Lindsay 👩‍🔬🚲
@llbroadwell.bsky.social
1.3K followers 190 following 4.9K posts
PhD candidate. Bike nerd. Train enjoyer. Possibly BlueSky's leading expert on outrigger monorails. Nuclear power is pretty cool. Support my research: https://www.patreon.com/m/BroadwellElectrics - https://paypal.me/luusb 🇬🇧🇳🇱
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Reposted by Lindsay 👩‍🔬🚲
nellucnhoj.bsky.social
ENTER LONG DUCK

the portal is safe do not question the void-inner

LONG DUCK FRIEND DUCK
roadside.xor.blue
long island duck, long island, new york, [between 1972 and 2008]
long island duck, long island, new york, [between 1972 and 2008]
Reposted by Lindsay 👩‍🔬🚲
ianwalker.bsky.social
On BlueSky I share thoughts about sustainable transport and environmental psychology, plus interesting links

I'm going to try a newsletter for when I want to explore ideas in more depth

Sign up? simple.ghost.io The first entry, to tell you what's going on, is at simple.ghost.io/the-simple-n...
The Simple Newsletter is coming soon
Because you can never have enough email
simple.ghost.io
llbroadwell.bsky.social
for the record, yes, the use of aluminium in bogie assemblies is an actual thing that has actually been done. yes yes I know the bolster area is not *technically* the bogie itself but it's similarly load-bearing and in Atlantic climates (like the UK) it also corrodes.

www.orr.gov.uk/sites/defaul...
www.orr.gov.uk
llbroadwell.bsky.social
every time we have a solved problem we end up with someone going "let's do it cheaper" and most of the timet doesn't end well.

"how to build a good passenger train" is a solved problem for fuck's sake, it just needs investment rather than penny-pinching all the time
llbroadwell.bsky.social
anyway still funny to me that we didn't just go "hey the Class 43 HST provides a solid basis to iterate off, let's improve the design with anti-climb devices and crumple zones and develop an electric version" and instead went hurr durr let's go for the lowest bidder and hope the bogies don't shatter
llbroadwell.bsky.social
but, you know, if there's been systematic neglect of rail infrastructure to the point where lower axle loads seems like a fair trade-off to avoid (further) stretching of maintenance budgets, go ahead I guess
llbroadwell.bsky.social
the thing about steel is it does also weaken over time but depending on the alloy it'll reach about 60% of initial strength and then stop. you can, in fact, design for this to give trains and rolling stock a functionally unlimited service life for non-wearing components
llbroadwell.bsky.social
"we're making our train bogies out of aluminium!"

*five years later*

"why are our train bogies cracking"
Reposted by Lindsay 👩‍🔬🚲
paulwhitewick.bsky.social
Its NEW VIDEO time.

The Great Canal Mystery of Southern England
Thumbnail of the week. Paul point at an empty canal. Wording.... These Canals Vanished.
llbroadwell.bsky.social
zstd is a very lightweight yet still quite effective compression algorithm that's written in C (yay), developed by Facebook (booooooo), and can easily be compiled for the ARMv7 CPU

so between that and image dithering I can fit quite a big site on it (cf. solar.lowtechmagazine.com/about/the-so... 🌞)
About the Solar Powered Website
This website is solar-powered and self-hosted. It has been designed to radically reduce the energy use associated with accessing our content.
solar.lowtechmagazine.com
llbroadwell.bsky.social
The NAND chips are SLC (yay!) but only 256MB (booooo!) buuuuuut the default system image uses about 150MB.

Which means (allowing for overhead) there's about 90-100MB left over to put a website on.

And thanks to cilgin on GitHub, I know how to efficiently use it!

cilginc.github.io/posts/Ultima...
Ultimate Compression Algorithms Tier List
Ever wondered how to shrink your files to an impossibly small size? You’re in the right place! This is your ultimate guide to the wild world of compression algorithms.
cilginc.github.io
llbroadwell.bsky.social
not often I get to say that an SDK is a joy to use but the Luckfox Pico Max SDK is actually a joy to use and makes configuring a Buildroot image a breeze
Reposted by Lindsay 👩‍🔬🚲
llbroadwell.bsky.social
The borough system is an obstacle to the joined-up planning that London desperately needs. I'm with you on that.
Reposted by Lindsay 👩‍🔬🚲
edmorrish.bsky.social
you know that critique of ai that says it’s like taking a forklift to the gym and expecting to get stronger? well this bit of that guardian article about people using chatgpt in dating apps kinda proves it correct
Which is why the man who greeted her inside the pub – polite, pleasant but oddly flat – felt like a stranger. Gone was the quickfire wit and playful rhythm she’d come to expect from their exchanges. Over pints he stumbled through small talk, checked his phone a little too often, and seemed to wilt under the pressure of her questions. “I felt like I was sitting opposite someone I’d never even spoken to,” she says. “I tried to have the same sort of conversation as we’d been having online, but it was like, ‘Knock, knock, is anyone home?’ – like he knew basically nothing about me. That’s when I suspected he’d been using AI.”

Rachel gave her date the benefit of the doubt. “I thought maybe he was nervous,” she says. But she’d been “Chatfished” before, so when the gap between his real and digital selves failed to close on their second date, she called it off. “I’d already been ChatGPT-ed into bed at least once. I didn’t want it to happen again.”
Reposted by Lindsay 👩‍🔬🚲
richraho.bsky.social
Chicago priest Fr. Larry Dowling describes procession to ICE facility: “No one had the courage to speak directly to us. No one from Homeland Security could stand in the presence of the Monstrance holding the Blessed Sacrament. No wonder. Evil is repelled, recoils in the presence of Christ.”
llbroadwell.bsky.social
As it is I keep my contact book up to date, and so when fission finally has its day then I'll step up to the plate and help any way I can.
Reposted by Lindsay 👩‍🔬🚲
annacycles.bsky.social
It's on 29th October at Edinburgh Quaker Meeting House at 6.45pm. If you live in Edinburgh or nearby, please come along and please share widely.

While it's heartbreaking to have said goodbye to Tim, we want to continue his legacy as best as possible, by sharing stories of cycling and mental health.
annacycles.bsky.social
Looking forward to being back in Edinburgh at the end of the month to share the story of our Ride for Tim. We're also hearing from @nicklifeafloat.bsky.social and the charity Health in Mind.

If you're coming, details are on FB fb.me/e/6IrqxMFSX - pls click 'attending' or 'interested' for updates.
llbroadwell.bsky.social
The part I am not looking forward to is when renewables hit the curtailment wall. I will take no pleasure in saying "I told you so"
llbroadwell.bsky.social
The deep irony is France did an energy transition im the 1970s and 1980s with the Messmer Plan.

It was - and remains - doable at the scale we need.

But the petrodollar is king.
flyingrodent.bsky.social
One of the many things I wish I had been wrong about is saying that back in the nineties, our leaders looked at climate change and said: We can’t do shit about this without measures we find unacceptable, so future generations will just have to deal with it via machine guns, fences and attack dogs.
Joe Noonan @joenoonan.bsk... • 2d
"I don't think we can mitigate for climate change."
- Mícheál Martin, Taoiseach.
Reposted by Lindsay 👩‍🔬🚲
artofchira.bsky.social
whenever i encounter people who say they can't understand shakespeare verses I always send them this clip from the 2019 Shakespeare in the Park production of Much Ado About Nothing
llbroadwell.bsky.social
you can tell he's a professional filmmaker fr
Reposted by Lindsay 👩‍🔬🚲
purserhallard.com
It occurs to me that the Doctor's polyethnic identity in recent times recontextualises Peter Davison's casting in quite an interesting way.
(For context, although you'd be unlikely to guess it by looking at him, Davison's paternal family is Guyanese. He has close relatives who are visibly Black.)
Peter Davison, a fair-skinned blond man, as the fifth Doctor, circa 1982.
llbroadwell.bsky.social
found a cool outdoors youtuber a bit ago. Stephen J Reid is him. was wondering why I vibed so well with his stuff and then in a video he casually mentions having quite intense ADHD

anyway here's a video. he's a fun watch.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=sx9u...
I Hate Hammock Camping (Another Disaster)
YouTube video by Stephen J Reid
m.youtube.com