softcactus

I am not sure why you are being downvoted. I have been doing a project with Homogeneous Transform Matrices recently and also assumed that this was "obvious" since the shear diagonal lives in the rotation part of the matrix. Still, it's a very neat trick and I appreciate the OP for posting it!

> I read that it took 16,000 88 flak shells to bring down one bomber. I infer the success of the flak was due simply to quantity.

I am not trying to be pedantic, just wondering out loud. 16,000 shells per bomber sounds like a lot, but I am sure you are familiar with the statistic that 250,000 small-arms rounds were fired for every insurgent killed in Afghanistan, and 25,000 rounds fired per kill in WWII. I can't find an actual hard source on the ratio of bullets per kill though. Bombers obviously cant hide behind cover, but I wonder if that 16,000 number isn't as unreasonable as it seems.

> I well know the death rate for B-17 crews - my father flew 32 missions in 1944 in one.

He sounds like an amazing man. I get queasy in light turbulence. I can't imagine the stress and horror of even a single bombing run. That's more than anyone should ever have to go through.

Sorry I worded my previous response poorly.

> The 8.8cm german flak gun WAS a radar-guided AA gun.

The Kommandogerat 40 was a rangefinder/computer, not a radar. It had the capability of being radar-guided, but was not necessarily radar-guided by itself.

For the Kommandogerat 40 you needed a direct line-of-sight (they were still used in overcast conditions though) but it would compensate for the velocity vector of the incoming targets, altitude, wind, and would relay fire controls to all the flak pieces in the battery. Not as nice as a radar, but it was able to be fielded in mass quantities, and I think it deserves its place as 2nd most devastating weapon of WWII. Especially since towards the end of the war, the Germans were the ones playing defense. It made the strategic bombing campaigns of the allies very painful. The RAF bomber crews had a 44% death rate. That's deaths, not casualties.

It also excelled in direct fire roles against ground targets.

My weight fluctuates pretty normally depending on my exercise level. When I'm actively lifting weights I am in a calorie surplus and usually end up a bit overweight. Losing weight is fairly easy. You just count calories, avoid sugars, and eat high-fiber foods at the start of the meal to feel more full for longer.

I recognize that 'gain weight for the winter famine' is a bit extreme but I'm just willing to gain 5 extra lbs than I normally would.

What does fgemm signify? Why did you set up a redirect to your own HN comments? Memory preservation?

Build up my savings to the point where I can live comfortably for 2+ years without a paycheck, or 4+ on a tight budget.

DCA into ETFs with the leftovers.

Buy a little bit more non-perishable food than I need every time I go to the store. Extra bag of beans and rice here and there. Also eating unhealthier than usual since I figure if there's a food shortage or energy shortage during the winter I'd rather be 15lbs overweight.

Continue to learn skills that I think will be valuable in the future/will get me ahead of the average person in my field. I was a child in 2008 so I have never experienced a bad labor market, but I figure I just need to be more employable than average (if I am mistaken then that's what the 2+ years of savings are for). There is always money to be made and people will want to hire those with skills that can make them money. If tech is in a bubble then just being able to make CRUD apps wont land six figure salaries anymore. I'll need a good reason for someone to hire me.

Human brains are funny. Obviously the absurd part of all of this is people (literally) building their houses on the edge of the ocean and expecting this to not happen.

However because it's all we know, it seems that the real absurdity would be the government designating these sites as 'no-build' zones-- or at least FEMA washing their hands of any damage that should happen to these sites.

This should be a wakeup call that many aspects of our current way of life are unsustainable, not that it's just standard operating procedure to rebuild from the ground up every 20 years only for everything to be washed away again.

Why is this redirect set up?

Why does this read like Chuck Palahniuk

I always interpreted this work as a satire of Ayn Randian style objectivism/exceptionalism. It's funny that in school we were taught that it was a criticism of communism/socialism when I think it's really a criticism of the popular perception of communism/socialism.

The underlying premise is a misunderstanding of equity that persists today. The idea behind leftist ideologies is not to handicap the brilliant and able, but to extend the material buffers that allow brilliance to flourish to everyone:

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein's brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”

But at the time and today, people (leftists included) thought that leftist ideology must have been based in envy or some inferiority complex. Harrison Bergeron is that 'meta-ideology' taken to its extreme.