u/VulcanTrekkie45

I thought I'd share this here. Over the last few months, I've created a high-speed rail gravity model inspired by the work of CityNerd.

All you need to do is enter the cities you want to include, along with their geographic coordinates and populations (based on a 27 km catchment radius, which you can find here). The model will generate a list of potential city pairs in the Distances tab, where you'll enter the driving distances (in kilometers). From there, it produces and classifies a list of city pairs where high-speed rail is plausible, calibrated against gold-standard systems from around the world.

I figured people here might enjoy playing around with it. I'm planning to make an animated map video once I finish North America, but in the meantime, have fun with it!

One small request: if you'd like to use the spreadsheet yourself, please make your own copy first, as I'm actively using the original for ongoing projects.

My biggest regret of the Scottish invasion of Boston in the last couple weeks is that I’ve spent half of it at home with strep throat. I was gonna go to a Tartan Army thing tonight in Charlestown but I’m not well enough to go. So I’m wondering how much longer you lot are gonna be in town and if there are gonna be ongoing Tartan Army stuff in the coming weeks and after you’ve all gone back to Scotland (as sad that day will be for all of us)

So it seems to be that the entire population of Scotland has descended on my fair city of Boston and I am loving every second of it. You all seem to be having a great time too. At least I hope you are. I’m guessing you’ll be here for at least a week or two? I hope longer. We really seem to be getting along really well. I don’t suppose you’d consider permanently annexing New England would you?

So I was thinking about how the freezing point of water depends not only on temperature but also on pressure, and how if you get the pressure high enough, you can have ice (albeit exotic ice) at room temperature. So I got to thinking, and number crunching, and I was wondering if you think the following move is plausible under the rules of waterbending in Avatar. For lack of a better term, I’m calling it the ice bomb.

1. Form a sphere of water 1 meter in radius
2. Compress the sphere with all of your might until it reaches a pressure of about 1 gigapascal. The water will turn to exotic ice under that pressure
3. Move the resultant ice ball over your target, maintaining the pressure
4. Let the pressure drop immediately
5. No more Fire Nation battalion

By the calculations I did, letting the pressure on the ice drop like that would cause it to explode out in all directions with a force of about 400 tons of TNT. Or put another way, 4% of the power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima. I’m guessing part of the reason it wasn’t ever shown on the show is that would be an instant mass casualty event and far too gruesome to show on Nickelodeon, but it is technically possible. I’d imagine if done by a single person that person would have to be either a high level master or the avatar, and might only be something done by a group of masters as a last ditch tactic. But I’m curious as to what you all think

Something I was just thinking while watching the scene where Tom Branson met Larry Grey for the first time. And one thing the latter said to the former was "Well you see, to us, in marrying you, it seemed like Sybil had left Downton Abbey forever if you know what I mean."

To me, that's just asking for a response like "No, I don't know what you mean, could you please explain?" Because Larry strikes me as someone who would be left utterly floundering if people reacted to such veiled insults by playing dumb, asking him to explain himself, and in doing so forcing him to dig himself in deeper. And oh how satisfying that would be.

And that got me thinking: what other insults in the show do you think are set up for such a response? Which of these would have the most satisfying aftermath? Who would be left floundering the most as they learn they've been backed into a corner like that?