavy, BUT…the collapse of the dollar especially if all those overseas dollars come home would be a catastrophe. I’m not the type of person whose thought bubble is “I have prepared, you can suffer because you haven’t” with glee. And if it’s bad enough…then I am sure no one on a middle class budget (and that assuredly includes me, except when I don’t have even that) is truly prepared for it.

Science Break

I know what I want to write. I’ve even mapped it out in my head, a bit.

Just…no time yet, but the fact that I’m thinking about it makes it more likely to happen next time.

In the meantime, here’s some Čaykovskiy. (As I prefer to spell it; it’s more one-to-one phonetic with the original Cyrillic–though Chaikovskiy works too. The T is superfluous in English.)

I love the way she seems to be launching the orchestra at about 6:12. Which, by the way is one of the best moments in orchestral music.

Obligatory PSAs and Reminders

China is Lower than Whale Shit

Remember Hong Kong!!!

https://youtube.com/watch?v=L3tnH4FGbd0

中国是个混蛋 !!!
Zhōngguò shì gè hùndàn !!!
China is asshoe !!!

China is in the White House

Since Wednesday, January 20 at Noon EST, the bought-and-paid for His Fraudulency Joseph Biden has been in the White House. It’s as good as having China in the Oval Office.

Joe Biden is Asshoe

China is in the White House, because Joe Biden is in the White House, and Joe Biden is identically equal to China. China is Asshoe. Therefore, Joe Biden is Asshoe.

But of course the much more important thing to realize:

Joe Biden Didn’t Win

乔*拜登没赢 !!!
Qiáo Bài dēng méi yíng !!!
Joe Biden didn’t win !!!