[HN Gopher] The meme-ification of the "Demon Core"
___________________________________________________________________
The meme-ification of the "Demon Core"
Author : SaberTail
Score : 240 points
Date : 2024-11-21 03:05 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (doomsdaymachines.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (doomsdaymachines.net)
| Topfi wrote:
| I'd argue Kyle Hill [0] should have been mentioned since his
| coverage appears instrumental in this trend.
|
| Also, if you are so inclined, there are also Chernobyl memes [1].
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z497lu4t5XI
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQeC06SdicI
| blueflow wrote:
| My spouse works in a nuclear research facility. Everytime they
| talk about radiation or something i make jokes from the HBO
| "Chernobyl" series like "3.6 Rontgen, not good, not terrible".
|
| Some years ago i gifted them a snow globe for birthday, but not
| one with a snowman and white particles, but one with a little
| chernobyl plant and black particles. Their coworkers found it
| funny. It is still at their desk these days.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > but one with a little chernobyl plant and black particles.
|
| Now I want one. Where did you buy it from if you don't mind
| me asking?
| blueflow wrote:
| From Ukraine via eBay. It shipped within 2 weeks despite
| the ongoing war. It is apparently a popular tourist
| souvenir.
| antononcube wrote:
| Nice! Here are some AI-generated images using your snow-globe
| description as a prompt:
|
| https://imgur.com/a/q2fyCuP
| antononcube wrote:
| It is very interesting that my comment above was downvoted!
| noman-land wrote:
| No one wants to read someone else's AI generated stuff.
| We can all do this ourselves. It's like linking to a
| search result page.
| antononcube wrote:
| Again, good to know.
|
| Although, my AI-generation was a response to an
| interesting comment. You do not think readers are
| interested to see how the Chernobyl snow-globes look
| like?! (Looking at AI generated images or store links.)
| andrewflnr wrote:
| But we wouldn't know what it looks like, we would only
| know what your AI thinks it looks like. So no, we're not
| interested in filling up our heads with vaguely related
| AI slop. If you had actually posted the store link that
| would be an entirely different question, which you've
| somehow tried to conflate with generated images.
| antononcube wrote:
| It is wrong to assume/state that people do not want to
| see these AI-generated images. At this point, [?]40
| people have seen that _hidden_ Imgur post.
| blueflow wrote:
| I clicked on it at least twice and found it disgusting.
| If more people were like you, thinking this is a good
| idea, i would stop posting my IRL stories to the
| internet.
| antononcube wrote:
| Sorry. If I knew you will have such a negative reaction I
| would have not posted my reply to your IRL story.
| Gracana wrote:
| Please don't stop. I want to hear more about "said a meme
| to my wife."
| Evidlo wrote:
| How are the images any more or less disgusting than the
| original snowglobe itself?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Although, my AI-generation was a response to an
| interesting comment.
|
| Yes, that's why the comment it was in response to was not
| downvoted. But being interesting and HN-appropriate isn't
| something responses automatically inherent from their
| parent comment.
|
| > You do not think readers are interested to see how the
| Chernobyl snow-globes look like?!
|
| Actual Chernobyl snow globes... maybe a link to that
| would be appropriate.
|
| AI hallucinations of what they might look like? Maybe if
| the context was a discussion of the capacities of
| different AI models and it was offered as a demonstration
| of the one that generated it, but not in the context it
| was presented, no.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I think this _is_ indeed interesting and also indicative
| of where AI art is going, unironically. People has much
| higher tolerance for human made low-effort memes.
| gnatman wrote:
| Viewing this image has less value than someone reading
| the parent comment and imagining the snow globe for
| themselves.
| Semaphor wrote:
| > Because it's a meme derived from human suffering. It's meant to
| be in bad taste -- that's the source of the humor.
|
| I don't agree. To me, it's derived from many things, like
| juxtaposing something incredibly stressful and dangerous, with
| something else.
|
| I'd go further and say the suffering that happened is only
| important in that it made the demon core popular and well-known,
| but the memes would still work if it somehow became well-known
| without the death and suffering because no accident happened.
| jonathrg wrote:
| The source of the humor is that what Slotin did is extremely
| funny. So obscenely reckless.
| lenerdenator wrote:
| Part of me thinks he'd laugh his ass off at the memes.
|
| Hell, when the accident happened, he said, "Well, that does
| it."
| BolexNOLA wrote:
| Yeah I've always thought the juxtaposition of 1) these high
| level experts with 2) one of the most dangerous objects we've
| ever created against the ways 2 was _treated_ by 1 is part of
| the entertainment. Like its own unique and wildly unexpected
| category of the Darwin awards.
|
| Yeah it's sad but it is almost difficult to believe, so it
| ends up being kind of funny
| vundercind wrote:
| Yep. It's like someone chain-smoking cigarettes while working
| with gasoline. There's a "yo, WTF?" humor to how reckless it
| is.
|
| Off-primary use of a mundane hand tool being the only thing
| preventing a minor nuclear disaster is simply funny. Like God
| forming man from mud not with the fine tools of a master
| clay-worker, but a child's play-doh plastic carving tools and
| a couple toothpicks.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's actually pretty hard to ignite gasoline with
| cigarettes: https://mythresults.com/special7
| cma wrote:
| Modern cigarettes have ammonium phosphate in the paper as
| a retardant, does that make it harder to ignite gas?
| aftbit wrote:
| My mom once worked as a gas station attendant and general
| gopher, back when gas stations had car repair shops
| attached (late 70s). She used to chain smoke as well.
| Whenever a customer would complain, she would
| intentionally spill a tiny bit of gasoline on the
| ground[1], then put her cigarette out in the puddle. She
| told me she would never light one while filling, because
| the spark and flame from the lighter could be enough to
| start a fire, but that the cigarette itself was not hot
| enough. I've never repeated this experiment.
|
| 1: Yeah I know this is a bad idea itself, but what can
| you do? She was ~20 and her pre-frontal cortex was still
| not fully developed.
| fwip wrote:
| Nit-pick: the meme about people's prefrontal-cortex not
| being fully developed until age 25 is not true. What is
| true is that there was a longitudinal study that found
| that people's brains continued to change under MRI as far
| as they tracked the participants, which was below the age
| of 25.
| 0x457 wrote:
| They just don't burn hot enough to ignite. Remember -
| things burn at different temps.
| akira2501 wrote:
| The vapor burns at a different temperature from the
| liquid. That's fun.
| RandallBrown wrote:
| Sure, but most people light their cigarettes with a match
| or lighter and those have no problem igniting gasoline.
| tokai wrote:
| Yeah the article completely misses the mark there. The
| suffering is not even a part of the meme, nobody really delves
| into that.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I think it's about that ecstasy in losing yourself in
| something that can sometimes cause you to lose your life.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I think it's about something else: In German there's the
| word "betriebsblind", an adjective that describes a state
| of knowing better but out of convenience/lazyness/routine
| foregoing precautions or ignoring warning signs, often
| resulting in preventable calamity.
|
| It's relatable: It's so human to experience fatigue and
| just let it go and do it the quick way that one time. From
| jaywalking to not checking whether the power is turned off.
|
| The Demon Core is an exciting parable about how closely
| we're flirting with death when we do that. Just one little
| slip, and life completely changes from one moment to the
| next.
|
| It's that wretching discomfort of how easy it is to imagine
| being Slotin.
|
| The nihilistic humor/sarcasm is a way to cope/confront it
| all.
| skullt wrote:
| That doesn't quite fit either. Slotin did the screwdriver
| trick a bunch of times before the accident. He was
| showing off.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Weirdly enough that conclusion reminds me of a scene I
| once saw in a nature documentary. It involved a species
| of birds where the males showed off their "fitness" to
| the females by doing dangerous things. One remarkable
| thing was that in one particular area near a highway, a
| group had adapted to show off by _diving in front of a
| car without being hit_ (I guess that that species already
| used to do that with snakes and other predators before).
|
| Anyway, in a general sense that's a particular type of
| sexual selection[0] that's been observed more often:
| showing that you are a healthy individual with good genes
| by taking risks. It probably has name. I suspect that
| with humans it's also an instinctual way of showing off
| who is the strongest in your peer group, without the
| sexual selection connotations.
|
| EDIT: turns out the wikipedia article was one click
| removed from what I had in mind: signaling theory! (the
| evolutionary biology version)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_selection
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signalling_theory
| PaulHoule wrote:
| There is Slotin and his motivations and then there is the
| visual vocabulary of musume art and how it represents
| emotions. The quickest way to get schooled on the latter
| is to watch the anime for
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azumanga_Daioh
|
| which has a mad scientist character that I can easily
| picture screwing around with plutonium half-sphere and a
| screwdriver.
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| I don't remember a scientist in Azumanga Daioh, were you
| thinking of Nichijou?
| masklinn wrote:
| I think it does, that's the normalisation of deviance,
| slotin had stopped respecting the danger because he'd
| worked with it so much it had become mundane, innocuous.
| Doing party tricks with barely sub-critical masses
| absolutely qualifies for me.
| throw7 wrote:
| That makes this even more funny. Next you'll be telling
| me it was his daughter's birthday.
| moralestapia wrote:
| The author seems to have missed the memo that the era of
| victimisation and virtue signaling is finally over.
| wredcoll wrote:
| I just want to highlight the amazing irony of the parent
| post trying to virtue signal something about "virtue
| signalling" and then getting down voted to oblivion, thus
| possibly proving his point?
| mock-possum wrote:
| Unhappily the era of whinging about victimization and
| virtue signaling has persisted
| anon84873628 wrote:
| >juxtaposing something incredibly stressful and dangerous, with
| something else.
|
| That "something else" to me is the absolute ease of the act. I
| think we normally expect the scale of the consequences to match
| the setup difficulty.
|
| Simply bringing two pieces of metal together for instant death?
| It's absolute magic!
|
| So there's also the wizardry component of it. It tickles our
| love of fantasy stories and arcane power, and the irresponsible
| handling thereof.
|
| Elsewhere someone mentions lighting cigarettes at a gas
| station. That situation has similar aspects, but lacks the
| magical flair.
| mikewarot wrote:
| >Simply bringing two pieces of metal together for instant
| death? It's absolute magic!
|
| There wasn't anything instant about the death, from
| Wikipedia:[1] Despite intensive medical care
| and offers from numerous volunteers to donate blood for
| transfusions, Slotin's condition was incurable.[2] He called
| his parents and they were flown at Army expense from Winnipeg
| to be with him. They arrived on the fourth day after the
| incident, and by the fifth day his condition started to
| deteriorate rapidly. Over the next four days,
| Slotin suffered an "agonizing sequence of radiation-induced
| traumas", including severe diarrhea, reduced urine output,
| swollen hands, erythema, "massive blisters on his hands and
| forearms", intestinal paralysis and gangrene. He had internal
| radiation burns throughout his body, which one medical expert
| described as a "three-dimensional sunburn." By the seventh
| day, he was experiencing periods of "mental confusion." His
| lips turned blue and he was put in an oxygen tent. He
| ultimately experienced "a total disintegration of bodily
| functions" and slipped into a coma. Slotin died at 11 a.m. on
| 30 May, in the presence of his parents.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Slotin#Slotin's_death
| fluoridation wrote:
| It was instant in that his fate was sealed in an instant.
| This is unlike basically every other form of death. If
| you're bleeding out there's a chance you can be patched up
| and transfused. If a cancer is killing you it could get
| treated. But Slotin was a dead man walking the moment his
| hand slipped; there was nothing anyone could do about it.
| anon84873628 wrote:
| Exactly. I figured my meaning was assumed in the earlier
| comment.
|
| But the details also adds to the magical element. It's
| not just being reckless, but being reckless with a
| horrible, excruciating, protracted, torture curse.
|
| A story of using a screwdriver to fiddle with a loaded
| gun while the muzzle is pointed at you wouldn't have the
| same appeal, because the consequence is so much more
| direct and mundane.
| fluoridation wrote:
| It was a form of death that was extremely novel,
| considering the entire history of humanity. He wrecked
| his entire body at the molecular level in a way that
| takes days to fully take effect. Before nuclear research
| the only ways to kill you comparably were either very
| violent and immediate, dosing with some chemical
| aggressor (e.g. venom, fungal toxin), or rabies.
| Radiation poisoning works at the physical level, like
| getting punched really hard in every covalent bond in
| your body. Death by a trillion cuts.
| l3x4ur1n wrote:
| I mean, if this should happen to me, I want to undergo
| euthanasia as soon as possible. If I am already dead, I
| don't want to unnecessarily suffer. So my question is, did
| he not want the euthanasia or was it not "accepted" or why
| he had to suffer so much?
| fwip wrote:
| The first person the demon core killed, Harry Daghlian,
| notably allowed the doctors to study and record
| information about his deterioration due to radiation. I
| believe Slotin had a similar motivation - that at least,
| even this slow, painful death could provide valuable
| information to doctors and scientists.
| glhaynes wrote:
| Replace "instant death" with "certain doom" then! Even more
| fantastical!
| DiggyJohnson wrote:
| Of course there was, that's not even pedantically correct.
| Death came instantly, only dying took awhile.
| hinkley wrote:
| You have to admit that the setup of this experiment makes
| riding a motorcycle, without a helmet, with a .1% BAC, look
| like more responsible behavior.
|
| The other people in the room got a couple years' worth of
| rads from his mistake didn't they?
|
| I'm sure they rationalized not using an apparatus for this
| due to embrittlement, thermal expansion, response time, or
| all three. But from the perspective of someone looking back
| on this era 50 years later (now 80), Jesus fucking Christ.
|
| Carpenter's pencils as spacers would have saved his life.
|
| In fact Wikipedia says he was a dumbass:
|
| > The standard protocol was to use shims between the halves,
| as allowing them to close completely could result in the
| instantaneous formation of a critical mass and a lethal power
| excursion.
|
| > By Slotin's own unapproved protocol, the shims were not
| used. The top half of the reflector was resting directly on
| the bottom half at one point, while 180 degrees from this
| point a gap was maintained by the blade of a flat-tipped
| screwdriver in Slotin's hand. The size of the gap between the
| reflectors was changed by twisting the screwdriver. Slotin,
| who was given to bravado,[11] became the local expert,
| performing the test on almost a dozen occasions,
| disqard wrote:
| Transposed to a very different time and place, the
| "bravado" here really reminded me of the "repeated dives in
| a carbon-fiber sub to crushing depths" -- with such setups,
| it's just a matter of when, not if.
| hinkley wrote:
| Those people died before they knew they were fucked. At
| some point acute radiation exposure makes it so they
| can't even dose you with morphine properly. Same thing
| happened at Chernobyl if I recall.
|
| At some point potassium chloride is a mercy.
| jcgrillo wrote:
| The real demon here isn't the core it's the flathead
| screwdriver--lowest among tools. The number of times I've
| slipped dealing with flathead screws, or stripped them, or
| nearly had an aneurysm from them is uncountable. No wonder
| one of these cursed devices played a central role here as
| well. But yeah he totally could have chucked a couple
| sticks in there to keep the halves separate and then he
| wouldn't have died. Oops.
| kps wrote:
| I'm just surprised it wasn't a Phillips camming out.
| hinkley wrote:
| You can add it to your list of its crimes against
| humanity: killed at least two nuclear physicists.
| caseyy wrote:
| I also disagree with the author. They don't consider the
| relationship between the meme makers/viewers and the demon core
| incident. And while it was horrific to those involved, most
| people have experienced maybe 0.1% of that terror - and that is
| good. They can and _should_ make light of it.
|
| Expecting everyone to be deeply affected by all traumatic
| experiences throughout history is unrealistic. We have defence
| mechanisms to cope with the overwhelming weight of global
| suffering, and breaking them down is a bad idea. So shaming
| those who managed to distance themselves from such events (by
| saying their dark comedy is in bad taste) is condescending. I
| say it's good to have healthy coping strategies and not be
| overly affected by awful events we were not exposed to directly
| - that is called _healthy_ mental resilience. Not everyone
| should suffer because anyone else has.
|
| People should and will still joke, even when awful things have
| happened to billions in every conceivable niche of life.
| Really, I would even argue one should not absorb more suffering
| and terror than they would have been exposed to in one life-
| time, even if the internet and news media makes it easy. One
| should _certainly, without any doubt in my mind_ not
| internalize every tragedy in history in an effort to stifle
| humour.
| whoopdedo wrote:
| Most comedy is tragic.[1] And laughing is an inherently
| selfish act, as Mel Brooks observed when he said, "comedy is
| when you fall in an open sewer and die."[2]
|
| [1] https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/06/25/comedy-plus/
|
| [2] https://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/mel-brooks-film-
| exc...
| MayeulC wrote:
| "Comedy is tragedy plus time".
|
| That quote seems to have multiple origins, though I
| remember it from Portal, an unlikely source.
| cwkoss wrote:
| American propaganda likes to paint the nuclear scientists as
| heroes, but I think the younger generation likely views them
| much more as "evil scientists who worked to create apocalyptic
| weapons" and feel comfortable with a lack of empathy for them
| harming themselves in the process.
| jchw wrote:
| The first time I saw the Demon Core as a "meme" is from the
| Japanese creator karameru, a person most known for short
| absurdist humor animations.
|
| https://youtube.com/watch?v=6ZIjbX1gj88
|
| I'm not sure if this is the genesis of the demon core meme
| (probably not), but it definitely came fairly early on.
| cdchn wrote:
| I was going to comment that I'm disappointed there is no
| mention of Demon core-kun.
| thih9 wrote:
| If anyone is interested, there are more animations like this
| e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNZnfbl_Z7M ,
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Od_RTVirPCo ,
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Eyl3WQCttQ8 . Sadly I see english
| subtitles only in the last one.
| jchw wrote:
| If you scroll far enough in the comments of most of
| karameru's videos, there will almost always be a English-
| translated transcript somewhere. Of course, in many cases you
| barely need them, since most of their videos don't really
| need much explanation, or maybe more accurately, utterly defy
| attempts at being explained.
| RajT88 wrote:
| I feel like this had to emerge on 2ch. The mix of cute/death is
| very much that community.
| wruza wrote:
| _What is going on here? I am not exceptionally well-versed in
| anime or manga tropes, but I think the "obvious" reading of this
| is a classic case of "unexpected juxtaposition creates humor."
| That is, moving something from one context ("Demon Core,"
| radiation experiment, horrible death) into another (cute, anime,
| girls) creates something that feels novel and unusual_
|
| Ah, sir, I guess you're completely unfamiliar with anime tropes.
| From absurd brutality to dark drama ( _much_ worse than your
| Titanic Ending and Futurama Dog), everything can be found in
| anime. Thinking that these are cute animations for teens and
| children is a big mistake. I, a grown up adult, usually dread
| when an anime plot is too nice to its actors and think if I want
| to watch it further. This juxtaposition is well-expected.
| bitwize wrote:
| There's a lot of light and fluffy fare in anime. Even back in
| the 90s when I was used to sex, violence, drama, and strong
| character lore in my anime, I discovered You're Under Arrest
| and was a bit surprised to discover that it pretty much went
| nowhere, just an episodic series full of funny things for the
| characters to do. Especially surprising for a show about police
| officers, which in American media usually means it's a
| "procedural" with particularly dangerous criminals and high
| stakes. But in YUA the officers mainly deal with petty
| criminals and get up to wacky hijinks. More recent series, like
| Azumanga Daioh and Lucky Star, are pretty much just schoolgirls
| doing cute things. And maybe that's just the energy you need
| sometimes rather than, say, the horror and drama of Attack On
| Titan.
|
| To paraphrase Brad Bird, anime is not a genre. It's a broad art
| form that encompasses all genres. This is a common mistake for
| Western viewers of anime; even in the 90s it was marketed to us
| as being all dark, twisted Liquid Television stuff. But yeah,
| actually, most anime _is_ created for and marketed to kids and
| teens. In Japan, if you 're an adult consumer of anime, your
| peers may wonder what the hell is wrong with you and why won't
| you grow up. (Manga is different; plenty of manga are produced
| for adult consumption, and these are fairly serious in tone,
| and may lack the fantastic settings or big-eyed character
| designs Westerners associate with the medium.) Adult anime
| otaku in Japan are viewed with the same bemusement and contempt
| we might have for, say, the grown-ass men who are fans of My
| Little Pony. This may have changed more recently, as the
| Japanese government has leaned into the idea of anime and manga
| being important cultural exports through its "Cool Japan"
| publicity program.
| cr3ative wrote:
| I feel like some conclusions of the intent here are born from
| being very well versed in the actual outcomes, including what I
| can only assume was a very painful end to someone's life.
|
| But on the surface level of it, it's a scientist doing something
| knowingly incredibly dangerous and dumb for no particularly
| justifiable reason.
|
| We've all felt a bit like that at some point. We just probably
| didn't have a core and a screwdriver.
| vundercind wrote:
| It's a master-tier Darwin Award win. That's why it's funny.
| Same reason should-have-known-better accidents often get a
| laugh even when the consequences were pretty grave.
|
| "I'm a highly-trained scientist who helped develop the bombs
| that leveled two cities and usher in the nuclear era... yeah,
| lemme just fuck around with this bomb core and a screwdriver
| such that I'm one muscle-twitch from killing everyone around
| me, that seems fine."
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Oddly the art is largely Japanese in style, not just the musume
| (e.g. "girl") images but that first one.
|
| Between that accident and the year 2000 there were about 60
| criticality accidents causing about 20 fatalities
|
| https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ml0037/ML003731912.pdf
|
| After a software project failure that overturned my life I got
| interested in the quality movement, Deming, Toyota Production
| System and all that. I was also interested in nuclear energy,
| actually opposed to it at that time, an opinion I have changed.
|
| Before the Fukushima accident I became aware that Japan was
| leading the world in nuclear accidents, especially this
| criticality incident
|
| https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/safety-and-sec...
|
| as well as the comedy of errors at
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monju_Nuclear_Power_Plant
|
| which I could summarize as "makes Superphenix look like a huge
| success"
|
| Causes floated for that were that (1) Japan was more aggressive
| at developing nuclear technology post-1990 more than any country
| other than Russia (who is making the FBR look easy today) and (2)
| the attitudes and methods that served Japan well in cars and
| semiconductors served them terribly in the nuclear business.
| Workgroups in a Japanese factory, for instance, are expected to
| modify their techniques and tools to improve production but takes
| detailed modelling and strict following of rules to avoid
| criticality accidents.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Workgroups in a Japanese factory, for instance, are expected
| to modify their techniques and tools to improve production
|
| If you go through the Fukushima disaster handling, that doesn't
| seem to have happened at all. In fact, people seemed to be
| super inflexible and actions seemed to have a long
| authorization chain.
|
| The Toyota Production System wasn't actually that free, it
| expected people to report the changes before they happen and
| had plenty of opportunities for a manager to step in and stop
| it. Anyway, I'm not sure how widely it was adopted in Japan,
| the system famously came from there, but the country isn't
| famous for applying it.
| fwip wrote:
| I feel like it's a totally different scenario. In usual
| times, you can afford to innovate - trade some risk for
| potential improvement.
|
| In disasters, you want to follow the established procedure,
| to minimize risk in an already confusing and unusual
| situation.
| shdh wrote:
| > So perhaps if anybody has a "right" to make jokes in poor taste
| about the "Demon Core"... it might be the Japanese?
|
| > I'm not here to be the humor police, or to say things should be
| "off limits" for comedy, or that it's "too soon," or make any
| other scolding noises. Dark humor, in its own strange and
| inverted way, is arguably a sort of coping mechanism -- a defense
| against the darkness, a way to tame and de-fang the horrors of
| the world.
| moate wrote:
| I am always of the opinion that as long as the joke lands with
| the audience or does what the teller intended, it's a good
| joke. Comedy is about a give and take between the
| comedian/artist/whatever and their audience.
|
| The problem arises when people think they are an intended
| audience when they are not (the pope going to a Bill Hicks
| show), or when a comedian thinks that they're in front of their
| intended audience when they are not (a conservative comic at
| the Appolo). A lot of people need to learn this on both sides,
| and more importantly need to stop complaining when they come to
| this realization.
| shdh wrote:
| Yeah, I concur.
|
| I know someone who saw a Carlin skit where he jokes about
| prisoners escaping... Basically the person got triggered.
|
| Either way, I don't believe in censoring humor in most cases.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Fun fact - if you eat the demon-core, at 124 trillion calories,
| it will provide enough energy for the rest of your life.
| cainxinth wrote:
| All 30 seconds of it.
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| I can count on the fingers of one hand, the number of times
| I've been to Chernobyl
| kstrauser wrote:
| Eight?
| ndsipa_pomu wrote:
| Close enough
| Hamuko wrote:
| You won't die in 30 seconds unless you shoot yourself in the
| head afterwards (which may be the preferable option).
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Well plutonium metal aside from the radioactivity is
| actually poisonous, like most heavy metals. I wonder which
| would kill you first?
| BobaFloutist wrote:
| Which is the equivalent of ~4,000,000 gallons of gas, or
| 10,700,000,000 Tesla powerwalls.
|
| Bear in mind, however, that some napkin math suggests that this
| is gross overkill, 2,250 _365_ 100 = 82,135,000, suggesting
| that even a fairly long lived person only needs a mere 2,650
| gallons of gas, or ~7,070 Tesla powerwalls, and that the demon-
| core can easily supply enough lifetime calories for a solid
| large city of ~1,500,000.
| caseyy wrote:
| For comedy one needs to subvert expectations, and this is why
| making light of grave events (Black Comedy) is a big phenomenon.
|
| There are many examples from WW2 comedy to 9/11 memes. Sometimes
| the examples are more indirect, like in film: American Psycho,
| American Beauty, Wolf of Wall Street, The Big Short, Fargo, Don't
| Look Up, Fight Club, Quentin Tarantino's stuff, etc. All of them
| deal with dark themes in a light way.
|
| Given the prevalence of this in our culture, the author seems a
| bit surprised. Maybe they didn't connect it to dark comedy.
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Maybe they didn 't connect it to dark comedy._
|
| I think they made the connection to dark comedy:
|
| > _this somewhat kawaii rendering of the Slotin experiment,
| along with the "I love science" phrasing, was a form of dark
| humor._
|
| And later
|
| > _Dark humor, in its own strange and inverted way, is arguably
| a sort of coping mechanism -- a defense against the darkness, a
| way to tame and de-fang the horrors of the world._
| caseyy wrote:
| Oh yeah. My bad. I maintain the author reads as surprised
| though.
| derektank wrote:
| Yeah, in spite of the author's claims to not want to be the
| humor police, this really just reads as someone who takes their
| work as a historian of nuclear weapons 'very seriously' and
| doesn't want it to be joked about. The SNL joke he identified
| as being particularly offensive ("Having received the Novel
| Peace Prize, the survivors of the nuclear bombings called the
| award the second biggest surprise of their lives") is ...
| pretty anodyne? It's not making fun of the survivors or
| glorifying cruelty, it's just contrasting the banal things
| people say when receiving awards with the extreme reality of
| having endured one of the most awful events in human history.
| That kind of juxtaposition is pretty par for the course in
| comedy, let alone dark comedy. And when it comes to engaging
| with the reality of awful events, not everyone wants to or has
| the capacity to treat them with the grave solemnity the author
| seems to expect.
| Verdex wrote:
| IIRC John Cleese has a talk from years ago where he makes a
| very interesting point that seriousness and solemnity are two
| very different things.
|
| In his opinion, killing humor is the same as killing
| creativity and killing creativity is the same as inviting
| disaster and/or failure for the sake of your ego.
|
| Not being solemn is not the same as not being serious.
|
| I think your last sentence there really is the right take
| away here. But even more than that, I think the right way to
| prevent future tragedies is with humor not solemnity.
| arethuza wrote:
| Also Dr Strangelove... the subject matter doesn't get much
| darker but it is also quite hilarious.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Strangelove is funny because it was true. Serious people
| really were doing studies on how to survive a nuclear war.
|
| But just as in the movie it was politicians who weren't down
| with it. On both sides. Khrushchev was removed when his
| colleagues figured out just how close he got them to WW3.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| Many argue the basis for true comedy is dealing with fear,
| rejection, and embarrassment...
|
| With Thermonuclear War: no one is around to experience
| anything after a comedian bombs on the world stage.
|
| Stanley Kubrick was famous for making actors miserable, but
| reminded us film is ultimately a collaborative art form. =3
| itishappy wrote:
| No mention of the earlier XKCD mentioning the demon core? It's
| what set in motion my particular interest in nuclear accidents.
|
| I don't agree with the author's analysis here. I think the demon
| core is simply memorable. It has a scary name and the beryllium
| sphere is iconic in a way the Kelley and SL-1 accidents simply
| aren't.
|
| https://xkcd.com/1242/
| Vecr wrote:
| What's the Helvetica Scenario? Just a joke? I know all the
| other ones.
| dole wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Y-yKmzP-4U
|
| A bit from Look Around You, a (fantastic) British comedy show
| made to look like retro science classroom educational videos,
| from the minds of Peter Serafinowicz and Robert Popper
| coremoff wrote:
| Explain XKCD to the rescue:
| https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/1242:_Scary_Names
| dale_glass wrote:
| Despite it being so famous, and the memes, I still don't
| understand what Slotin was _doing_.
|
| So I get it, it was a demonstration of how to perform an
| experiment. But I can't understand how the screwdriver makes any
| sense at all. What's being measured? What does success and
| failure look like? What does the experiment produce, what data in
| what format?
|
| Because in my head, a proper experiment has data collection and
| precise measurements. Somebody's working on a data table that
| says "At position X, we measured value Y". But randomly wiggling
| stuff around with a screwdriver, I can't see how one can do
| anything of the sort. And I figure at this level, "more coverage
| = more radiation" is kind of a trivial point that doesn't really
| need to be demonstrated.
| sho_hn wrote:
| My understanding is that he was demonstrating a technique for
| how to bring the system to near supercriticality, without
| causing it. I.e. the objective was to look at the measurement
| devices they had and monitor them, and build an understanding
| of what the data was showing. This would then (in principle) be
| repeated by others with more specific objectives later.
|
| Obviously they should've built a rig for that (at least), but I
| guess there was a "ain't nobody got time for that" attitude.
| dale_glass wrote:
| Right, but shouldn't distance be a critical part of such a
| measurement?
|
| Like if we measure the amount of noise a device makes, we do
| it in a quiet room and at a standard distance. Without
| precision there's no useful data being generated.
|
| So that's the part that I don't get. Shouldn't there be a
| screw being turned precise amounts, precisely made shims, or
| at least calipers be involved?
| sho_hn wrote:
| I think it was more about being able to understand/read
| what the measurement devices were showing. The exact
| distance probably wasn't as important as the criticality
| could also vary with other variables (e.g. geometry).
|
| As in, you're trying to understand the situation as
| "shouldn't they have precisely nailed down all the
| parameters, if the goal is to measure when X starts
| happening". But it seems Slotin was more demonstrating
| "this is what you're going to see on the monitors when
| stuff is close to going boom". It wasn't about "this
| specific distance is a safe gap" and more "here's how you
| can tell whether the gap is safe".
|
| He was about to be reassigned out of the lab, and was
| demonstrating equipment to his designated successors.
| davisp wrote:
| Sometimes science doesn't have to be precise to demonstrate
| a result.
|
| Consider trying to measure feedback from a microphone and
| speaker. You don't have to be an expert to know that
| there's a quick change in system behavior when the
| microphone gets too close to the speaker.
| StableAlkyne wrote:
| The honest truth is there's just a certain acceptable level
| of jank in a scientific lab.
|
| Not everything needs to be measured to a high precision to
| be useful, and it's always a balance of how much effort you
| want to expend versus how useful that extra
| accuracy/precision is.
|
| If all you care about is "when you're getting close to a
| critical mass, your instruments will look like this," you
| don't care that you have a wide swing in your data. You
| just want to show a difference from baseline.
| stetrain wrote:
| If the goal is to collect precise data and use it after the
| experiment to draw conclusions, update a model, etc. then
| sure.
|
| If the goal is to demonstrate to observers how the neutron
| output (reaction rate) increases as the reflectors are
| moved closer together over the source, then that isn't
| really necessary.
|
| This seems more like an incredibly dangerous version of a
| demonstration you might see at an interactive science
| museum or a classroom. You don't need precise measurements
| to demonstrate the relationship between two phenomenon.
| rocqua wrote:
| This is just proving 'move spheres closer means more
| neutrons'. It's something you quickly show someone to
| explain what you are going to do. The people watching will
| then get most of the same ideas you are suggesting, and
| figure out how to design a proper experiment around it.
|
| Presumably the experiment to be done later is about
| characterizing different cores. They had already done it
| for this core, and wanted to teach the principles to
| others.
| lm28469 wrote:
| It's all in the wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_core
|
| > It required the operator to place two half-spheres of
| beryllium (a neutron reflector) around the core to be tested
| and manually lower the top reflector over the core using a
| thumb hole at the polar point. As the reflectors were manually
| moved closer and farther away from each other, neutron
| detectors indicated the core's neutron multiplication rate. The
| experimenter needed to maintain a slight separation between the
| reflector halves to allow enough neutrons to escape from the
| core in order to stay below criticality. The standard protocol
| was to use shims between the halves, as allowing them to close
| completely could result in the instantaneous formation of a
| critical mass and a lethal power excursion.
|
| > Because in my head, a proper experiment has data collection
| and precise measurements.
|
| In your head yes, in early nuclear science it seems protocols
| weren't that important as long as it went boom in the end. As
| with many industries, regulations are written in blood
| dale_glass wrote:
| I've read that and it doesn't really answer those questions.
| How can you measure the core's neutron multiplication rate if
| you're not exactly controlling the distance? Isn't the
| measurement going to be all over the place?
| kstrauser wrote:
| In a demonstration, not an experiment, it's sufficient to
| have the Geiger counter go clicky at different rates while
| the demonstrator plays the sphere like a theremin.
|
| The point was to show it to people, not to collect data.
| eichin wrote:
| > plays the sphere like a theremin
|
| Wow, that's a brilliantly horrifying image. (Are there
| other analogous ones? Does anyone do musical timing of
| building demolitions, or something like that?)
| lm28469 wrote:
| It was a boy's club with unlimited funding working on
| things that were never attempted before, a lot of things
| weren't exactly done by the books, even their original
| "safe" protocol would seem completely insane by modern
| standards. As long as it went boom in the end and they kept
| it secret I doubt they had many rules
| michaelt wrote:
| Imagine if you'd invented the world's first modern sink, in
| a world that had never seen a faucet or a plughole before.
| And you're training some new guys on the details of what
| you're working on.
|
| Sure, some of that training is going to involve blackboard
| calculations and careful measurements.
|
| But you're also probably going to demonstrate a sink to
| them and say "As you can see, when we turn this knob more
| hot water is added to the mix. Note how, after I put the
| plug in the plughole, the water level starts rising."
|
| The purpose of the demo isn't to precisely measure the
| depth of the water or the temperature at the faucet or the
| angle the tap is turned to. It's just to let them see the
| thing in practice, so as they study it in theory they know
| what to imagine and how the model maps onto the real world.
| GTP wrote:
| Regardless of the outcome, this still looks like a poor
| demonstration: what's the point of showing how it is done, if
| you're not following the protocol anyway? My understanding is
| that those in the room where nuclear experts, so they didn't
| need a demonstration to know that, the closer the two cores
| where, the higher the radiation.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Same reason that chemistry professors demonstrate dramatic
| reactions in front of the class from time to time. It's
| fun, and keeps things interesting, even if you already know
| the chemical processes that are happening.
| atomicnumber3 wrote:
| I've read about this in a few different mediums before and no
| it's not just that protocols weren't that important.
|
| The guy doing this experiment was *notorious* for it and
| multiple other manhattan project people had already told him
| he was going to die if he kept doing it. But he had the kind
| of bravado and personality that he kept doing it.
|
| So to be clear: all of the other people whose risk tolerance
| levels already had them handling weapons-grade plutonium as a
| career ALSO thought this guy was insane for doing this.
| vundercind wrote:
| He took a dip in a pool with a functioning nuclear pile
| some time before that just to avoid having to shut the
| thing down before doing some maintenance, taking a pretty
| big dose. He was a daredevil and had the kind of bravado of
| someone on a work site who scoffs at PPE and rolls their
| eyes when you tell them they need to wear a damn helmet.
| Those types usually end up having a bad time eventually.
| gopher_space wrote:
| > Those types usually end up having a bad time
| eventually.
|
| It's entirely possible to build up skills allowing you to
| avoid using PPE, but every kid who sees you is being put
| at risk just so you can swing your dick around.
| 0x457 wrote:
| > It's entirely possible to build up skills allowing you
| to avoid using PPE
|
| Yes, but you only need to mess up once and your skill
| doesn't save you from other people mistakes.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| No it isn't. Over an 80,000 hour career in
| construction/other dangerous field, you will eventually
| have an incident that will make you thankful for PPE.
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| What skill do you develop to avoid the need for a helmet?
| Is it like a spidey sense, or do you hit yourself in the
| head so frequently your skull thickens enough to protect
| your brain from falling objects?
| lapetitejort wrote:
| I would like to learn the skill to dodge harmful
| prolonged sound waves. A technique similar to the safety
| squint, but with your ears?
| doubled112 wrote:
| Don't mind me, boss. Just hitting my head off of this
| pipe to build up a resistance to physical trauma.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| No, it's not.
|
| Humans don't have perfectly consistent attention, and by
| the time you think you have any skill like that your
| attention is even less consistent than before you started
| "practicing".
| GuB-42 wrote:
| It tends to be the opposite. Kids are usually fine, if
| they cross a construction site once, they would be really
| unlucky to have something fall on their head, even if
| they are careless. Professionals who work on site for
| thousands of hours will have something fall on their head
| eventually, even if they are careful. That's just
| probabilities. Take 10 times the risks for 1/10000th of
| the time and you are still 1000 times less likely to get
| injured.
| cpeterso wrote:
| > He took a dip in a pool with a functioning nuclear pile
|
| xkcd published a What If? video about the consequences of
| swimming in a nuclear fuel pool:
| https://youtu.be/EFRUL7vKdU8
| michaelt wrote:
| _> multiple other manhattan project people had already told
| him he was going to die if he kept doing it_
|
| To me it seems quite reasonable that the people hired
|
| to work on a bomb intended to kill 150,000 people in one go
|
| against the backdrop of a war where 70-85 million died
|
| might not place the greatest value on health and safety,
| and the sanctity of human life.
| Joker_vD wrote:
| On _other_ human lives. They 'd probably damn well care
| about _their_ lives; otherwise, they wouldn 't even make
| an effort to create "better weapons".
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| I still can't believe that there exists rocks on this world that
| will make a room glow blue and kill everyone in the room if the
| rocks are brought close together.
| lm28469 wrote:
| Heavily processed rocks that very few nations can produce. A
| bit like your cpu is just sand, heavily processed sand
| jayrot wrote:
| Right? Also there are an awful lot more totally boring and
| simple things that "if brought together" make exciting stuff
| happen.
|
| Sodium and Chlorine? Potassium and water?
| vanderZwan wrote:
| Honestly, we don't spend enough time feeling appropriately
| amazed at the processed sand we're using to communicate right
| now either.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| "A computer is a rock we tricked into thinking."
| krisoft wrote:
| I likewise "can't believe" we have CPUs. The two things are
| equally wild to me.
|
| Sometimes i imagine how I would explain our current tech to
| someone clever and curious from the past. Like what would
| Jules Verne, Edison or John von Neumann do if you took your
| iphone out of your pocket and show them as you unlock it with
| your face, click youtube and search their name. (Just as an
| example of something super pedestrian and mundane which might
| just blow their minds.) We are trully living in an age of
| wonders.
| rocqua wrote:
| I think a transistor, etching, and photolithography should
| all be explainable to these geniuses. If you get those, and
| then hand wave 'but now a lot more and precise' they will
| have about an average understanding of the process for HN I
| would wager.
| willis936 wrote:
| Well, a determined individual _could_ make a few grams a
| year, but they 'd likely be told to stop early on by one of
| those few nations.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Heavily processed rocks that very few nations can produce.
|
| "Are allowed to" is probably more accurate than "can", given
| that the main constraint is other nations looking for signs
| that you are doing it and... reacting negatively if they see
| them.
| Gazoche wrote:
| Reminds me of this XKCD: https://xkcd.com/2115/
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Origin of the idea for the Loc-Nar?
| ndileas wrote:
| The alchemists are still with us, more powerful then they ever
| could have imagined.
| layer8 wrote:
| It's because "rocks" aren't the fundamental nature of our
| reality. There are also ugly giant bags of mostly water posting
| comments in this very thread.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| The author mentions 2019. That was the year that the "Demon Core
| Kun" videos were put on YouTube[0]. There's no mention of them in
| the article, which is a bit odd. I don't know if that was the
| first to "memeify" the demon core, but it certainly is one of the
| most popular memeifications, with each of the eight videos having
| somewhere between three to six million views.
|
| This also would explain the relatively large presence of anime
| memes in particular, since the "main" meme is a series of
| Japanese animations.
|
| EDIT: knowyourmeme.com actually has an article about the Demon
| Core and its popularity in Japan as a meme[1]. Apparently the
| latter predates the Demon Core Kun series by about a year at
| least. Still, the latter being on YT made it a lot more
| accessible to non-Japanese people which might explain the spike
| in meme popularity in 2019.
|
| [0]
| https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLjjzx95hXRLvbVeHuE8fT...
|
| [1] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/demon-core
| anilakar wrote:
| Memes are fun. Crossover memes doubly so. There's no need to
| overanalyze.
| niemandhier wrote:
| Part of the reason why we slowed down in our progress in science
| is that we do not take risks like that anymore.
|
| Now the risk takers are at private companies.
| thfuran wrote:
| Would science have progressed more slowly if they had spent a
| few hours building a decent rig for that that can't slip like a
| screwdriver instead of losing a scientist?
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Yes, but not in the way you're implying. Safety measures
| don't exist in a vacuum, they exist in a whole system of
| other similar safety measures. In aggregate, this system of
| safety measures does slow science down (or anything else).
| One might argue that it's worth it to slow down output for
| the sake of safety, but I don't think one can reasonably
| argue that output doesn't slow down.
| thfuran wrote:
| It is possible to construct a system of safety measures so
| absolute that almost no work can get done, and it is
| possible (in a sufficiently dangerous field) to be so
| reckless that injuries to and deaths of would-be
| contributors stymie progress. Even ignoring the value of
| avoiding death and injury for its own sake, it is likely
| that optimal productivity lies somewhere in between.
| coldpie wrote:
| What? We're making incredible progress. mRNA vaccines, CRISPR,
| access to space research, materials sciences, the upcoming AI-
| driven research boom. It's crazy out there, _and_ as a bonus,
| we 're not irradiating anyone due to clumsy screwdriver
| techniques.
|
| Stop paying attention to whatever source is leading you to
| believe scientific progress has slowed down. They're lying to
| you.
| niemandhier wrote:
| I am professional scientist. I am not allowed to use certain
| substances, because exposure is damaging to the unborn child.
| I am a man. I am not allowed to perform certain procedures,
| unless I rebuild half the lab. I am not allowed to use lasers
| you can buy as costumer products in the US and china unless I
| write a safety manual .
|
| Innovation needs creativity and fast iterations, in our
| current setup that is incredible hard.
|
| MRNA tech is a good example: It was stuck in limbo for ages
| due to safety concerns, COVID allowed people to ignore these
| and push forward.
| Evidlo wrote:
| Costumers need the fancy gear for their mad scientists
| costumes.
| jayrot wrote:
| As Shaw said, "Life does not cease to be funny when people die
| any more than it ceases to be serious when people laugh."
|
| Things can be, and often are, both at the same time.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Oh they still haven't figured this one out at knowyourmeme?
|
| Demon Core meme came from KanColle(2013) communities in Futaba,
| and permeated to nicovideo.jp as well as to Twitter. That's why
| it is predominantly image based with few GIFs inbetween, why it
| is Demon Core and Demon Core only, and why there are few comical
| non-girl versions created years after inception.
|
| I'd guess overlap between outspoken (ex-)Futaba users AND HN
| readers(hops_max=3) OR knowyourmeme users is exactly 1.0f, and
| this won't ever go on record anywhere unless someone say it
| somewhere, so here you go.
| guerrilla wrote:
| Can you elaborate? What's the context? I have no idea what
| those communities are.
| numpad0 wrote:
| The Crossroad trio was ~2015 addition to the game so it
| doesn't quite date back to 2013, but I doubt others enjoy
| inevitable wall of text for complete context at this time. I
| suspect it will take few more years until enough with
| Anglosphere background gains enough Japanese literacy to
| document this. For now I'd leave just pointers here.
| throwaway37387 wrote:
| Futaba Channel is a Japanese imageboard website originally
| born as a mirror backup for the textboard website 2ch (now
| 5ch). You may be aware of 4chan, which was directly based on
| Futaba and from which it took much of its culture.
|
| Nico Nico Douga is a video hosting website that was created
| soon after YouTube's boom. It's famous for having user
| comments scrolling across videos and for being one of Japan's
| biggest meme factory from 2007 to 2012. Forcing users to
| login to watch videos, the push for premium accounts, and a
| rough transition from FLASH to HTML5 are considered some of
| main reasons of its decline.
| resoluteteeth wrote:
| > Demon Core meme came from KanColle(2013) communities in
| Futaba
|
| Do you have some source for this being the origin? Could you
| cite some examples from prior to 2018 which is earliest date of
| other Japanese demon core memes cited by
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/demon-core ?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Oldest mention to Demon Core as local favorite I could find
| was timestamped 2016/12/05 23:51, but they don't keep formal
| logs and they really don't like things "brought outside", so
| I'm not going to link it.
|
| Maybe there could be mht files in someone's basement
| somewhere, but I have no data to present at this instant,
| mostly just oral history. Sorry for that.
|
| edit: oldest post tagged Demon Core on Pixiv dates back to
| 2016/01/17, so kym is verifiably off by years.
|
| edit: there's a KanColle themed image post in Nico nico seiga
| dated 2017/06/18 featuring a "borrowed" Demon Core-chan 3D
| model, which meams the design existeed for some time.
|
| edit: this blog post dated 2014/09/30 links to a deleted
| Touhou video with Demon Core in title:
| https://1ni.co/2014/09/30/project20140930_6/
| ziddoap wrote:
| > _Oh they still haven 't figured this one out at
| knowyourmeme?_
|
| Why not contribute your knowledge there, instead of (or in
| addition to) here, where it will surely be forgotten about?
| philipkglass wrote:
| There's also this one from last year:
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/nuclearweapons/comments/12x9rxi/the...
|
| Based on The Ol' Spicy Keychain:
|
| https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-ol-spicy-keychain
| louthy wrote:
| Didn't read it, just went for the memes. The kinder surprise one
| is absolute genius!
| frozenlettuce wrote:
| As per Aquinas, every joke is a disguised form of sadness. You
| can only laugh at something that is sad.
| willis936 wrote:
| They didn't include my favorite example.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cymbal-banging_monkey_toy
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I had never heard of this story. What an absolutely horrible way
| to die. Not only do you have ample time to suffer with the
| knowledge of your impending death, but you get to do so in agony
| the whole time. I wouldn't wish that upon anyone.
| Lammy wrote:
| Azumanga Daioh mentioned :)
|
| I like the pun on "hot girl stuff" https://www.nrc.gov/reading-
| rm/basic-ref/glossary/hot.html
| pawelduda wrote:
| My favourite one is the flail with the demon core attached to it.
| Memes aside, I find it fascinating how absurd was thinking that
| experiment was a good idea
| kps wrote:
| Mine is the cup-and-ball style toy.
| Vaslo wrote:
| Im on the internet a ton. Very familiar with the two horrible
| nuclear research accidents that occurred around this time. Never
| once seen these meme.
|
| Also, I love how the author tries to argue for who should be
| allowed to make the joke, like there is some arbiter who can tell
| you "oh you don't fall into that group so you are not allowed to
| make that joke."
| Razengan wrote:
| The "Demon Core kun" short anime series on YouTube is the most
| hilarious:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ZIjbX1gj88
| treflop wrote:
| Let me tell you about 9/11 memes...
| 00N8 wrote:
| IMO the demon core incident resonates with people as kind of the
| ultimate case of "playing with fire". Humans have always played
| with fire, so we see the attraction, but also the dangers of it.
| It's a primitive behavior that's put us at risk, but also been
| the origin of most of our technology. The juxtaposition of a top
| nuclear weapons scientist taking such a "caveman" approach,
| playing with a new kind of "fire" that's millions of times more
| powerful, is poignant in the way it's absurd, but also relatable,
| sad & darkly funny.
| nghia999 wrote:
| 9999 vip
| vibrolax wrote:
| Twice bitten, three times shy. After the Slotin incident, prompt
| critical assemblies by hand were prohibited. Los Alamos then
| built a series of remotely operated critical assembly machines.
| There is a fair amount of open source literature on them,
| especially the "Godiva" series. Some of these machines have
| experienced criticality excursions that damaged the machine, but
| spared the biological organisms operating them by remote control.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Which reminds me, I can unfortunately not turn this up, but
| iirc at one of the national labs they've been working on
| dismantling a particular set of hot cells and iirc the whole
| thing has been stalled for a couple years trying to figure out
| how to do it. Sort of like a "demon hot cell".
| jkestner wrote:
| I really liked this telling of the story with illustrations:
| https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230719-the-blue-flash-l...
| GauntletWizard wrote:
| The front page of hacker news is not where I expected to see Gura
| fanart today.
| kapp_in_life wrote:
| Remember learning about this from the crossover with fake
| "bowling alley animations" like
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2q6MQwsJCA4
| nothacking_ wrote:
| Just about all humor derives from some degree of suffering.
| Compared what the core could have done, the three deaths from the
| accident are nothing. Even things that are joked about often have
| much higher death tolls like wars and natural disasters.
| cocodill wrote:
| It's pretty funny to see so many anime memes when you consider
| that demoncore was originally planned as the third bomb for
| japan.
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