Recent content by Swamp Thing

"What do you call a deer with no eyes?" "No idea". "What do you call a deer with no eyes and no legs?" "Still no idea".

A pump with no moving parts, able to lift water above its source, quietly serving a hillside fortress centuries ago. It is clever, effective, and, all these years later, mostly unknown today.

AI-Drafted Police Report Said Officer Turned into A Frog...

A different approach to compass design — a liquid-free baseplate compass that uses induction (eddy-current) damping instead of fluid, but can also be made transparent to allow looking at a map through it.

I did get the mixed content warning, not the other two. Since it doesn't affect your rendering, it may not be related to my problem. I will try on another computer later and other browsers as well.

Images lower down in this page ... https://johncarlosbaez.wordpress.com/2025/12/26/the-mathematics-of-tuning-systems/ ... don't load in my browser. I have verified that their URLs are valid and I can view them in a new tab using Dev Tools. How can I force the browser to load all images? Or to...

I am using an old ISP-provided fiber router as a secondary router to extend the WiFi range on my newer fiber router. I have a LAN cable running from the LAN1 port on the secondary router to the LAN1 port on the current ISP's fiber router. Devices on the secondary router are able to access the...

After some online research I enabled DHCP on both routers, setting up non-overlapping pools of addresses. So devices can get connected via either router. However, the secondary router still doesn't know how to forward IPV4 internet traffic to the first one. (IPV6 somehow works magically, maybe...

I have connected a second router to my ISP's router using a LAN cable in order to cover areas that the ISP's WiFi doesn't reach too well. The first router's IP is 192.168.xy.1, and I set the second router to be 192.168.xy.7. Now if I connect to the second router's WiFi I can use the internet...

I wonder if other people who are getting on in years have this same kind of experience: thinking about something you thought you understood, and having a silly question pop into your mind (perhaps a question that could lead to interesting answers). My silly question of the day is this: Given...

The onboard adapter has a smaller range than the dongle. The dongle has an antenna like the ones on routers etc. and has a somewhat greater range.

I bought a USB WiFi adapter that I want to use on a Raspberry Pi 5 running RP OS. It works fine if I plug it in after booting, but doesn't start up automatically on boot. It does get listed by lsusb after booting. How can I set it up so that it consistently starts up and connects to my router...

So if I understand correctly, when we want to calculate the acceleration of a charged bound system under a certain field, we have to plug in the equivalent mass of the binding energy manually. There is no way the exact acceleration can fall out automatically from some more fundamental...

I was not trying to compare the atom mass with the total mass of its component bits and bobs. I was trying to compare two atoms or ions in which at leas one electron in one atom or ion is at a higher energy level than its counterpart in the other atom or ion.

Then is there anything specific to which we can attribute the extra mass, or is it just somehow acquired by the whole system in some "holistic" way? Edit: For example, take an ion that has all electrons in their lowest possible levels and another ion that has one excited electron. Presumably...