• 1 Post
  • 2.06K Comments
Joined 2 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 11th, 2023

help-circle



  • So, imagine you live at home in a completely dysfunctional family. You are responsible for grocery shopping. Your mother gives you $600 a month, and a weekly grocery list for $200 a week. You have to buy everything on the list. You can’t take more than $600 a month.

    When you run out of money, your mom berates you for overspending. When you don’t buy everything on the list, she berates you for not doing your job.

    That’s our federal government under normal conditions.

    Now imagine that you’re a total piece of shit, but your abusive father won’t let your mother strangle you and bury you in the back yard.

    That’s our federal government since January.







  • Judges are bound by the Separation of Powers. A judge who refuses to apply a legislated law against a particular defendant would (effectively) be exercising powers of the legislature. The judge cannot do this, nor can they advise a jury that this can be done, or otherwise enable the jury to do this.

    However, a juror is not bound by the separation of powers. They are not an agent of the government. They are laypersons. Members of “We The People”, who are the same authority that gives us the Constitution.

    It is not illegal for a juror to determine that the legislature failed to consider a particular defendant’s specific circumstances when they established a law, and exercise their constitutional authority in finding that defendant not guilty of having violated that law.





  • Need a “securities” tax, payable in shares of the security. An annual assessment of 1% of all shares owned, transferred directly to an IRS liquidation department. The liquidated shares will be sold off to the general public over time, such that no more than 1% of total traded volume of the security are liquidated shares.

    Individual investors can exempt up to $10 million in value from the tax. Artificial persons (corporations, trusts, any “owner” that isn’t human) are non-exempt.

    Basically, stocks, bonds, and other financial instruments become more valuable assets to the working class, but carry more liabilities for the problem class.





  • At 30,000 feet and +50C, which literally never happens, your density altitude is ~38,000 feet and 100 KCAS will get you 194 KTAS. Not quite 400 😜

    This is why I’m a balloon pilot and not a fixed wing pilot. 30,000 is 12,001ft higher than I’ll ever see, and 30kias will probably collapse my envelope and splatter me in a corn field. 😵‍💫

    and winds aloft forecasts from one of the government agencies the Republicans are desperate to destroy,

    Can confirm: the accuracy of forecasts in general (and vertical wind profile data in particular) plummeted for this year’s flying season. The GOP is needlessly endangering aviation safety on multiple fronts.


  • I imagined it would be relative to wind speed at the craft, as measured by some instrument. Which would make the comic at least true in a general sense, as it does state the altitude is constant?

    That is the misconception I am trying to address. Check out this wind report:

    1kt of wind on the surface, 5kts at 100ft. My balloon is 120ft tall. My balloon is experiencing those 5kt winds while I’m floating inches off the ground. If I have an airspeed indicator in the basket, it’s going to be reading 4kts. (Actually closer to 5kts due to the change in direction as well as speed)

    How about if I’m at 150ft in the basket, in 5kt winds. The top of my balloon is 270ft, in 12kt winds. My airspeed indicator is going to be reading 7kts. I’m going to have 7kts of wind in my face.

    I’m trying to point out that the height of a balloon is very often larger than the gradient between two different air masses.

    I have experienced 15kt shears: my basket is hanging in an air current 15kts slower than the air current that my envelope is riding within. I have felt 15kt winds in my face while riding in a balloon that is carried by the wind.


  • Edit: yep, air speed is relative to the air the vessel is moving through

    Just to complicate it a little bit, “Airspeed” usually refers to “Indicated Airspeed”, which is provided by measuring the ram air pressure into the pitot tube relative to the static air pressure. It’s a measure of dynamic pressure rather than actual speed. It’s how fast your wings think they are moving through the air.

    If your wings need 100kts in the thick air at sea level to lift off the runway, they will need to “think” they are moving at 100kts when you get into the thin air at 30,000ft.

    Depending on altitude, you might actually be moving at 400kts past a weather balloon, but your “Indicated Airspeed” might only be 100kts.