LA MapNerd

Longtime LA resident, local history buff and map nerd. Rockets'n'space stan from waaay back. All em dashes organically generated.

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

I seldom post original tweets - I mostly reply to other people, so if you're wondering who I am, check out my "Replies" tab.

Also, I mostly navigate with Lists rather than Follows, so my "Following" list is a disorganized mess. 😆

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

@la_dorkout I can see why people are mistaking this for Mission San Juan Capistrano; but no, it’s a contemporary design, dedicated in 2009. 😎

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

@TheMiddleborne “Why Army helicopters have Native American names”:

https://t.co/7sISYiEXxC

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

@LauraFlowD @TheMiddleborne We had one for a while, but it was canceled.

https://t.co/26Aeg8hHwX

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

@DocPriyamMD Are nitrate/nitrite-free processed meats any more dangerous than non-processed meats, or are those nitrosamine-producing additives the primary additional risk factor?

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

@Robotbeat @strat0manc3r Yeah, Fahrenheit is a more thoughtfully designed, much more useful, more human-centric room-temperature scale.

But otherwise, give me Kelvin and meters and Newtons. :-)

(And… “metric ton/tonne”? That’s a megagram. Git serious :-))

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

But I am not trying to absolve Mulholland—his life is a glorious and tragic tale, and it is not mine to approve or disapprove.

I mostly meant to point out that the St. Francis dam failure doesn’t belong to the set of “Engineers warned of grave danger, but were ignored by management.”

It was a tragedy, to be sure—but not THAT sort of tragedy.

:-(

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

@teoloveo @engineers_feed There was no way he could have known, given the limits of geological surveying technology at that time.

And he immediately accepted full responsibility, even before forensics revealed the real cause.

It ended his career. He died a broken man.

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

@teoloveo @engineers_feed But Mulholland was right. The leak he inspected had nothing to do with the dam’s failure.

The dam collapsed because it was anchored to an ancient landslide which the weight of the impounded water reactivated.

The leak was perfectly normal seepage from a settling masonry dam.

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

Already did. :-)

https://t.co/pZUzdXmoAf

[Andrew Anderson @uscfan981]

Say something nice about LA.

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

@ingelramdecoucy @mehdirhasan (Consider, f’rex, the cautionary serial misadventures of Kistler Aerospace/Orbital ATK/Northrup Grumman in eventually launching Cygnus.

Not sure anyone involved has made a profit on that, and of course Kistler went bankrupt.)

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

Not quite.

Apollo contracts were cost-plus. Build to NASA spec, guaranteed profitable.

SpaceX, OTOH, gets firm fixed-price contracts. Bid whatever you think will work, for a fixed price. Contractor is on the hook to deliver specified services at quoted price.

Profitable? Maybe, but only if you do it right. :-)

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

@bronzebust The really amazing thing is that the earthen dam of San Andreas Lake was built in 1868, and survived the 1906 quake, despite the fault rupture running directly underneath the dam.

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

Look at a map. See those long skinny lakes at the northern end of 280? Those are Lake San Andreas and the Crystal Springs Reservoirs, so naturally, development is restricted in their watershed.

Also, note that the reason there are long skinny reservoirs in those mountains is the San Andreas fault. Those lakes lie directly in the fault trace.

Not exactly the world‘s most prime development area. :-)

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

@HistoryBoomer Yeah, if you think oligarchs are bad, just wait until you meet the People's Commissars.
😒

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

Poor guy doesn’t seem to realize that his vacuum flasks also have REFLECTIVE walls that prevent RADIATIVE heat transfer.

Guess how SpaceX plans to cool their satellites. :-)

[JerryRigEverything @ZacksJerryRig]

You know the reason your Stanley or Hydroflask is so good at keeping your water cold is because there's a vacuum inside the walls of the thermos.

Heat can't conduct in a vaccum. And "radiated" heat is ineffective at the temperatures processors operate at.

This satellite will be like plugging in your gaming PC without a CPU cooler. It'll be dead in minutes.

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

@ZacksJerryRig Dude, your Stanley or Hydroflask _also_works by having reflective walls.

Glass liners are silvered, metal liners are… well… metal.

This prevents heat loss via radiation across the vacuum.

Without the reflective layer, your flask wouldn’t work very well at all.

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

@seaef @sweetthoneyplz @LeorSapir Only if you’re speaking Latin.
:-)
In English, data is almost always used as a mass noun , and mass nouns take singular “furniture.”)

https://t.co/ybhjT7uvth

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

That’s the correct way to use “data” when using it as a mass noun (which is mostly how it’s used these days).

Some people (mistakenly) treat “data” as a plural count noun. That’s almost always a hypercorrection.

(And “datum” is rarely ever used, except as a jargon term among geographers and mapmakers, where it means Something Completely Different. :-))

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

@sweetthoneyplz @LeorSapir Go look up “Count Nouns and Mass Nouns” and all will be revealed. :-)

[LA MapNerd @LAMapNerd]

@picklepeeete @TheCriticalDri2 If struggling actresses could make 20k per a month EVERY month, Hollywood would be a very VERY different place. :-)

Not how it usually works, though. :-)