Man I love movie trivia

If this goes well, I'll keep adding buckets until I am dropping mushroom jerky on the ground with every arm motion

Warning: Long treatise about current hyperfixation-turned career plan

After a lot of research into different hydrolysis devices and the principles they operate on, I feel confident that I've satisfied the theoretical part of this step in my plan: I have the plans for an oxy/hydro fuel cell that I really do think will surpass the designs that inspired it in efficiency and safety. Now I just have to do the blood-sweat-grease alchemy to make it real.

My initial idea for a bulky "double decker sandwich" design, where the anode and cathode plates are two different stacks separated by plexiglass, has been abandoned. Rather than keeping the two gasses separate in this way, which would lead to unavoidable efficiency loss, I'm intermingling the stacks for maximum efficiency while cordoning off one gas-producing surface at a time with 3d printed separators which will be included in the sandwich. Instead of separating the groups of plates, I'm separating the individual spaces between the plates. I am essentially building a scaled up version of this: https://youtu.be/klJzWPo-ZZE?

The separators work by taking advantage of the different polarities in the powered cell: basically, the different sides of the 7 plates will together form a little self-contained mirror hall of positively and negatively charged metal. The negative sides always produce hydrogen, and the positive sides always produce oxygen. But in a normal cell like this, these gases are produced together and rise together, forming the explosive HHO which is very cool but mostly useless for my purposes. But with the addition of the separators, we can split the whole unit into alternating negative and positive layers, which share an input (coolant) but split the outputs. We can channel the gases from these layers alternately into twin manifolds, then into their own tanks and eventually, down two hoses and into a hissing sapphire furnace.

The biggest change I personally have made to distinguish this from other cells like it is the planned addition of heavy nickel plating., The second biggest change was including primitive blowoff valves on each bubbler tank, but I really hope for the nickel plating to be a game-changer, and here's why:

It might mitigate or solve the toxic waste problem while seriously boosting the device's power. I may or may not have gotten into this already, but stainless steel, the best balance between conductive and affordable most hydrocell builders can find, is alloyed with up to 10% chromium. This is fine for building stuff, I think, but if you submerge that metal in caustic liquid and zap it with electricity, some of that chromium will leech out into the fuel, making it not just highly caustic but carcinogenic as well. To avoid this, I'm planning to electroplate a THICK coat of nickel on the plates, so thick that apparently they call what I want to do electroforming. If I can add at least a half millimeter of pure nickel to each plate, I'll be a happy fish. The idea is that the electricity will go along the path of least resistance (nickel is several times more conductive than steel) and spare the vulnerable alloy beneath. This would also greatly increase the cell's power efficiency, because

nickel is several times more conductive than steel

The way I proceed with this now depends on my ability to electroform, and the outcome of my best attempt. If there's some reason it can't work, let me know, I can handle the sadness.

Looking ahead to the next step, I finally found footage of a personal corundum furnace actually working, and seeing it's design has refilled the wind in my sails and eased my doubts.https://youtu.be/YiS3ZUuCH3c (skip to 7:20 for the money shot) It's so fucking simple, the combustion chamber is two modified firebricks. The body is a glorified welding torch with a can of oxides on top, and there are a total two pieces of beginner-level robotics in there. Before this, I wondered blindly and anxiously about how I would design the thing. Now, I see that the current step of constructing the gas cell will absolutely be the most expensive and time consuming part. I'm nearing the peak of the mountain, after which momentum will begin to carry me as a friend. Also, I've been keeping the cost of fittings down by taking them all from Ken Langone.

Still, I do have one or two important questions that my comrades here, who are more versed in things like math and numbers, could maybe fill me in on:

1. How do I calculate the gas output of this thing? The amperage I can do, but the output I cannot. I want a cell powerful enough to potenially fuel two Verneuil furnaces at once down the road.

2. I'll edit this in when I remember it 5 minutes after posting

It seems too flexible to be a new branch. Is it an adventitious root? Weirdly high up for that

What with the climate and the fires and the genocide

I've been taken by a fey mood, not gonna lie. You ever be researching two different current hyperfixations, then reach a magical point where they suddenly intersect? That's where I'm at right now with hydrolysis and gems. I've been looking into building a machine to split water into oxygen and hydrogen for cutting stuff, because it turns out they're piss easy to make. Pretty simple so far, this is stuff some people learned in high school chemistry (not me, i never got past math). Hydrogen hot, add oxygen to make hotter, I at least know that from welding.

Then I find out that back in 1902, they figured out how to use just such a device, in conjunction with a special, also-shockingly-uncomplicated furnace, to grow huge corundum gems very quickly. That was also when I found out that corundum is a real thing and not a magic metal from skyrim. Apparently rubies and sapphires are the same thing, both corundum, just with differently colored trace minerals. Corundum itself is clear like diamond and almost as hard, 9 on the Mohs scale. So what's it made of? Just fuckin...aluminum oxide. Yeah, the stuff that's like 40 bucks for a 20 pound bag to use in sandblasters. 10 bucks for 2 pounds of the really pure stuff. It turns it into a big slug or rod of pure, genuine ruby or sapphire called a boule.

So my economy brain kicks in and I start looking up how much these boules go for online. One thing about these boules is that most of the time, you gotta split them in half lengthwise as they cool, so they don't shatter. This is how they're sold, as halves. Looking it up, a sapphire half-boule about 2 inches long goes for about 60 dollars. Sapphires seem to trend more expensive, probably as a result of lab rubies being more widely used industrially. One gemcutter on youtube (who was very nonplussed about this technique and coping about the literally microscopic differences in the resulting gems) said almost derisively that these boules can be grown in an hour or less. At that output and that price, what we have is a machine that takes cheap oxides and turns them into 2 dollars per minute.

And if I can eventually power the hydro machine with a solar panel, I'll be producing sapphires and rubies from nothing but oxides, electrolyte, water and sunlight

But wait, there's more! I have a small little electric jewelry furnace already, which while not suitable for conversion into a corundum furnace, is suitable for annealing the gems, cooling them slowly so the tension releases and they dont crack. So if I get this shit built, I will also have the built-in capability to produce massive, optical-quality gems. Also, being able to completely dab on every family holiday and gift-giving occasion for the rest of my life sounds nice.

So fuck it, why shouldnt I:

-Construct a hydrolysis machine

-Construct a verneuil furnace that is fueled by the hydrolysis machine

-Become a corundum dealer

-Invest the money into China

-???

-

Actually don't tell me why I shouldn't, I'm looking for encouragement in my alchemists journey

I've become obsessed with AR-47s in the last few years because look at this thing. Apparently 7.62x39 is the far better caliber for pistol builds: because it's energy comes from that fat cartridge, it doesn't depend on barrel length to get up to speed the way 5.56 does, so it loses very little out of a shorter barrel. All the spare powder makes a big sweet fireball too.

Obviously the challenges of rechambering the AR15 upper are all related to the size of the new cartridge and the stresses it puts on the finer parts. AR-47 bolt carriers are typically made from tougher materials to compensate for the higher pressures, as are the firing pin and extractor.

According to a bunch of gun review sites, a well-built and tuned one of these feels like the best of both worlds: the ergonomics, accuracy and reliability of a modern AR-15 combined with the 123-grain smashing power of an AK-47

Gotta be something real ill though

I'll be taking in the night, laying on my pillow

Knowing in the morning I will wake up as a hero

And step out on the street to pull the trigger like Gavrillo

Hello

You don't need to do this, we already know they're largely the same guy

I struggled through weeks of executive dysfunction and wild anxiety to get this shit done, and you know what? I'm proud as fuck of the jump in editing quality from episode 1 and episode 2, and don't think episode 3 will take so long. Trying to be objective, I think this one reaches the heights of "pretty alright", which is phenomenal for the episode 2 of a complete audio novice.

This is my still-coalescing podcast Wasteland 2000, where we dive into End of History nostalgia from various angles and media with the overarching goal of putting a bullet through the head of nostalgia's shambling husk and prying it's bony hands off our ankles

This was recorded in early october, so the brief discussion (not even really that) of Lebanon is now hopelessly outdated. Do not mind my partner's lib-adjacent takes in some areas, they're new and this podcast is partly an exercise in

All that said, at least a few people we don't know listen to and download it, so someone somewhere thinks we're funny

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Also recommend I'm Still Whooping That Ass