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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 7th, 2023

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  • I mostly work in social services, but during times of intentional or unintentional unemployment, I run a handyman service and fix a range of smaller consumer gadgets and household appliances. Not an exaggeration to say that over the last 6 months 50% of my income was derived from buy/sell/repair of vacuums. I am not lying when I say I have a small vacuum shrine, somewhat as a gag but also in respect for the fact that vacuums kept me fed.

    There’s a few aspects to vacuums that play into your concerns.

    The heating issue arises from the use of standard AC brushed motors in the cheaper builds, vs DC brushless motors in the higher-end. Basically AC motors are mini-heaters that spin a bit, and DC motors spin a lot and generate a tiny bit of heat. There’s a cool Tech Ingredients video where the presenter discovers this by tinkering with ceiling fans, learning how much air they move, power consumption, and so forth. Worth a watch even just for curiosity.

    The next issue is airflow. There is a complex chain of intake, impeller, dust bin, outflow, filters, etc. Impairments and poor design in any of these areas restricts airflow and makes the motor work harder.

    The impeller is the “fan” that moves air and it’s attached to the motor. The faster you move air, the more resistance, the more resistance, the more the impeller converts movement into sound. It approaches a threshold where it can’t efficiently push the air any harder, and the energy needs to go somewhere so it ripples through the air medium.

    And with fluid dynamics, the more resistance the more turbulence, which of course leads to more resistance.You can mentally plot an efficiency curve where moving almost no air would have incredibly high efficiency, but see it drop off sharply you approach the max, where you can dump as much energy as you want into that impeller, but it’s maxed out and is now a noise-maker. A thought exercise would be to imagine a 1cm^3 motor that is expected to fill a Zeppelin in 30 minutes - we can intuit exactly why that’s insane and could never happen.

    The compactification of devices is the next huge area. If the consumer wants incredible suction in a tiny device, it’s going to be a grid-melting racket-box. Physics is not to be argued with.




  • I live in the Canadian prairies.

    One time I was flyin’ down the highway and I noticed a man with car parked on the shoulder, staring out into a farmer’s field of flowering Canola.

    I stopped because I could think of no reason other than he’s had car trouble, and is staring off into the distance trying to figure out WTF he’s gonna do now.

    He explained to me that he wasn’t having car troubles, that he was on a visit from Hong Kong and it’s the first time he’s ever traveled outside. He told me that from the structure of the city and sky rise density, he’d basically never seen a patch of sky or open land. The biggest patch of sky that he’d ever seen would be about the size of a 2 packs of cigarettes held at arms length.

    Woah.

    And here we have the joke that the terrain is so flat and monotone that you can watch your dog run away for 7 hours.



  • I don’t have a giant hate for disney, in fact it’s fair to say I’m relatively uninformed about their offerings.

    But every Disney movie I’ve seen is basically the same script. “I have self doubt and I’m judged by my role models for my non-conformity. Now I’m going to go on a crazy adventure with sidekicks where I discover that the things that make me different actually give me strength!”

    Why any adult would want to see this shit is beyond me.






  • I’m sick to fucking death of hearing about the quantum multiverse. It’s a delusional fantasy, and even though I respect the hell out of Sean Carol, it’s time for him to shut the fuck up about it and stop giving it air.

    I’m tired of hearing about the quantum multiverse which is a fantasy, and I’m tired of hearing about quantum consciousness and all that other fucking horse shit.