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edited 11th Apr '18 6:31:51 PM by dRoy
It's a local one, the same that provides hosting for my website: Afrihost.
I've been talking with their support today about the issue. It looks like it might be awkward: they seem to have things set up under either the assumption that users are going to be happy with an opaque email quarantine doing its own thing, or the assumption that users are going to be happy with logging into their interface to check one the contents of the quarantine. I'm happy with neither. :/
I'm hoping that I can disable the quarantine and get spam emails directed to my spam-box, which I can check in my mail client. Ideally, I'd set up a means of automatically deleting spam-box entries based on age.
That would give me more or less the functionality of the current quarantine system, save that I can actually check on it from my mail client.
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I heard back from the magazine in question, and the missed email was a rejection, alas. Ah well, on to the next magazine...
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This has also made me a little anxious about another story regarding which I've been waiting for a reply.
At time of submission, the information that I had indicated a response time from the magazine in question of less than ninety days. That duration would finish late in this coming week, if I'm not much mistaken.
I intend to wait for the time to be up... but if I don't hear back, at what point should I query, do you think? Do I wait another thirty days on top of the ninety, or query once the ninety have passed, or something else...?
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Oct 18th 2020 at 5:41:02 PM
My Games and Asset PacksI'd say query once the ninety days or up, don't see a point in waiting even longer.
Alright, now for my question: I'm trying to establish that the main character has been going to not-Hogwarts for a few years, but when the chapter starts it's her year's graduation. How do I establish that she's been there a long time without spending more than a chapter on it?
So, let's hang an anchor from the sun... also my TumblrFair enough; I may well do that, then. Thank you for the answer!
Another thought might be to show her familiarity with the place: have her refer to elements of it in a comfortable and well-worn manner; or make use of shortcuts and paths that she knows well, perhaps especially of those seem complicated to outside eyes; or mention things that might affect how certain people—perhaps especially those from previous years—will move around the place or arrive for graduation.
Something like these lines:
"She hurried past the statue of Old Jeff—more properly Vice Principle Jefferson. Indeed, in such a hurry was she that she didn't even stop to look for new graffiti, or to see how her own contribution—an amusing image of Jeff as a bird—was slowly being covered up. Instead, she just gave Jeff's ever-smiling face a jaunty smile in passing, and kept moving."
"She cut through the third-year classes, over the quad beyond, and into the Magus Hall past that. A few well-worn turns amongst its labyrinthine corridors, and she was out, and most of the way to the graduation hall."
"The third bell rang. With that, she knew, the stairs between the second-year halls and the third would be turning. The process could take hours—if those second-years weren't already on their way to graduation, they would be late."
My Games and Asset PacksAh, I'm really only familiar with birds and reptiles. I think most capture/transport procedures for wild-caught animals nowadays involve tranquillisation in some capacity, since the animal might hurt themselves or die from stress otherwise.
Between wolves and elephants, you're talking about a huge range of techniques. For crocodiles (and I assume some mid-sized mammals) one common device is the noose pole, which is... a pole with a noose on its end. You use it to muzzle the animal so it wouldn't bite you while your colleagues physically restrain it.
Other than that, you have many kinds of traps for all occasions. There are box or cage traps, which are, well, boxes or cages just big enough for the target animal to enter, with a bait to lure them in. The entrance would typically have a one-way door or a guillotine-style trapdoor that would trap the animal once inside. There are also a whole bunch of mesh/net-type traps, including rocket/gun-launched ones to catch moving animals (though I'm not familiar with any of them). And there are non-lethal foot snares, which are basically holes in the ground that the animal can't pull their feet out of once they step in.
As for transport, you can simply throw the animal (properly restrained) onto the back of a truck, or still inside the trap. They might also be transported by helicopter via an underslung harness; I think some wildlife reserves in Africa do this with rhinos, you can try to look it up. Or you can put the animal into a custom-built crate for transport, with the requisite lighting and ventilation holes. Zoo animals who are used to it can often follow the transport procedure willingly without needing anaesthetics.
One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.Is it possible to use a Improvised Lightning Rod to shoot a lightning back at the source?note
Edited by Nukeli on Oct 21st 2020 at 10:30:02 PM
~*bleh*~You mean in real science? No, not unless you can somehow form a circuit with your intended target, in which case it's not technically lightning any more.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"I think that you could—*ahem*—potentially and theoretically do it if you had sufficient insulation in the area, and the lightning rod held loose (both to prevent the electricity from grounding itself), and then somehow arranged a massive potential difference between the rod and the target. (And far, far more than between the rod and anywhere else.)
Quite how you'd manage that potential difference, or sufficient insulation, I don't know.
It would be... tricky, at the least.
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Alternatively, if you somehow had the means to store the electricity in the rod (say via an attached capacitor), and furthermore the means to construct a magnetic coilgun, you could perhaps accelerate the charged particles of the lightning bolt in a given direction.
The main problem, however, is that they'd very quickly start to want to go in other directions, as determined by potential gradients. But sheer momentum might reduce this somewhat.
Again, you'd want the environment (and yourself!) to be very well insulated indeed.
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Oct 21st 2020 at 3:16:00 PM
My Games and Asset PacksIf something caused a bolt of lightning to travel towards a point on the ground, and it was intercepted by a lightning rod, in that moment while an electric arc connects the two, if one then opened up a circuit that added more voltage coming into the rod than was arriving from the bolt, wouldn't the current begin flowing the other way? The timing would be tricky, of course, lighting only lasts a fraction of a second.
I'm done trying to sound smart. "Clear" is the new smart.Hmm... The original bolt might provide an ion-channel for the second bolt to pass down, reducing the required voltage for the second bolt. And if the original bolt was produced by a voltage difference—not necessarily the case, given the setup described; powers of some sort might be involved—then theoretically flooding the rod with enough charge that a counter-voltage is produced might work.
Depending on the voltages involved, doing so might involve an awful lot of energy, however. And ideally an awful lot of insulation, too.
My Games and Asset PacksIt's only really guaranteed if I suggest now that it working is a million-to-one chance... ;P
My Games and Asset PacksDepends on the plant/animal ratio of their body, one imagines. From "sugar water and sunlight" to "same as a non-plant person".
Suddenly I'm... still rotating Fallen London in my mind even though I've stopped actively playing it.I personally think that we've moved beyond the realm of realism being worth it with the whole lightning rod. I mean, sure, you can do the scientific research and make it absolutely 1 to 1 with real life, and that's fine, but having someone spout a few lines of Technobabble (or, as someone mentioned above, portraying it as a Million to One Chance) serves much the same purpose and is much easier.
So, let's hang an anchor from the sun... also my Tumblr![]()
As to the insulation, I'm not sure of specifics, but I imagine that it would depend on the power of the bolt.
As to the behaviour of the arc, I imagine that it would follow the standard behaviour of electricity: follow the "downslope" in the potential gradients—much like water, but with electrical potential instead of gravitational "downwards"—and likely head to "ground".
As mentioned above, giving the charged particles significant momentum (as via a coilgun) might help to keep them going in a desired direction, as might a pre-existing ion channel.
Or at least, so I think—I'm no expert in this!
My Games and Asset Packs

Fair enough, and thank you both—I'll likely query indeed, then. ^_^
The funny thing is, I never seem to get spam on the email account in question, despite having spam- and junk- folders. I've wondered a few times whether spam isn't being outright discarded somewhere along the way... :/
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Yup, it turns out that my email provider had some sort of quarantine in place that I hadn't been aware of. There was indeed a response that was caught by it—but that response has since been deleted due to the quarantine expiring, it seems. :/
I've deactivated the quarantine—I'll just delete spam myself—and sent a message asking for the original response to be resent. >_<;
Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Oct 17th 2020 at 11:42:45 AM
My Games and Asset Packs