xkcd #3276: Recursive Trucker's Hitch
Title text:
As if the americium smoke detector incident wasn't enough, now nuclear regulators have ANOTHER reason to worry about the Boy Scouts.
Transcript:
Transcript will show once it’s been added to explainxkcd.com
Source: https://xkcd.com/3276/
Ah, the nonsense we can get up to when we ignore friction and the tensile strength of materials...
We're doing physics aren't we?
Just think of the nonsense we could get up to if we made it spherical and put it in a vacuum, too!
So... Where do you guys source your unbreakable rope?
Same place I get my infinite 2d planes
Is that where the spherical cows are too?
Used to be, until someone ignored air resistance and they all died.
That you find in isle 4: 3 dimensions or more and farm equipment
Those twist ties that come with the new perfume gun you're trying to open.
I got mine from the Lady of Caras Galadhon. She has a nice 7-for-one special she offers, where you and several other people take on a quest to throw something bad into a random volcano. I agreed to throw Lindsey Graham's phone into the Grand Prismatic Spring at Yellowstone, and she gave me some "real elvish rope". Some other group agreed to drop Mitch McConnell's phylactery into Kilauea. We haven't heard from them, yet. You've got to be really smart about what you ask of the Lady of Lorien, too. A few years back, some dolt asked her for a single hair from her head. That group did NOT successfully throw Putin's Ring of Polonium into Eyjafjallajökull.
my local hardware store sells Immovable Objects (well, they try) so i'd assume they have Unbreakable Rope as well
(well, they try)
😂
It's the perfect scam. If you can haul it, half price (cash up front, you'll get 50% back when it's outta here).
Seriously though, if you learn one knot make it the trucker’s hitch. You’ll never buy ratchet straps again
The Explainxkcd for this lead me to the Wikipedia article for Block and tackle, which lead me to Block (sailing), whose first paragraph is giving me Plumbus vibes:
In sailing, a block is a single or multiple pulley. One or a number of sheaves are enclosed in an assembly between cheeks or chocks. In use, a block is fixed to the end of a line, to a spar, or to a surface. A line (rope) is reeved through the sheaves, and maybe through one or more matching blocks at some far end, to make up a tackle.
sailing is such a fun subject because it's so fucking old and historically important that everything related to it is a thick soup of utterly inscrutable jargon
Nautical terminology is PRECISE, and for very good reasons. You don't want to be in the middle of a gale and ask for the round thingamagig on the right side, to pull or something. That is why you use starboard instead of right. Starboard is the right when looking at the bow. "To the right" on a boat can mean your right, my right, etc.
Explainxkcd: "Obviously, this would not work."
Me:
Disappointed he didn't do the math for number of loops needed (assuming no friction and infinite strength rope) .
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