Some model trains operate on a system called DCC, or Digital Command Control. As an alternative to DC, or Direct Current-driven models, it’s a commonly-held misconception that DCC runs on an AC, or Alternating Current circuit. In reality, it’s still using direct current, but combining it with PWM, or Pulse Width Modulation, to embed digital signals at slightly higher voltages than the regular operating voltage. These signals can be used to address individual models and send commands that allow for a model to have more functions than a DC model would be capable of, such as more sophisticated lighting, finer motor controls, sound features, consists, speed matching, automation, and a lot more.
It’s very depressing to ask someone about their weekend and the answer is always nothing more than TV and sleep.
I know somebody who maintains a gas powered go kart that his son races with. I don’t know much about it, and I’d never be into it, but at least hearing about what he is up to is interesting.
That’s the unfortunate part of modern society. Many people are barely able to make a living to get by that when they do have time off, all they want to do is sleep and do nothing. It’s not that they are necessarily lazy or unmotivated, it’s that they are tired and need the rest.
People don’t create, or get into a hobby unless they have enough free time and money.
If all your free time is spent on trying to get a bit more money to live … any bit of time you have to just sit will be spent either sleeping or watching TV.
I don’t have any energy to do anything else. I hate being asked about my weekend. Why do I have to entertain? They can just tell me about their own weekend instead and I’ll offer my own information if I have something to tell.
I don’t assume people are asking for their own entertainment. I think they are trying to connect. Conversation is one of the way people connect to each other. If it’s just for entertainment It’s so much easier to just get entertainment from a phone rather than go the effort to interact with people.
Being autistic, this post hits home. Sometimes I feel too much anxiety about my passion, but then I see something like this and know that it’s okay. It’s cool when people love stuff.
I said it a few times already, and I’ll say it again:
Being passionate about something makes a person so, so much more attractive. It’s so cute, it genuinely gives me the butterflies.
I love it so much. Go ahead, be nerdy, infodump about that cool thing you’re into. I wanna hear it <3
All the coal in the ground was made in one specific period of history when trees were “new” and there was nothing that broke down dead trees for food. Trees that die now do not become coal. No new coal is being made.
That whole story about how long it took for fungus or anything to evolve to the point it could break down trees was a fascinating surprise to me, that also highlighted how evolution works.
However nowadays, I see it mostly as important to share from the perspective of both climate change and cultural resilience. We all know the connection to climate change, but ….
I love watching apocalypse movies, but an op Ed I read really struck home. The premise was that if there were enough of a disaster to knock humanity back a century or more, we would never be able to recover. So many easy sources of energy through fossil fuels have been picked clean to where they are no longer recoverable without modern technology, and we can’t get back to modern technology without Easy sources of energy. Fossil fuels in general were created once. There are no new ones created. But there are no substitutes that would let a re-building society pass that level of development.
That’s a very interesting story if you think about it. I would say that it is possible to reach our technology level again without fossil fuels. It just takes a lot longer. The biggest issue for this is getting materials as steel or copper. Wind turbines are relatively simple and don’t need that much technology. As a more stable form of energy production we have trees and bio mass. It would cost a lot of our trees to get back to our current state, but I think it’s possible. You just have to remember to not make the same mistakes again.
Wind turbines are certainly doable at be lower technology levels, but how do you scale that up to enough power density for things like refining metals? How could you even have enough of an iron or steel industry to build things, including tools? Concrete? Glass? Chemicals? How would appliances ever be cheap enough for home/personal use?
