One of the sources suggested in our Meta conversation yesterday (State of the Soylent: Community Roundtable) was the physics blog Cocktail Party Physics, which had this neat video, How to Cut String with Your Bare Hands in it.
It's reminiscent of the sort of thing Mythbusters liked to reveal.
Thanks to tonyPick!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday November 09 2016, @09:35AM
I would probably be able to enjoy that video a lot more if we didn't just elect Adolf Hitler as President of the United States.
The human race is on an eternal merry-go-round of stupidity. We never learn.
First, there's a place [soylentnews.org] for wailing and gnashing of teeth. Go there.
Second, the lesson of the cutting of the string is that you don't try to cut a string with your bare hands by exerting 300+ pounds of force.
Consider that the Clinton campaign outspent the Trump campaign by a significant amount and ran a more competent campaign the whole time, yet they lost anyway. The choice of Clinton played to Trump's strengths since she had strong negatives in the same places that Trump had negatives (such as narcissism, trust and perception of deception, bigotry, how the candidate's wealth was obtained, etc). Just as one doesn't break good string by merely pulling on it, neither does one win elections by choosing candidates and running campaigns that play to an opponent's strengths.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 09 2016, @06:05PM
So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong, and strike at what is weak.
―Sun Tzu, The Art of War
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday November 09 2016, @10:02PM