Tales of a Wanderer

fusion happens when atoms hit each other really hard, but they dont usually want to hit each other. they need to be forced into it. you can do this by getting them really hot, which makes the atoms move faster, which much like cars doing 90mph in a 65 zone increases the chance of collision

really hot atoms in a really hot gas become what's called a plasma, where all their electrons fall off so the leftover positive nuclei are floating around with negative electrons

therefore, fusion research consists of trying to get plasma hot enough to fuse.

two problems

it has to be really really really hot to fuse

really really really hot plasma is bad for nuclear reactors, humans, and everything that isnt the sun

solutions arise

plasma is electrically charged, so we can control it with magnets. magnetism and electricity happen at right angles to each other, like if an electron is moving vertically a magnet can pull it horizontally, and vice versa

if we get the plasma to whirl around in a circle, we can hold that moving plasma flow in place with magnets

behold! the tokamak

it would be nice if it worked out that neatly, but plasma is really messy and ends up drifting all over that place. it turns out that doing the spiraling helical thing in the diagram is the best way to contain it, but it's not 100%

and even trying to confine it like that needs a huge amount of energy to get a huge amount of electricity flowing through the plasma to get it magnetically active enough for the magnets to hold it in

when people speak of "nuclear fusion in ten years!" they mean that we will achieve "breakeven", when the amount of energy used to just run the thing is "worth it" because we get more energy out

but plasma remains messy, and every time it messes up it costs energy and damages the reactor. an early tokamak had a hole melted in it by what we later understood to be very similar to a literal lightning bolt

the tokamak is a somewhat brute-force approach. what if there was a more elegant method

though we don't yet understand all the messes of plasmadynamics, we understand many of the biggest ones, so we can come up with ways to cancel them out.

one of the easiest ways is rotation: if the plasma drifts left, let it get halfway and then flip it upside down so it drifts back right. or constantly keep rotating it. you can see the same idea on the helical magnetic field in the tokamak diagram from before

so in a stellarator, we've switched our focus: instead of relying on flowing plasma current to respond to the magnets holding it in place, we've reshaped the magnets to catch plasma drifting outwards and redirect it back inwards.

pros: no messy, power-hungry plasma current to force. a stellarator can operate in "steady-state": instead of constantly touching it up like pottery on the wheel, it just goes until you turn it off (or it runs out of fuel or explodes of whatever). since we're already fucking with the magnet shapes, we can also put in extra little twists to trap plasma messes, smooth out the more obvious tangles, etc.

cons: all that magnet fuckery is complicated. it's harder to calculate and design, harder to physically build, and harder to maintain. depending on the design you can make it so the magnets are movable, so for a research stellarator you can try new magnet designs a little easier, for example, but that movable magnet will never be as good as a properly fixed magnet. also the magnets have to be quite close together so there's not really space to build, like, a door into the interior for maintenance or access

and the real con: tokamaks are better. they quickly got much closer to breakeven as we just continued to refine our plasmadynamics alongside brute-forcing the plasma current

BUT

stellarators are getting better

i almost wrote that theyre getting beautiful. they are. just look at her

Just like the anti-Vietnam War protest songs that we associate with the 1960s, or the early nihilism that spawned punk music in the 1970s. But he didn’t *sound* like a punk anarchist; he sounded like a country rock singer. When he released Born in the U.S.A. people completely misinterpreted (or possibly ignored) the lyrics in favor of the tone of the music.

Politicians used his music to promote their ‘Murica Yes! brand, and he had to literally explain that that was not what he was about. He’s over here asking when we’re going to have jobs and heathcare, not stanning the politicians who weren’t helping the people.

It was also kind of a big deal that he had an integrated band, because even as late as the 1980s music was still kind of segregated and MTV was straight up racist. They refused to play and promote black artists and then claimed that were no black artists in the first place. Michael Jackson’s record company had to threaten a boycott of their white artists to get MTV to play his Thriller video.

Plus, the first black/white interracial kiss on TV was in 1968 (OG Star Trek). Also it took us until the 70s to get sympathetic gay characters on screen, and the 90s to get gay characters to kiss onscreen. And all of those firsts were met with outrage.

So keep that in mind when you see Bruce Springsteen not just playing with an interracial band, but engaging in an interracial, gay kiss on stage repeatedly.

https://www.gq.com/story/this-fucked-me-up-bruce-springsteen-singing-about-clarence-clemons

It was a story where… we remade the city. We remade the city, shaping it into the kind of place where our friendship and our love for one another wouldn’t have been such an exceptional thing. - Bruce Springsteen

It wasn’t about showmanship or rejecting bigots or anything it was just. Damn right that was one of the loves of his life and damn right he was going to kiss him onstage

It gets me a little that Bruce has had a divorce, that he’s been married twice, but he loved Clarence for the rest of Clarence’s life and will presumably love him the rest of his own

Clemons said in one interview. “Bruce and I looked at each other and didn’t say anything, we just knew. We knew we were the missing links in each other’s lives. He was what I’d been searching for.” In another version of the story, Clemons says “He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we fell in love.”

I’m having some emotions about it!

“He was elemental in my life,“ Springsteen adds, “and losing him was like losing the rain.”

Not just! I love you pure and deep and true but! I am going to love you like that in front of the whole damn world!

We have fewer narratives about taking risks and making statements for platonic love rather than romantic and supposedly it would be easier to downplay this onstage than romance and! They refused! They fucking refused! In front of hundreds of thousands of people, over the course of years! In the spotlight, in word and deed, I love you!

I mean, will you LOOK at this:

This was the pic chosen for the album cover from an extensive photoshoot, too. A few others:

AUGHHH

2pm: "where's the dog he can't possibly have jumped over the fence"

3pm: "hi i live in [another village]! I got your dog here, if you can come fetch him?"

I was recently browsing through some archival Gerard Donelan and I found this series of comics someone archived from the Advocate, from July of '79. I'm FASCINATED by the animal comparisons, since the only modern day analog that's stayed entirely intact seems to be bears:

But, crucially, the books manage all of this while having stakes. There are the relationship, personal level ones-- will these orphaned kids become friends? Will they learn to overcome the traumas of their respective backstories? Will they learn to master their magic?

And then there are Larger, life-threatening stakes... but crucially, not 'save-the-world' level. Pierce made the excellent choice for the first quartet (when the kids are like ~10-12 ish) to generally have the threats be natural. An earthquake, a forest fire, a pandemic; there's a pirate raid, but even then the framing feels more like a force of nature. As the kids age, the threats do become more human, but remain generally localized. A crime syndicate, a serial killer. The focus of the story remains what can we do to improve things, here, now, where we are?