Most 5.25″ mechanisms use a lever or handle to manually drop the floppy disk down onto the motor spindle and engage the read/write head/heads. The floppy disk cannot be removed until the mechanism is unlatched by reversing the loading operation.
Conversely, 3″ and 3.5″ mechanisms normally auto-mount onto the spindle on insertion, and are typically ejected using a mechanical push-button that unlatches the mechanism and uses spring pressure to eject the disk. A notable exception are the floppy drives used in the Apple Macintosh which removed the eject button and used a software controlled motor to operate the eject mechanism. This ensured the computer had unmounted the filesystem and flushed the disk cache before the disk actually ejected.
https://thejpster.org.uk/blog/blog-2023-08-28/?utm_source=hackernewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_term=fav
One of the best things about the Internet are devoted nerds sharing their knowledge.
Over time, however, that variability averaged out into stasis. Even if traits wobbled off their optimal, moderate peak from one generation to the next, there was a net effect of stabilization — ultimately leading to little change over the multiple generations.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/evolution-fast-or-slow-lizards-help-resolve-a-paradox-20240102/?mc_cid=169f0a8ce7&mc_eid=f83944a043
Increasingly, I’m beginning to suspect that epigenetics, Lamarckian evolution, and the above-mentioned “wobbling” will end up proving that evolution is so much all over the map that it may seem some species didn’t evolve at all from those seafloor vents that supposedly gave birth to all life.
Many advocates would like to see Hvaldimir reunited with wild belugas or at least moved to a nature reserve. But rehabilitating a formerly captive whale is nothing like the triumphant leap to freedom in “Free Willy”; it’s more like helping a severely traumatized victim of abduction reintegrate with society. For creatures of such size and sentience, confinement to relatively tiny, sparse and lonely cells exacts a heavy physical and psychological toll. Like Hvaldimir, many captive cetaceans are in-between creatures: born to whales but raised by humans, not quite domesticated but no longer wild, suspended somewhere in the middle of instinct and compliance. Hvaldimir is a living bridge between their circumscribed existence and the nearly limitless one from which they were barred. What happens to him now — whether he becomes a rare example of successful rewilding, transitions to a more sedate life in a sanctuary or meets a tragic end like so many of his predecessors — will influence efforts to liberate the thousands of cetaceans still in confinement today.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/14/magazine/hvaldimir-whale.html/?src=longreads&utm_medium=email
What do we really owe our more intelligent yet still reliant companions on this planet? A fascinating story that explains the complicated ethics behind rehabilitation of wildlife.
Zubrin makes a strong case that nuclear plants are safe. Unlike what the fear-mongers say, nuclear reactors cannot explode like atomic bombs; it is impossible thanks to the laws of physics. Atomic explosions can only occur if large quantities of highly-enriched fissile material are pummeled with fast neutrons nearly instantaneously. A nuclear reactor contains only low-enriched fuel and cannot create fast neutrons, and thus cannot produce the devastation of an atomic weapon.
To quell radiation fears, Zubrin notes that nuclear reactors actually reduce the amount of radiation that enters the atmosphere. One 1000 MW natural gas plant releases more radiation every month than the entire Three Mile Island nuclear accident, one of the worst nuclear accidents in history.
https://quillette.com/2023/07/07/humanity-should-split-more-atoms/?ref=quillette-weekly-newsletter
Nobody died from Three Mile Island either. The misguided (at best, insane at worst) campaign against nuclear energy remains probably the most significant cause of emissions in the 20th century.
C. S. Lewis hits on the problem in The Screwtape Letters, where he has the devil Screwtape urge his nephew Wormwood to mislead his human subject by directing his love as far away from “the real world” as possible. He urges Wormwood to push the human to love abstractions, like the far-off Germans, while treating his neighbors with disdain. This kind of “love,” which affects only our minds but does not push through to our actions, is no love at all.
Keeping our economic power at the most local level possible can allow our economic interactions to express love. That’s right: not only our gifts but even our economic exchanges at stores and coffee shops or with contractors and repairmen can be loving, if they are conducted in the context of a personal relationship at the local level.
https://www.plough.com/en/topics/justice/social-justice/economic-justice/keep-your-money-close
In the complexity of the globalized economy, it is quite difficult to pull this off, but it’s worth starting somewhere. I’m comfortable with trying to keep it within at least the bounds of the country I love and am a citizen of, to some extent. Perhaps this is why sometimes there’s a bit of understated glee from some that the globalized order is tottering and consumer goods are no longer going to be cheaply made thousands of miles away… and is that such a bad thing?
When I started asking women about their experiences as mothers, I was startled by the number who sheepishly admitted, and only after being pressed, that they had pretty equitable arrangements with their partners, and even loved being moms, but were unlikely to say any of that publicly. Doing so could seem insensitive to those whose experiences were not as positive, or those in more frustrating relationships. Some also worried that betraying too much enthusiasm for child-rearing could ossify essentialist tropes or detract from larger feminist goals.
https://www.vox.com/features/23979357/millennials-motherhood-dread-parenting-birthrate-women-policy
A good piece if a bit comical at times spelling out some conclusions that if depressing have been relatively clear for a while: Turns out casting motherhood in casual, implicit, explicit, derogatory, snide, laissez-faire, etc. terms and then also pairing that decades-long trend with brutal economic realities all tend to combine to make women NOT want to be moms. I don’t fully believe in the Kingsnorth-coined the Machine’s ability to have created and coerced such trends, but have to admit that a society and workforce system that got used to doubled labor based on women’s entrance into the workforce would definitely try to keep that going with motherhood interrupting it as little as possible. With luck, and pieces like these, maybe we do realize that yes, women want careers and also they often want to have kids. Both things can occur and also be done without nearly as much trouble as it takes now.
But the Brooks Range also happens to have a lot of alkaline limestone, which makes water more basic. If the acidic water from a seep reaches an alkaline river or stream, its pH will rise, and the iron will fall out as what miners would call yellow boy. “It’s like a one-two punch,” Lyons said. “You have the shaley rocks with pyrite that source the acid and the iron, and then the limestones neutralize that acid and cause the iron to come out of solution.”
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-are-alaskas-rivers-turning-orange/
As in most things with climate change, the phenomena discussed definitely will change the current environment and species, but the confluence of minerals, salt, water and more may well also eventually have beneficial effects. We just don’t usually think about that part.
In a critical network, the connections are strong enough for many moderately sized groups of neurons to couple, yet weak enough to prevent them from all coalescing into one giant assembly. This balance leads to the largest number of stable assemblies, maximizing information storage.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/a-physical-theory-for-when-the-brain-performs-best-20230131/?mc_cid=3f0bc80c10&mc_eid=f83944a043
Everything in life is balance.
If this is true, then it would make sense that the collapse of the false picture painted by the age of “science and reason” — mind-body dualism, religion as evidence of superstition or stupidity, the ability of ideology or technology to create paradise on Earth — would bring about a return to the mean. And if the mean is what we might call a religious sensibility, then a resurgence of religion itself would be very much on the cards.
I think there is a good chance that, beneath all of the surface culture war battles, below the arguments about free speech and democracy, coursing below all of these necessary and inevitable cultural strains and tensions, this is already happening. It could be that Spengler’s second religiousness is already here.
https://unherd.com/2023/12/our-godless-era-is-dead/
One of the paradoxes I am debating writing a book about is that by the time most people know about it, it’s no longer true. Hence millennials still citing half of marriages end in divorce in the US (no longer true) or supposedly all of us becoming secular. I am skeptical of most survey data for a lot of reasons, but perhaps many still think of themselves as “spiritual” and not “religious”. Where it’ll end up, I don’t know, but I do know people are grasping for meaning and parts of religion are coming back in a sneaky way, from Pentecostalism that is more friendly to leftists sans gender ideologies and traditional Catholics.
