To expand on this, the rainbow of colors which start at a straw then turn yellow, red, brown and then that vivid blue, are caused by refraction. The oxide layer on the surface is transparent or translucent, and the thickness of the layer determines what wavelength of light it scatters. The hotter it gets, the thicker the oxide layer forms, so you can fairly reliably tell the temperature the metal has been heated to by eye, and you might use different amounts of heating to achieve hard-but-brittle or soft-but-tough.

I’ve even seen it done by Chris of Youtube channel Clickspring for decorative purposes. It’s how he made the steel hardware of his brass clock blue.

Exactly how you temper something the size of a sword using a forge is a bit outside my understanding; I’ve done it with relatively small bits of drill rod to make lathe tools with a gas torch, but that’s about it.

I spent enough time in aviation to know how much drilling it actually takes to teach people emergency procedures. If it’s different than what they usually do, it takes hours of practice. Even something as simple as finding and pulling a different door latch. If you’re stressed, even as stressed as “the doors won’t open the way I’m used to them otherwise everything is okay” your brain will just fail to pivot to the alternate procedures.

Cars got so simple to use in the 90’s. Sure they were simpler machines in the 60’s but fuel injection eliminated chokes and other carburetor issues, automatic transmissions became ubiquitous, children can handle vehicles of this complexity. And now we’re making them more complicated for no actual reason, with electric door latches with manual backups and such, and it’s causing problems.

It’s a Lemon Tango moment!

At least one door should open via a mechanical key and mechanical handle from the outside, and I firmly believe the internal door handles should all function mechanically as well. There shouldn’t be “usually you use a button but in an emergency this thing that looks like a bit of trim is the actual mechanical handle” that shouldn’t be allowable by code.

Pluto wasn’t demoted. It didn’t get a pay cut or see a loss of benefits.

Our vocabulary has gotten richer and more specific as we’ve explored Pluto and things like it. As we launch missions like New Horizons out there, we’re going to need new terms to talk about the things we find. We sent a whole probe to Pluto; Uranus and Neptune had to share.

Science!

To make that $3000 at her normal rate she would have had to work 30 hours in that same week, which I bet is a tall order for all the unpaid hours that takes attracting customers individually.

There’s also one of those adjustment pots on the main board you get to by sticking a screwdriver in a hole on the back, but people don’t tend to mess with that much.

“So what do you like? What do you want to do?”

doesn’t even react as if she heard me make a mouth noise

I’ve tried that enough times to know it doesn’t fucking work.

Rich Evans once said of Who Framed Roger Rabbit: “Bugs Bunny gave Eddie Valiant the spare tire (instead of a spare parachute) because Mickey Mouse would never do anything funny.”

You seem to be implying that you put nutmeg in mashed potatoes as a matter of routine.

that’s what I said.

Gender Gending Rodriguez.

It was this webcomic that put this idea in my head and I just can’t stop seeing it everywhere “I don’t like this because I’m a woman” comes up. The original commenter also slut shamed the model in the ad which is why I figure it’s either homophobia or sex negativity in general.

But yeah yeah I know homophobia is bad and you can’t accuse women of being bad.

I think libraries are still allowed to let people read the books, yes.

I can’t help but think of that episode of TNG with the following exchange:

Q: “What must I do to prove to you people that I’m mortal?”

Worf: “Die.”

Q: “Oh, very good, Worf. Eat any good books lately?”

have a bunch of books that are age appropriate to 12 year olds, let them wander around and read the first few pages of each, and go “I want to finish this one” and check it out from the library? I hope that’s what this is, that sounds the most sane.

I thought they’d have foods that were related to certain books, like a book with a prominent apple in it, here have some apple. But that feels more like something for 5 year olds.

Your homophobia/sex negativity is noted.

Given this is a print ad, I think the primary payload is just “SEX DRUGS AND ROCK & ROLL” shouted as loud as it can to get the reader to stop flipping through the magazine and actually look at it, and then once it’s got the reader by the foveas it then says “Sony Playstation 2. Circle Cross Triangle Square.”

PS2 launched in late 2000 so this ad would be targeting tween, teen and young adult millennial boys and men, so the secondary payload here is to associate the PS2 brand with thoughts and imagery that demographic is interested in or curious about, such as clubs/raves/parties, girls, sex, party drugs, and sex with girls on party drugs at a club or rave and thus transfer some of that interest/curiosity to itself.

The tertiary payload would be to use association with more grown up imagery (also during this time were ads featuring four condoms in see-through packets bent into the Circle-Cross-Triangle-Square shapes among others) to set themselves apart from Nintendo, who generally maintains an all-ages friendly image, and especially during the GameCube era when they revealed The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker to much fan backlash at the “childish, cartoony” graphics. The PS2 looked more like a piece of AV equipment than Nintendo’s Barney The Dinosaur purple box, and could play audio CDs and DVD movies, VERY important socializing tools for teens in the 2000s.

Bottom line is it FUCKING worked. The PS2 sold like toilet paper. Sony sold 155 million PS2s worldwide, Outselling the GameCube (21.7 million and the Wii (101.7 million) combined And they did it with ads that said “Hey, if you’re grown up and with it enough to recognize what this chick is doing, ours is the game console for you.”

I mean yeah that’s Battletech.

Early on they stole a lot of artwork from Japanese products, so the Phoenix Hawk, Stinger, Wasp and especially the Hatamoto-Chi are very much the Samurai with wings thing. Also, melee combat was a significant part of the game, mechs carried swords, axes, clubs, and those with fists could punch. Even the weirder 'Mechs of this time were described as more insectoid or bird-like, like the Locust.

They trended toward more mechanical, military machines as they hired artists and did their own designs, they trended in a more mechanical, angular, military vehicle direction and more often than not used backward-kneed legs. Look at the Timber Wolf or the Shadow Hawk. Even when the 'Mech was more humanoid and had forward bending knees they tended to be more angular and mechanical like the Summoner.

Pictured above is Clan Smoke Jaguar’s invasion of the Draconis Combine.

Not much can top the 3DFX VooDoo graphics card boxes.