#engineering culture

[ourstoatmeansdeath]

I've seen a few posts from people who think Henry was being shitty to Gorgug or setting Gorgug up to fail by allowing him to do 3 years of the artificer track at once. But I have a lot of experience in STEM, and I think Henry was being incredibly kind in a very engineering-coded way.

I did an undergrad degree in engineering and have been in STEM spaces for more than 10 years. And the STEM way of being an asshole is much more like what Porter did. So many people who don't look like they fit the stereotype of who belongs in STEM have been explicitly told to leave. Like, I was at a conference last year where a presenter asked all the people in the room who had been told to change their major to raise their hands. And there were lots of us with raised hands. (This was in a diversity equity and inclusion session, so a lot of non-traditional looking people for engineering.) If Henry wanted to be an asshole he would tell Gorgug to leave, or that the curriculum was "rigorous" and half-orcs can't usually hack it, etc. But he didn't!

Henry did the classic STEM thing of laying out all of the options, even the ones that aren't desirable. Since Porter won't sign the MCAT, the reasonable options are all gone. Henry mentioned that Gorgug doesn't need to be in school for artificing to be an artificer ("If artificing is something that brings you joy and brings happiness to your life, you don't need school. You can do that on your own.") Which is NOT something that STEM people do. I've never heard an engineering professor say that someone who does STEM stuff as a hobby can call themselves engineers. Henry is being absurdly kind by saying this.

When Gorgug says that he wants to do artificing in school, Henry gives the option to do all three years of school at once. [Note that Henry did not suggest this at first. Henry didn't offer it until Gorgug basically asked for a loophole.] This reminds me so much of all the STEM people who know a system really well and give you advice on how to navigate it. They note that their path isn't what the system was designed to do, but if you really want to do it you could do it this way. Which is exactly what Henry does. This also gives Gorgug the agency to decide for himself.

Henry also goes out of his way to say that the people who work hard are the ones he would bet on. This is also so nice as a STEM person! I can't tell you the number of professors I had who said that a specific problem shouldn't take long, or "if you're efficient you should be fine." I also had a professor who said some people can code and some people can't, and he didn't know how to help the people who don't have a natural aptitude for coding. Henry saying he thinks Gorgug can achieve this through hard work is super enlightened for a STEM instructor.

tl;dr Henry is incredibly enlightened for a STEM instructor. He tells Gorgug that Gorgug can still be an artificer without formal schooling, and then when Gorgug expresses a desire for the formal education he tells Gorgug the path. If Henry does a heel turn I will be emotionally devastated lol

[engineersplanet]

The Engineering Behind The First Flight

Introduction: The First Flight The Wright brothers’ historic flight on December 17th, 1903, stands as a defining moment in the annals of aviation history. This monumental event, witnessed at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, marked the dawn of controlled powered flight, forever altering the course of human transportation. The significance of their achievement reverberates through time, shaping the…

[chamerionwrites]

”Your comfort is not more valuable than another person’s life, let alone hundreds or thousands of other people’s lives” is a very simple and obvious ethical concept and yet USAmericans will regularly stand up and argue the opposite with their whole chests. Peak imperialism brainworms

[cosmicportal]

Hemudu culture - China

[heilos]

I have come to the annoying conclusion that many search engines are becoming super useless in trying to track down historical research without bending over backwards for answers. The amount of garbage that shows up in the results is so incredibly aggravating and has nothing to do with my search terms or questions. I cannot in fact "just use X search engines" apparently.

[ohsalome]

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Hadrian's Wall

Hadrian's Wall is an impressive masterpiece of military engineering built along steep ups and downs that cross space and history between England and Scotland.

The old wall, sculpted for almost 2000 years by wind and rain, climbs over hills, immerses itself in a moor to suddenly resurface among the blades of light of a wood, a karst presence that seems to absorb the energy of landscape to challenge its gravity and logic in a rollercoaster of harsh ups and downs that cross space and history.

Hadrian's Wall is no longer England but it is not yet Scotland, even if the land to the north seems wilder.

But perhaps it is just a state of mind of those who look at it, subtly altered by the emotion of treading the same stones on which the Roman legionaries walked.

In reality, unlike what many believe, the Wall is within English territory, even if it has helped define the borders of the two countries since the emperor from whom it takes its name ordered its construction in 122 AD to "separate the Romans from the barbarians," the hostile tribes of the Picts who populated today's Scotland, a tough nut to crack even for the Roman legions.

To build it in just six years, about fifteen thousand men were employed, three legions that faced the challenges of a terrain carefully chosen to exploit its advantages.

The result is an impressive masterpiece of military engineering, a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987, stretching from one coast of England to the other for eighty Roman miles, about one hundred and seventeen kilometers from Solway Firth to the west and Wallsend to the east.

It is one of the many place names linked to its existence and then extending southwards with ports and coastal fortifications.

For nearly three centuries, Hadrian's Wall was northernmost and most fortified boundary of the Roman limes, a gigantic defensive system that stretched for over five thousand kilometres — from the Atlantic coast of Great Britain to the Black Sea across Europe — then continuing through present-day Middle East to Red Sea and from there cutting across North Africa to the Atlantic.

The 117km long (80 Roman miles) Hadrian's Wall was punctuated by 14 main forts, 80 minor ones and 2 watchtowers every third of a mile.

In addition to the actual wall, mainly made of stone, about 5m high and up to 3m thick, becoming six metres thick in the earthen sections, the Wall was reinforced by a ditch bristling with pointed stakes, a military road that connected the forts and allowed any point to be reached quickly and by a deep embankment, the Vallum.

The forts, rectangular in plan, varied in size according to the importance of the garrison, a pattern repeated with slight differences along the entire limes that protected the borders of the empire.

A moat and a wall punctuated by towers protected the perimeter and each side had a gate protected by two massive towers.

Inside were the headquarters — the praetorium where the praefectus castrorum reside; barracks; a hospital; warehouses and latrines, generally under the walls, while the bathrooms were outside the fortifications.

In granary, food supplies were stored to face the harsh winters or possible sieges.

In the Vicus, the civilian settlement, lived the families of the soldiers, often auxiliaries who officially could not marry.

In these villages that grew spontaneously around the forts, merchants, artisans and prostitutes also lived, attracted by the soldiers' wages.

There were also temples dedicated to Roman, local and even oriental deities that reflected the different religions of soldiers from all over the empire because Romans were very tolerant as long as the social order and the emperor were not questioned.

🎥: © pindropandhop via IG

[gophergal]

I'm like a bull in a china shop Knocking off a knockoff Cause I got no culture I got no culture of mine...

[ivan-fyodorovich-k]

societies that demonize children and child bearing when their population starts its dramatic decline and women still refuse to have children: 😮

[nauticaltrain]

You ever seen them fight? It's brutal. They can't feel pain, but they can still make each other hurt. It's some weird dominance thing they do.

Sounds like humans.

[balioc]

If you provide no incentive to Do the Thing, then very often people just won't Do the Thing.

If you provide an incentive to Do the Thing, then very often people will Do the Thing just because they want the incentive, and they'll do it in the most mercenary and antisocial way possible.

These are both, potentially, huge problems. These are both looming failure states.

(It gets super mega obvious with parenting, right? We have a ton of kids who need people to raise them -- orphans, children of abusive families, etc. This need, when it arises, is a desperate need. Having someone not show up to meet it is really really really bad. And parenting clearly isn't something that you can just make people do coercively, not if you want good results, so you need volunteers. But: if you hear the words "this person is raising kids for the money," the scenario that comes to mind is also really really really bad.)

A lot of high-level policy engineering must consist of wrestling with this nightmare dilemma, making judgments about the least-bad place on a spectrum of awfulness, and tinkering with the incentive structure accordingly.

A lot of high-level social engineering, in the ideal case, consists of finding ways to change culture and values so that you can transcend the dilemma, by inducing people to Do the Thing through methods other than direct incentives. (Or, alternatively, by reallocating a rare and precious resource -- The Right People -- to the problem of Thing-Doing. But a lot of folks are allergic to that kind of thinking these days.)

A lot of really dumb discourse consists of people understanding one of the maxims above but not the other one.

[wombywoo]

Happy wombat day!!

[witchofthesouls]

Tony prob would give in for the tech

Fury:*tired*Stark what do you have

Stark:*hiding unsuccesfully Cybertronian stuff blueprints he got* Nothing

Also

Stark: *watching as Cybertronians fight over him* Even my dad wasn't that invested

Hawkeye: Your daddy issues are showing

Joke's on S.H.I.E.L.D. because Tony's having the time of his life because the baby proofed kits are still leaps ahead of Earth. He's attacking it with a ferocity, so he can get Big Boy stuff. Like hello, personal teleporter and space-bridge technology! Plus, he gets to talk so much shop and tea with a variety of mecha between the sides that can keep up or outpace him.

While Dr. Foster, Dr. Banner, and Dr. Stark are messing with things. There are a few 'bots and 'cons wiping wet optics because the sparkling built himself drones for company. Quite a few mechs are angling for a guardian-bond for the weird squishy sparkling. Tony's surprisingly getting along with many of the giant metal aliens, he has pick for a guardian, and the competition is fierce.

Tony is getting feels because there's genuine interest on their end. Not just his weapons and Iron Man and the Merchant of Death, but for Tony. There's no glazing eyes or impatient tics when he rambles or jumps disciplines because he's chasing after something, no digs at his philanthropy or at his AIs. Bonus points for not underestimating Pepper and Rhodes and giving Jarvis his due, too.

(But gods help him if they find out the palladium poisoning, Tony is getting kidnapped and treated.)

[aro-culture-is]

Aro culture is trying to find a job where you can work with queer people.

[syndrossi]

The idea where Arya comes along too, and has mismatched eyes - what do you wanna bet Viserys looks at this fierce girlwithmismat he'd eyes who can use a sword and ride like the wind and follows Jon around (last time he was gone from her sight he almost went through the door at Summerhall alone! She's never letting go!) and muses that she's like his and Daemon's mother, Alyssa.

(Also, Arya is asked what name she'd like and she answers Arya. They ask again and she says Nymeria, and Daemon sighs in defeat and let's her keep being Arya LOL.)

Also, I keep thinking about the burning thing that possessed Jephyro and I have a theory - it's R'hllor. Not a God, but some powerful demonic fire being, possibly created in Valyria?

I could also see Arya being cool with Visenya, who was a badass warrior dragon queen. And would make a very impassioned argument for getting Dark Sister over Jon and Rhaegar due to said name. 😂

Is your theory that R'hllor is not a god but something of Valyrian origin/creation? Or that some powerful/demonic fire entity from Valyria is masquerading as the actual god R'hllor?