Watching this, is just like any pre-school TV show back then, when suddenly it becomes very serious.

Radioactive pancakes. :)

After a whole week off I'm diving in with a 24/7 shift starting tomorrow. :) It's fine but man, what a nice holiday week. Not even a single phone call from newer people seeking technical guidance. 😄

One of the best Saturday Night Live sketches is “Toonces: the Cat who could drive a car” where a cat puppet drives a car off a cliff and that’s the beginning and end of the joke but they went with it for five years and it worked because really that’s all you need to do

This cool, sunny day is a good time to play.

You’ll never see a colder group of people than Floridians waiting to start a Turkey trot when the temp is 60f…

Happy Cold War Thanksgiving from 1962...

Hmm, that's not good. :|

post a famous bathroom scene

After unpacking some things from a temporary storage I have my last, newest scintillator and what I hope will be a more suitable photomultiplier on hand. I have a lot of work and consolidating to do before I can start plopping anything on a bench again but that project could yield nice data. :)

This sort of toy, anything plush with a noise maker, appears fun but only lasts for some minutes of supervised play before it has to be put up, out of sight. I know from past dogs how determined they are to gut stuffed toys and that it will happen soon as you turn away. :/

Far as cheap, second hand and not too old(no vacuum tubes) rad detection equipment goes this has been some of my favorite kit for the price. I don't know if this stuff is still trickling out of classroom stores but some years back it was very easy to find and usually operable out of the box. :D

Look at all of those babies. They were sitting right outside the door.

What advocates for testing don't realize is that US scientific achievements (e.g. fusion at NIF) are a surrogate demonstration of the credibiliity of the nuclear stockpile and allow better understanding of the underlying physics than a mushroom cloud.

Mostly fireworks tonight but definitely a few celebratory bullet reports sprinkled in. Stay safe, it's well surveilled around the stadium. And it sounds like the helicopters left here, keep the recreational lasing to a minimum. :/

Ah, she thinks she's all settled down for tonight but spent most of the afternoon tumbling in and out of a freshly excavated patch of dirt so this won't do. But she likes the hair dryer so it's mostly okay. :)

Swamp things. Been some years now.

Honestly? For every job I’ve had? They hired me.

Wow! Some hardcore 1960s Nuclear Engineering vibe going down in this photograph! Neat nuclear rocket engine diagram in background too!

This was a peculiar old audio recorder, one of the first popular for domestic police wiretaps, I think? Per usual I'm not affiliated with the seller and anyone might have a much better chance of recovering audio or any use for what could be a ~4μCi ²²⁶Ra needle source inside. :/ ebay.us/m/QEacEY

Yep dont trust this shit at all. While no one is really safe from datasets, this site is definitely being made for clean datasets to train AI slop.

Like most days here they're launching more Starlink birds. About 13min out and I'm awake enough to wander outside with a camera. So, we'll see. Failing that I could repost one of a precious few shots from the park down the street I am proud of. :)

Any motorist who complains about bollards should have their driver's license taken away.

I had to visit an imaging center clinic today and once again, like every time, I forgot to pocket a logging scintillation detector for my walk past the nuclear med departments. 😞

Dave put up the first of several peg board sheets this morning. We still have a pair left but this wall along with some bins and assorted hooks currently in the post will be primary store for anything handy. I'm pretty excited because I've never had a workspace with hangers for organizing kit. :D

Presumably this is the little guy who keeps excavating the backyard at night - spotted snooping around the palm trees late this morning. :3

It's going to be a clean sheet night. That means all of the little dogs are about to go in the shower. They're cooperative at least with Olive even sitting politely for a blow drying because she doesn't like to feel cold air drying.

A week late, but 6 days and 66 years ago, Dresden Generating Station Unit 1 went critical for the first time. Dresden 1 was the first privately financed nuclear power station in the United States (note all the qualifiers here) So when we say the first nuclear power plant, what do we mean? 🧵

My favorite is the chunk of graphite I have labeled as coming from Obninsk. I'm slightly dubious that it was used, but the soviets did lots of stupid things. It definitely has the "visiting scientist gift" vibe. And Obninsk is just obscure enough that it's possible

One of the very first sources I ever found - from a cool neighborhood store that sells minerals and artifacts. Inside a wrap of lead foil marked "uranium hexafluoride" sat this small ampoule. Almost certainly just UF₄ which is safer at least. Provenance is sadly unknown but the price was fair. :)

Lots of folks captioning aurora photos like "for a few minutes we didn't think about politics" guess I'm built different, every time I'm out trying to see night sky stuff I frequently think about how much light pollution is entirely preventable with just a tiny bit of regulation

Blue Origin Nailing the landing like that on the second flight of new Glen while also delivering useful payload to MARS is wild. A certain somone is probably gonna be fuming about it lmao

Frog is too cold. :/

Seems like there's always a few people pushing for mycoherbicides but none have yet successfully made a case for its use in controlling drug crops.

Seems like yesterday. :)