Cool

Big Freakin’ Laser

Chill Amusing, Cool

In theory, someone could build a high powered laser on Earth and use it to burn advertisements into the Moon’s surface. What’s stopping someone, or is it impossible/illegal?

It’s not impossible, but it is highly impractical. First, a laser like that is not something we could currently build, but if we did it would require absolutely insane amounts of power.

Just as a rough calc, to burn an ad into the moon using a laser that could produce deep and contrasty enough lines to be visible from earth (say something box-shaped and 2,000 miles x 1,000 miles) would require about 10^21 Joules of energy on Earth. Maybe 10^19 of that would reach the moon due to atmospheric absorption and dissipation.

That’s about 277,778 TWh, or around sixty-three years of total U.S. electricity generation. Not even including the cost of the laser itself (which would be hundreds of billions to trillions), that much electricity would run you about $40 trillion in 2026 dollars. US GDP is about $31 trillion per annum.

So that’s why ain’t nobody carving anything on the moon with lasers. It’d likely be cheaper to send astronauts with excavators and such.

Space Cap

Chill Cool

We launch an absolutely insane amount of stuff into space now, mostly thanks to SpaceX. And that’s awesome.

Degrowthers and anyone like them can go straight to hell.

Tenacious S

Chill Cool

I have a friend in the UK who worked for several years on some sort of restaurant boat tourist trap in Australia. Her boss was horrible and petty and shorted everyone’s pay as well as not contributing properly into the Australian national retirement plan (Superannuation).

She has been now in a decade-plus-long crusade to make this person pay and to harm him in any way possible and I kind of love her for this. She constantly files complaints (actually has it in her calendar) with the Australian government, leaves a steady stream of bad reviews for his businesses, and interferes with him using any legal method.

One time he contacted her to stop her “harassing” him. She said, “Pay up and it’ll stop” but of course he did not so she kept at it. Unfortunately, the Australian government is toothless and he’s connected, so nothing much has happened on that end. But she estimates she has cost him something like $200,0001 in lost business and $50,000 in lawyer’s fees. All for what she thinks would’ve been about $10,000 in stolen wages and Superannuation contributions.

Do not mess with this lady.

  1. Primarily by reporting a safety issue on one of his boats that stopped it sailing.

Figure In

Chill Cool, Cute

I don’t care about figure skating even a little bit. But she does show (legal) immigrants and their progeny can be full Americans. If they want to be. Not “Quality Learing Center” type immigrants.

And that is beautiful skating. Alysa’s routine is not as athletic as some others I’ve viewed, but she’s about the most graceful human I’ve seen in my life. And that hair flip at the end is epic.