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Jn819

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    Steris's double
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    OH, USA
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    Sanderson, Heinlein, Star Wars, video games, languages, guns, flight...

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  1. Fair enough, but it's still extremely unlikely that atium was traded to Mraize.
  2. My personal attacks and condescending attitude? Okay, I really have to get my side of the story out there. Here's how I see it. I entered this discussion when people were already disagreeing and talking past each other. I tried to find points of agreement as a baseline so we could see where the disconnect in opinions was. I tried to explain the position I agreed with in another way that might be easier for some people to see. Alder seemed to get pretty close in his reply, stating that "you're just leading the object behind your hand in circles around you, while you spin." (Which is sort of what spinning a lasso is, but he seemed not to get the connection and didn't seem to realize how much smaller the radius of your hand can be to the radius of the object.) CometaryOrbit at least agreed to the first thing I listed as a point we probably all agree on, but had similar trouble seeing the connection between lassos and orbits. I did get a bit aggravated at Alder for nitpicking a hypothetical, but at the time I'm pretty sure I didn't know English was his second language. @alder24 Sorry for snapping at you. Then you came in and the very first thing you said to me is "That would not work at all." And you ended that first comment by taking my assessment of Alder's physics knowledge and basically saying that I not only didn't know what I was talking about but also hadn't thought things through. I responded by pointing out your errors and trying to explain with the analogy. I even went to a lot of effort to create a diagram that might help. I probably should have taken the high road and not responded at all to your insult, but I was frustrated. You then repeated your insistence that I was wrong and not thinking things through while using a tone that implied that I was an utter fool for missing something so obvious. My next reply contains no insult or condescension whatsoever and includes a textual reference from Sanderson. Your reply directly contradicted the textual reference, repeated your insistence that A-Iron couldn't transfer "tangential force," made the same mistake as Alder in implying that you'd have to spin exactly as fast and it would follow your hand exactly (as in, with the same radius), called my analogy "flawed at the core," and repeated your insistence that it would only work if the object happened to start with the perfect orbital velocity, again, with a tone and emphasis implying that I was being obtuse. My reply started by emphasizing the specific point of the textual reference that your explanation most contradicted. I then finally put into my own words what you seemed to be implying, but I thought you couldn't have meant that and therefore was perhaps too expressive of how ridiculous I thought it was. I then granted a partial agreement to the "spinning and it follows your hand" thing while explaining that it didn't have to be the same radius. I was perhaps too dismissive in my reply to your insult. I finished by reiterating how it could work. In the next comment, your reply on the textual reference was at least respectful enough, though wrong. That's probably the first point in the entire discussion where your tone wasn't disrespectful. And you immediately ruined it by using laughing emojis in response to my explanation. You then insisted that yes, a (taut) rope can "serve as sort of lever" and said I "don't seem to understand physics very well." A timing that I think perfectly highlights the irony of you complaining about my "personal attacks and condescending attitude." You approached respectful again in requesting that we consider gravity again. Then you emphatically repeated your error and added a new one as if I was silly for not seeing it your way. Your reply to my dismissal of your insult was probably only as disrespectful as it deserved. You then went into the math a bit, and you were at least only mildly condescending (I've addressed the errors in math already, no point in rehashing that). CometaryOribt popped back in (reasonably respectfully) to repeat agreement with you. My tone was pretty conciliatory on the textual reference in my opinion. I was a bit exasperated with the "try it at home" thing and it shows. I think I demonstrated remarkable restraint in my reply to your insult, but I guess I kinda ruined that by comparing you to Bill O'Reilly. I think my tone in the next section was perfectly fair and reasonable. Same with a couple following that. I might have been a little too sarcastic with everything I used exclamation points for, but considering how frustrated I was getting, I'm glad I kept myself from going further. Similarly, I think [facepalm] is an entirely appropriate response to claiming that math which assumes we got it to work proves it doesn't work. I spent a while expanding on my diagram for you. The rest of that comment was fairly conciliatory. Your last response here is still pretty dismissive, but it raises a couple of relatively fair points. Let's get to those then, shall we? Where's the fulcrum? Where is force being exerted in the opposite direction from the force at the end of the rope? I'm sorry, but if you get to call my analogy flawed, this is a really flawed analogy. The rope is not pushing anything, only pulling. Yes, obviously. I wouldn't want to mistreat a book like that though lol. Think of swinging something small (let's say wired earbuds) around your head. You start by holding it up off the ground. The wire is under tension, it's just that all of the tension is counteracting gravity; the wire is straight vertical. You then start moving your hand around in a circle, and the tension increases as it no longer has to just counteract gravity. The tension grows as a larger proportion of it must be converted to centripetal and tangential force. At full speed, the component counteracting gravity will be much smaller than the centripetal force. That said, yes: I think how difficult it would be to modulate the strength depends a lot on how the perception of iron lines works. If you can see just with iron lines like Inquisitors do, it stands to reason that you can tell how far away something is and in what direction it is just by the line. You should be able to do a trial-and-error kind of thing and pull harder when the object starts moving further away and either move faster or pull softer when it's coming closer. It would still take a lot of practice, though. I don't think that would be a significant factor in the difficulty here. Since iron lines are described as letting you see all around yourself, you wouldn't actually have to change which direction you are facing, you could just do a hula hoop movement. And semantically speaking, that is revolution (like what makes a year), not rotation (like what makes a day). If you would, please use the appropriate terminology for the sake of clarity. Perhaps you don't have the same experiences I do. I grew up with two brothers who liked roughhousing. Swinging something around so fast that it whistles certainly makes people stop and think before diving in for the attack. Pull, but I get the point so no big deal Difficult but not impossible yeah, since Zane was about Vin's age (around 20). (It's possible his spike strengthened his A-Steel though, as hers strengthened her A-Bronze.) Again, the hula hoop movement is a viable alternative. I do agree that we can't be sure (yet) that you can Pull from a different body part though.
  3. Rock did take a form of revenge, as Moash sought to do. It's why he was sent to the bridge crews. (If you don't remember what I'm referring to, it's in the chapter of WoK titled "Many Uses.") In fact, he took basically all the revenge he could given his conviction that fighting is "beneath" him. Kaladin also caused a lot of problems seeking vengeance until he saw a form of justice served. Teft also caused some problems with his self-hatred (though as it was directed internally, the harm he did was mostly to himself). The primary difference is that they've been redeemed already. I think Brandon was trying to make it as clear as possible (especially with how Dalinar discussed it) that they definitely were innocent and they definitely died because of their imprisonment. That said, no, Moash probably wouldn't care. Sorry, this sounds like you're describing Moash as mentally stable. I guess maybe in SA 1 + 2 he was, but even in OB he was already deteriorating. The mistakes Moash made while mostly stable were at least as justified from his perspective as anything Nale did. Especially since he had people talking him into it. As for torture, it takes many forms. How many stories feature someone resisting serious torture to themselves, only to submit as soon as their loved ones are tortured? The suffering of your loved ones (like Moash's grandparents) can be worse than experiencing the same yourself. Yeah, I think the bridge crew (once Kaladin took over) was enough of a mixed bag not to be relevant to this discussion. Definitely agree with most of that. Brandon is very good at giving characters a reason for their actions. Even Sadeas is basically a conquest addict driven mad by withdrawal (among other things). That said, it would take a lot to write a realistic redemption of Moash.
  4. Okay, to be fair, Sanderson does like having unreliable narrators in awe of the hero. But this is Sazed. He basically knows about as much about Allomancy as anyone who doesn't have it possibly could (though I'm not sure he knew of Duralumin at the time). And it's not the confusing rapid-fire ball of rage Kelsier did against the Inquisitor, it's an Allomancer moving one object fairly slowly. Sazed knows enough to say "she Pulled the gate off and dodged out of its way" if that is what happened. But that's not what happened and it's not what he said. She continued Pulling it while moving, making it seem "as if it was tethered to her by a chain." Does it matter whether she was moving herself by Pulling an anchor or Pushing? She was definitely Pulling the gate, and that's the relevant factor here. Okay, you "try it at home." Pull a cord taut, then try to use it as a lever. You have made an assertion that is very easy to disprove if you'll just try it. I got a 5 (out of 5) on the AP Physics test and passed the course with an A. Granted, high school was a little while ago, but I haven't forgotten that much. Ah, I see you think the Moon has nothing to do with the tides, plate tectonics, the rotation of the planet core that produces Earth's magnetic field... If it's not being accelerated, why isn't it going in a straight line? Now granted, there comes a point where its rotational velocity reaches a maximum. It's when the "tangential force" is equal to the force of friction acting to slow down the spinning object and they basically cancel out. (Well, the horizontal force tangent to the orbit of the object. There is a vertical "tangential force" too to counteract gravity; the orbit of the object being swung will by necessity be slightly lower than the point it is being swung from.) There is no physical tether, no. That's why the Lurcher has to be skilled at modulating the strength of their Pull to mimic a tether pulled fully taut. "you are never dragging the object close" not closer to the current position of your hand, no. But you yourself said that when you start swinging something on a rope, the object is being "dragged" (right before the "try it at home" thing). And it is "dragged" closer to the starting position of the hand. The hand has just moved since then. Seems a bit larger than it needs to be, cowboys don't spin around with their arms fully extended, they twist their hand around a radius approximately the length of their forearm or less, so that inner circle would be closer to 30cm. But let's play along with your numbers for now. The rope is pulled tangential to the inner radius (which is why it is never pulled inside). In other words, if you made a line from the center of the orbits to the start of the rope and another from the center to the end of the rope, those plus the rope itself would form a right triangle. How convenient, trigonometry is easy! If we do the math, we find that the angle of the rope to the "tangential force" is the same as the angle of the two radii we made, so yes, the tangential force must always be the same ratio of the total force as the ratio of the radii! You got something right! You get a sticker! Where did you get its mass? You must have picked one to be able to convert force to acceleration to then take the double integral of the acceleration, set that equal to 6m, and solve for time. (Or use a pre-solved kinematic equation as a shortcut.) After all, a Newton is a kilogram meter per square second (or second squared, though I've always thought that wording leaves ambiguity as to how much of the phrase is being squared). Rounding it, it looks like you assumed a one-kilogram object (or, more likely IMO, just forgot the kg part of N). That is kind of important to know. (In fact, for those who are paying attention, you know that by choosing 1kg and a 10N force, we're already setting ourselves up to fail. We'll get to that.) Ah yes, if you make calculations assuming that you don't move the proper way to maintain an orbit, the answers show the force you're exerting on the object will accelerate it toward you and it will hit you! Brilliant! This is why working out your units is important, students. Let's look at that a little closer. Velocity squared, then divided by the radius, equals the force. Just looking at the units, that's ((m/s)^2)/m=N, or m/s^2=kg*m/s^2. See why my opinion is that you simply forgot the M in F=MA? But yes, the square root of 60 square meters per square second rounds to 7.746 meters per second. (The hypothetical doesn't assume a limit to the accuracy of our measurements, so we get to use infinite significant figures, but whatever.) Of course, this formula is only valid for things that are moving circularly; suddenly we're assuming we got it to work. [facepalm] Yeah, let's fix that. Why say imprecisely? We're making up the numbers here, let's say you managed to find someone whose arms were precisely 1.500 meters above ground level. Using the same (unnecessarily large, as I said earlier) radii of 1m and 6m, that would mean the object is hanging down about 1m (the angles are the same), so at .500m AGL. And here it is! The moment we've all been waiting for! The point where suddenly the fact that we chose 10N and a 1kg object makes all the difference! Scadrial does have "cosmere standard" (Earth) gravity according to Arcanum Unbounded, so if you remember memorizing that acceleration due to gravity is 9.80 m/s^2, you immediately saw the problem of only pulling with a force that could accelerate the object by 10 m/s^2. The obvious answer here is not to increase the force, but to reduce the mass to something closer to what Coinshots usually use, say something that weighs about 1N (has a mass of about .1kg), a little under a quarter pound (how much the meat patties at McDonalds weigh). We could be ridiculous and go for the actual mass of a coin, say 1.67g (.00167kg) for a gold dollar, but that would be overkill. While we're changing numbers, let's use some more reasonable radii akin to lassoing. How about an inner radius of 30cm (.30m) and an outer radius of 1.5m? A one to five ratio will make things easier. We already know what the component counteracting gravity must be: 1N. Looks like centripetal force is 5N this time. 5N/.1kg=50m/s^2=v^2/r and r is 1.5m, so v^2=75m^2/s^2, so v=5*sq.rt.3=8.66m/s. The circumference is 2pi*r = 3pi meters = about 9.42m, so the Lurcher would have to be moving their hand around the inner circle a little less than once per second to stay in sync with the orbiting object. (That's very doable.) Kinetic energy=.5mv^2=.5*.1kg*75m^2/s^2=3.75kgm^2/s^2=3.75J, which isn't a lot. (That's why lassos don't really hurt when they hit.) Also, like with a lasso, the way to get it up to speed is to start slower (and gentler) and go around faster and faster until you reach max. Zane could levitate himself only about a meter over a coin, so it's possible that with practice you could Pull that softly. (Now I want to see a Lurcher with a steel cable lasso lol.) But the Lurcher would probably be pulling harder on a smaller object. There would be a larger outer radius, a smaller inner radius, or both, and the component counteracting gravity would be a drastically smaller proportion of the total force. They could probably move around their inner circle two times per second with a radius of 10cm, since that's about what a hula hoop takes (as far as movement of your torso where A-Iron lines come from). I'm tired of doing math, but you could get a lot more kinetic energy into it. You might even be able to get it supersonic, like a whip crack. And again, like with a lasso or swinging something with a rope, all you have to do is start slower and gentler to get it going. As for usefulness, it's probably not much more useful than Pulling and dodging...as a means of dealing damage. But if you can keep it orbiting around you as a deterrent, like somebody performing a sweeping greatsword kata, it could certainly be worth learning. (Side note, can we agree that Adolin's moment fighting with a greatsword in Shadesmar was pretty awesome?)
  5. What part of "as if it was tethered to her by a chain" sounds like she stopped Pulling it as soon as it was moving? Tangential force is not real. It's the component of the actual force being exerted on the object being swung. Any vector can be broken down into component vectors at right angles to each other; that's what the "centripetal force" and "tangential force" are, the vectors that add up to the total SINGLE real force being exerted. Do you think a rope transfers tangential force by being so stiff you can use it like a lever?! No! You just change where it's pulling from--exactly the way the hypothetical Lurcher either moves their hand (if they can Pull from just their hand, or themselves if not) around while Pulling on the object in question. If your masses and the radii of your turns are similar, yes. If the ratio of the radii is more in line with the picture I posted a couple comments ago (presumably because you're Pulling with much more weight than it has), yes you still need to have the same period of revolution, but the radius is smaller, so your actual Cartesian velocity (not rotational speed) is much lower. I'm tired of your repeated failure to understand how well the analogy works, so if you respond with anything like this again, I will ignore it. And then you move to the side while still pulling it and while its acceleration is always directly towards you, its velocity remains mostly tangential to the point you are moving around. This is how you bring something up to speed when you start swinging it around on some kind of tether. It begins moving towards your hand, you continue moving your hand ahead of it in a circle, it continues chasing your hand, your hand keeps going around the circle...
  6. It's not a matter of whether there's a rope or a Spiritual Connection. It's a matter of how the source of the pull (or Pull) is moving relative to the object being pulled. You are acting as if Lurchers are statues incapable of moving while they burn their metal. Look at the diagram above. Imagine instead of having a hand holding the end of the rope on that inner circle, you have a Lurcher who's pulling an object on the outer circle. If the Lurcher moves the way the hand moves (as in, along that smaller circle), and Pulls with the strength the rope pulls, the force of their Pull can similarly be broken down into component vectors of centripetal force towards the center around which the Lurcher moves and tangential force perpendicular to that center. In fact, something like this (bigger in scale, though shorter in duration) happens in the books. Well of Ascension, Vin's fight against the koloss as she returns to Luthadel: Is that enough to convince you?
  7. Maybe, but she rarely seems to draw any spren, much less the multitudes Taravangian draws on his stupidest day. If she's anything like me (and she seems to be), there are certain things that invoke her passions, but usually she's more apathetic. She doesn't just hide her negative emotions, she fights them. I am curious if Stormlight 5 will reveal more as to how Odium created Thunderclast souls (cognitive shadows, whatever term fits best). I imagine it's a lot like Unmaking a spren.
  8. You can't push something via a rope, they're only good for pulling. You create that tangential force by pulling the rope in a similar "orbit" (with a smaller radius) ahead of the end. You could do the same by moving your hand in a circular motion while pulling from it. Or, if you can't Pull from distinct body parts, you could do something like the motion of using a hula hoop to achieve the same effect. You should consider how your chosen example works before you say it can't be imitated by swapping one piece out. A rope can only pull. A-Iron can only pull. Edit: picture for clarity
  9. What I said (in parentheses) could be rephrased as "assuming something had the right relative velocity somehow" and therefore this statement of yours qualifies as completely missing the point. My point is that we all agree Ironpulls are consistent enough that the force could hypothetically create an orbit. Right? No, it wouldn't. Have you never seen video recorded on the International Space Station? If you're in the same orbit as another object (as everything inside the ISS is), Earth's gravity is no obstacle to making things move relative to you however you want. Yes, there would be some effect, but it would be negligible, insignificant, not an obstacle except in the very long term. You do have an imagination, right? Hypotheticals are about assuming certain things don't factor in so that you can better understand the influence of another factor. Maybe he has a jetpack. Maybe there's another, larger piece of metal nearby that he can Pull on. The point of such hypotheticals is that you are focused only on one factor and imagine there is a means to account for any others. That is not how it works. Grab a string, maybe tie something on the end of it, and try it yourself. (Heck, hold some wired earbuds in your hand and swing them around.) If anything, the force on the rope is making his hand change directions, not the other way around. You can hold your wrist and hand rigid and still make it work, it's just a waste of effort. The elbow and shoulder movements are what actually keep everything spinning. Does a cowboy have to spin himself while swinging a lasso? No. Can Ironpulls be modulated such that the strength of the Pull is the same as the force of the rope on the object at its end? Yes. So if you could Pull from your hand, you could move your hand exactly the same way a cowboy does and make something spin around you exactly the way a lasso does. You do not seem to understand physics. Swing things around more until you do. Have you heard of a slingshot orbit? Nevermind, just consider a standard sling weapon. You use string and a pouch to accelerate a rock better than throwing it with your hand. A Lurcher might be able to achieve a similar increase in effectiveness by using a tactic that spins their metal around them. It would definitely take lots of practice yes, but so does throwing a lasso or using a sling. I think it could make sense to have a Lurcher who has trained to do this, though it would probably be easier from a story perspective to just use a Coinshot to achieve similar results. I think we agree, but I'm not confident that Marsh was actually using his hands to direct his powers. I think that might have just been showmanship and he Pulled the far end while Pushing the close end. Brandon is very fond of having unreliable narrators leave him enough wiggle room to decide on the exact mechanics later. More importantly, it might be about body parts having somewhat of a distinct Cognitive Identity. Kind of like how when Wax focuses on Entrone's safe, he can distinguish the different parts. The Lurcher in question might have to pull from his right shoulder blade, then his left shoulder blade, then his third rib, etc. as opposed to just picking a point somewhere within his body with nothing particular to distinguish that point. I think that even if that was possible, it might be easier to just move your body around the way a cowboy's hand moves while swinging a lasso.
  10. Let's try to find some points of agreement. If the Lurcher was already in orbit (or further) around the planet (in a space suit), we all agree that he could get something (that had the right velocity for the strength of his Ironpull) to orbit him, right? Also, we have seen A-Iron used to start something moving and then release and step out of the way. I think that we all agree just doing that over and over does not count as an orbit, right? But it could be a method of imparting the necessary initial velocity (though you'd probably need to use a weaker constant Pull to maintain the orbit). Also, we have all seen somebody swinging (something on) a rope around themselves, right? A lasso, a grappling hook, a yo-yo, or something. Look up a video of someone playing with a lasso if you don't know what I mean. I think something like this is what you were picturing when you said this, right? The object being pulled (whether a lasso or the hypothetical metal target of the Lurcher's power) would hang below the point it's being pulled from due to gravity, and that point would have to revolve (not rotate) itself to maintain the velocity despite air resistance (the same way a cowboy's hand moves when swinging a lasso around). Since the revolution of the pulling point can be much smaller in radius than the revolution of the target (or to put it another way, the subject does not move as far as the object), a Lurcher could definitely take sort of a wide spearman's stance and shift his weight (or do lunges) to keep something spinning around him. I will say, even if you could pull from somewhere other than your center of self/Identity as Marsh seems to (though it's possible using his hands was more about showmanship than actually directing his powers), it would probably be easier to physically move whatever body part you're Pulling from than to constantly change which part of your body you Pull from. It's a matter of semantics whether this would actually count as an "orbit" though. Side note: Actually, an elliptical orbit involves exactly the opposite. It's just that the object is going slowest when it's furthest away and goes increasingly fast until its closest pass (aphelion, if I'm remembering the term correctly Edit: nope, perihelion). The closer it is to the object it's orbiting, the stronger the force of gravity will be.
  11. I lean towards the latter. Vin describes the pulses of the Well as "demanding" at one point. I think it has the Intent to be used, and was designed to broadcast pulses kind of like the opposite of A-Copper. As for the sensing of Ruin and the mist spirit, those seem to basically be projections. It's a bit like Lightweaving from the Stormlight Archive, and (OB spoilers): Maybe Shardic projections are louder than Lightweaving, or maybe this is another example of Vin's exceptional strength with A-Bronze.
  12. Well, Amira will find out in the next chapter that it's not exactly what you'd expect. And you get hints and leads and such pretty soon. It does take a lot of work for the Radiants to figure out what's going on, though.
  13. Unfortunately, she also doesn't express her passion much. She wouldn't be likely to attract the power of Odium if it lost its Vessel. And she might even struggle with it like (significant Mistborn: Secret History spoilers):
  14. You definitely have a point in the first section. However, we see from RoW that Taravangian was able to think clearly as soon as he Ascended, despite Ascending on possibly his stupidest day ever. I think that makes it clear that at least real world aging problems (which were partly at play) don't factor into it. I don't think that's what you were implying with your last sentence, but I wanted to make sure we were on the same page.
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