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Cake day: June 18th, 2023

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  • DoD work (both civilian and active duty) tends to bind people together a lot more than other industries, in no small part due to the factors you mentioned, but also because a) the additional barriers of national security/clearance work make it only really possible to vent about work to coworkers/friends from work, b) the work can often be unique enough that only coworkers have shared experiences to bond over and empathize with, and c) the civilian side of the DoD tends to attract career folks a lot more than it does transitory people. I think a disproportionate amount (when compared to private industry) of civilians who hire into the DoD stay in federal service for their whole careers. And people sticking around their whole careers tend to invest more in personal and professional relationships in the workplace, because networking is how you get opportunities, and you never know who you might owe a favor some day (or who might owe you one).




  • (obligatory I’m not a biologist)

    Looking at the article, it seems like the influence bison have is by stimulating and cycling the ecosystem in Romania. In other words, they graze across the area, eating the plants and shitting out the waste. This helps pump more nutrients into the environment, helping even more plants grow. It’s those extra plants that remove and store CO2. Interestingly, the fairly new series America’s National Parks covers the benefits Bison bring to ecosystems in s1e4 (Badlands National Park). Def worth a watch if you want to learn more about the most beautiful parts of America.

    As far as the comparison to cows, I think the biggest reason cows emit so much methane is the diet we feed them. They don’t just graze free across massive tracts of grassland. They are fed mostly corn and corn byproducts, supplemented with grasses, and digesting the corn is (I think) the source of the methane problems.






  • SUBSAFE was implemented in 1963 following the loss of USS Thresher (SSN-593). It’s a remarkably strict QA program for systems and components exposed to seawater/operating pressure. To our credit, we’ve only lost one submarine since 1963 (USS Scorpion, SSN-589, and she was never SUBSAFE-certified), so the program works.

    Similarly stringent controls for the Titan would have either caught all the manufacturing defects in the carbon fiber, or prevented anyone from thinking it’s a good idea to begin with. A big part of innovation is learning what rules you can reasonably bend/break, and which should never be touched. I tend to think pressure hull construction falls in the “never touch” category, at least not without a mountain of testing, data collection, fatigue life calculation, etc. along with communication with regulatory bodies to ensure you meet the principles of the regulation, if not the exact words (again, innovation has it’s place).