I don't want to jinx anything or talk too soon, but I have a feeling that the 2024 election isn't likely to go well for the Republican Party, and when that happens, they're going to want some revenge. That's bound to take a multitude of forms, but in particular...I think they might blame the Internet for their problems.

Corporate social media have become vital to the U.S. right-wing propaganda machine—perhaps TOO vital, in fact. The fashy techlords became intoxicated with the power they thought they had. Elon Musk, especially, really seemed to start thinking himself (just like all his fans, whom he closely resembles) that Xitter had become the news cycle. The overconfidence of the Silicon Valley execs can be seen in their influence over J. D. Vance, the deeply unpleasant and profoundly unpopular Republican candidate for the Vice-Presidency in 2024. (For now.) Only Christian extremists and technology CEOs seem to love Vance and now his selection has backfired spectacularly. Vance has become symbolic of everything that the people hate about right-wing entrepreneurial culture.

We're still more than three months out from the Fifth of November but I think the damage has been done—at the very least, the GOP can't any longer believe that they're masters of viral Internet marketing who can use the power of technology to make anyone believe in anything, however repulsive. Once that realization sinks in, will they attempt to claim a consolation prize by trying to wreck the Internet for everyone? I have a feeling they'll be blaming the Internet for betraying them and possibly demanding the head of Elon Musk, who is already attempting to find some sort of middle ground between his X fandom and the Trump fandom...I can't imagine that's likely to end well.

~Chara of Pnictogen

I have a curious problem as a writer: at all times, I write with the conviction that my words will NOT be remembered.

It's the truth. Everything I write is ex tempore, trying to respond to some need which I perceive in the moment. I put a tremendous amount of energy into writing on Twitter in the full knowledge that nobody will remember anything I say there even a week later, or a day later.

I have been used to thinking that this is what I deserve. Now I'm struggling with the realization that I would actually like to be remembered for something...for once in my life, I'd like to be more than just another freak in the freak kingdom, trying my hardest to leave an impact in the narrow space I have available—as if a mayfly decided that, as long as they were alive for a few days, they'd make the most of it.

To my surprise...I find that I don't like the idea of disappearing as much as I've been telling myself.

~Chara of Pnictogen

One of the most remarkable things about nuclear chemistry is that geometry is now as important, if not more important, than the actual reactions going on. Ordinary chemists (and chemical engineers) are used to sloshing liquids around freely, piping them hither and thither and pouring them into all manner of vessels. But fissile solutions need far more delicate handling. The shape of the container now matters, and a small error in dimensions can mean the difference between life or death.

It's frightening, but it's also appealingly simple. The forces at work are so powerful that they reduce all problems down to the most basic shapes and arrangements of matter—spheres, cylinders, cones, ellipsoids.

One sees a glimpse of the same thing in the fictional depictions of magic and supernatural power. Instinctively we feel as though these powers, when wielded, will have a sort of geometric simplicity to them. Think of one of the most powerful images in cinema, namely Tetsuo awakening to his powers and creating a spherical bubble of safety around himself almost instinctively, refracting away the laser beams aimed at him. Does Tetsuo even know what he's doing in that moment? Maybe not, but it makes sense that whatever he's doing would be simple, and thus spherical.

Lines and planes and circles—all important in manifestations of immense physical power, whether it's nuclear or magical.

~Chara of Pnictogen

"It's momentum. I'm running like an express train. I don't know how to stop." (that's Max Renn in Videodrome. It's not a good thing to feel like Max Renn from Videodrome.)

Let me try to set some racing thoughts in order. This is a business I've been long curious about. Dr. Louis Slotin, the Jewish Canadian nuclear chemist and nuclear physicist famous for the "Demon Core" (and other things!) scented an analogy between nuclear fission and money, and that's why we have "dollars and cents" in a nuclear-criticality sense.

It seems intuitively obvious at least that money behaves somewhat like nuclear fuel. Pile up enough money in one place and boom! The money starts "growing". In reality, there's countless people working and toiling and driving "the economy", and that's why money can "grow", i.e. behave like one of Slotin's critical masses. Fissile systems are complex. Slight changes lead to massive differences in reactivity, which is why criticality accidents happen at all (usually): a system that was thought to be safe was, in fact, perturbed by some easily ignored factor. The substitution of one material for another, let's say, or a slight change in the geometry of a volume of U or Pu solution.

But it does boil down to individual fission events, on the submicroscopic scale. A fission event—an unstable nucleus fragmenting, either spontaneously or because it was struck by a neutron‚ producing smaller nuclei and more neutrons—might be seen as somewhat analogous to a financial transaction, I suppose. What happens when someone tosses money at a sketchy venture, when it's boiled down to individual terms? "Give me your money and I'll give you back more of it once the scheme pays off." Once enough cash piles up in one place to enable a certain game to be played (the fission event, if you like) then more cash goes flying in all directions out of that transaction. It's a loose analogy but maybe a useful one?

The money-chasers ignore the machinery that makes their monetary games possible. That's rather like pretending that no work went into refining the fissile materials. Now it's just...the juice, the stuff, the hot sauce. A huge amount of mining and chemical separation and refining and isotopic fractionation and all the rest of that went into producing something that can now simply be poured out and handled like it was soda pop—except it's not. Put too much of this spicy soda pop in one place and BOOM!

Money is a bit like that. Hm?

~Chara of Pnictogen