Greatbeholderbrooke - Great Beholder Zolob

theres a popular brand in canada called no name brand and it manufactures everything you can imagine in a grocery store and it kind of makes me feel like im in a world no one bothered to do much world building for

I've recently been seeing this article making rounds around this website and particularly people misusing this very cool advancement to imply that modern nuclear reactors are "unsafe" or "dangerous", which is partially due to the just blatantly bad journalism on display here.

The accomplishment of this new reactor is definitely exceptionally impressive but I think that news websites (Even ones specializing in science) have been mischaracterizing the reactor as "meltdown-proof" which is just - wrong? and implies that current reactors are just begging to meltdown.

The cool thing about this new reactor is that its passively cooled, but that doesn't mean its INVULNERABLE to nuclear meltdowns, for example the Chernobyl meltdown happened completely independently of whether it was cooled passively or not.

In fact, passive cooling would only pose an advantage in situations where ALL pumps and backup pumps break and the core doesn't get coolant pumped to it. That's happened exactly once: in Fukushima and only after a literal tsunami hit it, and there's no reason to think that the passive Helium coolant in this new reactor wouldn't also just break. Fukushima happened because of corruption in regulation, preventing suitable defenses against this exact thing from getting built, not because of unsafe reactor design.

There's also some articles like this one which talk about the new reactor being "self-regulating" which is true, but misses the point that the vast majority of nuclear reactors in service today are also stable in the exact same way. Negative feedback loops are a HUGE part of reactor design, the most popular reactor design today is the Pressurised Water Reactor (PWR) which is incredibly stable - PWRs just truly hate increasing (or decreasing) energy output.

Most nuclear reactors today are already incredibly safe, even if you had complete control over a nuclear reactor it would be effectively impossible to cause a meltdown on purpose - both the physics of the system and the thousands of automated components would beat the ever loving shit out of any hope of trying to do so.

Articles like these just turn this impressive achievements into a kind of fearmongering over the "dangerous" nuclear reactors currently being used. The fact is that nuclear reactors are incredibly safe, PWRs are an incredible feat of engineering genius and its a genuine shame that the general public isn't aware of how much care goes into their design and safety, let alone how useful and essential they are in our electrical systems.

Modern nuclear reactors are clean, they are safe, and they are vital to a healthy energy grid in the post-fossil-fuel future.

A really good read I highly recommend is Colin Tucker's How To Drive A Nuclear Reactor. He's very clear and very frank with the workings and reality of nuclear power today.

You might be frustrated by the library never having a complete manga collection on its shelves at any given time, but the 12 year old checking out 14 volumes of One Piece at once is vital to the library ecosystem. He's like the sea otter keeping the kelp forest from being devastated by an excess of sea urchins.

distant past

[image id: a four-page comic. it is titled “do not stand at my grave and weep” after the poem by mary elizabeth frye. the first page shows paleontologists digging up fossils at a dig. it reads, “do not stand at my grave and weep. i am not there. i do not sleep.” page two features several prehistoric creatures living in the wild. not featured but notable, each have modern descendants: horses, cetaceans, horsetail plants, and crocodilians. it reads, “i am a thousand winds that blow. i am the diamond glints on snow. i am the sunlight on ripened grain. i am the gentle autumn rain.” the third page shows archaeopteryx in the treetops and the skies, then a modern museum-goer reading the placard on a fossil display. it reads, “when you awaken in the morning’s hush, i am the swift uplifting rush, of quiet birds in circled flight. i am the soft stars that shine at night. do not stand at my grave and cry.” the fourth page shows a chicken in a field. it reads, “i am not there. i did not die” / end id]

a comic i made in about 15 hours for my school’s comic anthology. the theme was “evolution”

Pater Hoyt: Let me tell you this tragic story of the slow death of my church, the desperation of believers to save it, the most terrifying trees, the dismissiveness of science for "unimportant" subjects, and a concept of immortality so gruesome it makes priests question the existence of god.

Sol Weintraub: Let me tell you about the slow death of my only child, about time and inevidability and being a parent, about having to witness your daughter wake up confused and frightened every single day and my powerlessness to help her. Let me tell you about the Binding of Isaac and a nonbeliever's struggle with god.

The Consul: Let me tell you about the doomed rebellion of a beautiful world and the death of it's ecosystem. About how interstellar travel and relative time separate people. About my lifelong struggle to fight my grandmother's fight to the detriment of my own person to the point where I do not even have a name.

Martin Silenus: Let me tell you about my incredibly long life and all the stuff I've lost, including earth itself and my ability to speak. How I became unfathomably wealthy writing shitty pulp fiction. About art and the process of creation in such a profound way that you'll forget you hated me.

Brawne Lamia: Let me tell you about our Robot Kings and how humanity is unable to stop whatever they are doing. About how everything you have been told about our history might be a lie. About corruption and murder in the highest office of our government. And about the cute twink I met, fell in love with, got pregnant from and then lost.

Het Masteen did not live to tell his story.

Fedmahn Kassad: Let me tell you about my incredibly hot secret girlfriend and about all the sex we had in detail!

you've been waiting a while for a new maths update - and it's finally here!

improvements include:

in gender selection screen, added "sumtraction" option

fixed bug where positive divergent sums evaluated to negative numbers

added new 2-dimensional version of off-by-1 errors - off-by-[1,1]

changed the discrete maths server to a PvP zone (note: computer science is still PvNP)

the category theory DLC is now (co)free!

to prevent confusion with function graphs, all voiced lines pronounce "graph theory" with a soft g

fixed "vacuously true" glitch

integrals can now disobey fundamental theorem of calculus when unhappy. they become happy again if fed logarithmic functions

hyperbolic geometry no longer exaggerates as a rhetorical device (note: spherical geometry left the same as before)

rebalanced primes so that 4k+1's and 4k+3's alternate in Thue-Morse pattern. added an uncomputable 4k+2 prime

hot combinatorial games now distribute their temperature according to the laws of thermodynamics; cold games are now superconductive

added demo of "finitist hardcore" gamemode. as of now only two levels are available

subtraction is now associative

recursion is now recursive

added a nontrivial linear, associative, commutative binary operation on the positive reals, over which addition is distributive

exponentiated liner logic, so that additive logic is multiplicative and multiplicative logic is exponential

fixed "negative probability" glitch

redesigned the Tits Building and the Cox-Zucker Machine

fixed trigonometry

increased hitboxes for infinitesimals

added lootboxes

not even JRR Tolkien, who famously developed the concept of the Secondary World and firmly believed that no trace of the Real World should be evoked in the fictional world, was able to remove potatoes from his literature. this is a man who developed whole languages and mythologies for his literary world, who justified its existence in English as a translation* simply because he was so miffed he couldn't get away with making the story fully alien to the real world. and not even he, in extremis, was so cruel as to deny his characters the heavenly potato. could not even conceive a universe devoid of the potato. such is its impact. everyone please take a moment to say thank you to South Americans for developing and cultivating one of earth's finest vegetables. the potato IS all that. literally world-changing food. bless.

Originally designed for a quiz night, I am happy to release this unto the world. Everyone prepare for:

Brooke's Crazy Quiz Night!

(No, I will not give you a free drink)

Prepare a gauntlet of mind-bending, reality shattering questions designed to test all facets of the human soul in five distinct rounds:

The Science

The humanities

The Arts

Raw Physical Strength

Mystery Bonus Round

This game is NOT for the weak of heart, throughout the experience you will encounter TRAPS, SECRETS and HORRORS. Following your performance in this game your soul will be judged into one of five ranks, and your results may shatter your worldview irreparably.

Requirements

To play you will need at least two players

An additional player will be The Brooke (the host)

Answers MUST be written on paper and this paper must be standardized between players

A screen everyone can see, preferably a large one as to see small text

How To Play

The Brooke should go through the presentation before hand to gain familiarity with all the questions and secrets

The first three rounds are multiple choice questions, one point is awarded per correct answer

If the correct choice is "None of the above" an additional point is awarded for stating the correct answer

Secrets with their own rules can be found throughout the presentation

The Raw Physical Strength round appoints one point to any player who can complete the task

The mystery bonus round is not multiple choice, each question has two correct answers, each correct answer given awards one point to the player.

Without any further ado, I present to you the quiz:

Google Docs

Brooke’s Crazy Quiz Night (Sanitised)

Brooke’s Crazy Quiz Night