Puella Magi Adfligo Systema

The Phoenixian said:

Graphite was chosen as a source because it's a pure form of carbon

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Errrr.

Article:

Although surface chemistry provides the mechanism by which floatation is affected, the process cannot change the purity of the discrete flake particle. Flake graphite contains mineral impurities that are virtually identical in composition to the country rock. These impurities can be associated with the graphite flake in two ways. The first is mechanically attached particles which appear as mineral grains attached to the surface of flakes or trapped between adjacent flakes that have become "cold welded". Flotation may be effective at separating graphite flake from this type of mineral impurity. The second way mineral matter can be associated is in "intercalated" form. This is not intercalation in the same way that certain ions can be intercalated between the graphene layers of the graphite crystal. "Intercalated" in this case is used to describe ash that resides in what could be described as "parting layers" between groups or stacks of adjacent graphene layers. The volumes or spaces occupied by this "intercalated" ash are orders of magnitude greater in size than the interlayer spacing of 3.35, which is the distance between adjacent graphene layers. "Intercalated" ash cannot be removed from the flake by mechanical methods and does represent an intimate ash/graphite association. In cases where ash is strongly intercalated, ignition of samples may result in a flake-shaped or micaceous skeletal ash residue. This type of ash can be removed only by using chemical or thermal methods.

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Commercial flake graphite products are available in a range of purities from around 80% carbon up to 99+ percent carbon. Flake which is in the purity range of 80-98% typically represent materials which have been beneficiated using only froth floatation. Flake above 98% purity has been purified using other methods subsequent to floatation. Sized materials from 0.5mm to 3 micrometers are available from Asbury Carbons as "off-the-shelf" products in any of the purities noted above.

AFAIK, diamonds need to be up around 99.9% carbon to not have major visual flaws. The graphite you get out of a pencil lead or car battery is going to have one or two OOM too much junk in it, and it's mixed in so thoroughly that you'd be better off starting over with carbon atoms.

I really do think we're better off going straight to nucleosynthesis. Any amount of time we spend greater than about 15 minutes is time lost compared to starting with griefhax.

If "carbonhax" is what captures everyone's imagination, there is another market, more lucrative than diamond. Extreme length, stable carbon nanotubes. In single kilogram lots, there should be hundreds of worldwide customers. We could get stability from one shipment of industrial size, too.

It all comes down to our connection to a broker. If our broker can move "x," that is our best product. It need not be a long-term market, either. Eventually, we would need to transition into something that gives us authority, utility and resources, not just money.

Vebyast said:

Errrr.

Article:

Although surface chemistry provides the mechanism by which floatation is affected, the process cannot change the purity of the discrete flake particle. Flake graphite contains mineral impurities that are virtually identical in composition to the country rock. These impurities can be associated with the graphite flake in two ways. The first is mechanically attached particles which appear as mineral grains attached to the surface of flakes or trapped between adjacent flakes that have become "cold welded". Flotation may be effective at separating graphite flake from this type of mineral impurity. The second way mineral matter can be associated is in "intercalated" form. This is not intercalation in the same way that certain ions can be intercalated between the graphene layers of the graphite crystal. "Intercalated" in this case is used to describe ash that resides in what could be described as "parting layers" between groups or stacks of adjacent graphene layers. The volumes or spaces occupied by this "intercalated" ash are orders of magnitude greater in size than the interlayer spacing of 3.35, which is the distance between adjacent graphene layers. "Intercalated" ash cannot be removed from the flake by mechanical methods and does represent an intimate ash/graphite association. In cases where ash is strongly intercalated, ignition of samples may result in a flake-shaped or micaceous skeletal ash residue. This type of ash can be removed only by using chemical or thermal methods.

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Commercial flake graphite products are available in a range of purities from around 80% carbon up to 99+ percent carbon. Flake which is in the purity range of 80-98% typically represent materials which have been beneficiated using only froth floatation. Flake above 98% purity has been purified using other methods subsequent to floatation. Sized materials from 0.5mm to 3 micrometers are available from Asbury Carbons as "off-the-shelf" products in any of the purities noted above.

AFAIK, diamonds need to be up around 99.9% carbon to not have major visual flaws. The graphite you get out of a pencil lead or car battery is going to have one or two OOM too much junk in it, and it's mixed in so thoroughly that you'd be better off starting over with carbon atoms.

I really do think we're better off going straight to nucleosynthesis.

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Bah. pity.

Also please, no nucleosynthesis. We should use the lowest energy level available to us for a given problem, not the highest. A plan where any mistake or false conception results in blowing things up is a bad plan.

I mean, if we want to purify carbon chemically, I'll point out that we have the ability to make literally any chemical out of grief. We've made grief gold. The same thing could make a chemical batch for refining that can be returned to solid grief later. (The only concern being safely taking care of the contaminant products.)

@The Phoenixian and @Vebyast - We can stop developing weapons, you just won.
Mami can give us a huge range boost while combining magic. So in one respect, You have just solved Walpurgisnacht? Construct Grief reactor enchantment, tag with ribbon, lob out far over the bay. We then power the nuclear reactions, and release control. Micro-nuke. Not going to chain, and can be scaled down as far as we wish.

The morning after, we can start turning beach sand into windows to replace what we broke, an ideal market with little regulation outside of the largest customers.

So, can I get some more votes?

Appletank said:

Is the market of diamond tools also restricted?

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No, but that's largely synthetic diamonds already, and it's not particularly high margin.

Like, I personally own a diamond-coated saw blade I use for cutting granite. It cost $30 from a regular old hardware store. A set of six diamond abrasive pads for my water polisher is in the same ballpark. And none of those tools are primarily raw diamond. They're all diamond powder anchored to some kind of substrate, like a steel saw blade or a velcro pad.

So to make decent diamond tools, you need the skillset, time, and interest to make decent tools, period, and then the diamond part is a not-especially-costly raw material for that.

You'd have to sell a lot of saw blades to get rich that way. Not just "hey, a box of these fell off a truck".

[X] Onmur

[X] Haggle. Extend value.
-[X] Confirm whether Kuvira Akiyama or Shinobu can shape gold: If needed, you can.
-[X] Ask whether synthetic gems could extend jewelry-value.

[X]Clear seed: Alongside warnings, ask to check in occasionally: The witch "hibernates" when you clear it and you're curious how that progresses.

[X] Whenever appropriate:
[X] Ask about other Fukushima groups, volcano bases, and local relations.
-[X] You're happy to cleanse everyone whenever you're in town.
[X] Thank Rin and Sakura
-[X]Ask them if anything is wrong is Sendai

[X] Give Kyuubey grief before leaving. Keep two seeds worth.

[X] Back to Mitakihara.
--[X] Everyone's invited.
-[X] Meet your friends at the school gates.
--[X] Praise Mami. (Warn her Yuki's a fan).
--[X] Find a cafe or tea house to chat/discuss.
---[X] Talk about Yuki's Nydus Network.

Notes:

Haggling:
We don't just have the option to haggle by making our money go further. We can also increase our rate of return by making our payment go further for in total. Confirming whether Akiyama and Shinobu can do that is one step, further increasing the value of the resultant jewelry with additives is another.

Clear seed:
Given their penchant for large scale enchantment. Fukushima will likely use their seed faster than anyone else. This means that any problems or oddities will likely be encountered by them before anyone else does. Beyond anything else, this is worth keeping an eye on.

Keep two seeds:
There are a couple several reasons for depositing "all but two" instead of "all but one."

First, It allows us to tie up a huge mass of grief in a single project (be that an industrial size manufacturing setup, a clone army, a very large computational array, or --- should we work the kinks out --- a barrier) while still having quite a bit left over to maintain the fog and/or any other devices.

Secondly, we have two clear seeds. Should some hypothetical situation force us to store all our grief, we can do so.

EDIT:

Deleted asking to include Oriko in chat: Plan would put Oriko in the same room as Madoka.
Moved Nydus network talk the meeting.

[X] The Phoenixian

Not entirely clear here why we need to be calling friends again about the meeting, when I thought we'd already told them...or is this just confirming that we'll have an in person meeting to discuss the pact?

On the topic of money making ideas.... how much of a paper trail is needed for recycling? A major limiter on profitability after all is the limitation on separating out the various matter (moreso when people don't sort properly) .... but if we really can do molecular assembly I suppose that'd be solidly more of a charity thing (clean up landfills and other waste) rather than profit itself.

Clothing maybe? What sort of interesting projects could we do weaving with arbitrarily fine needles and as many separately held threads as we like? Make the most amazingly soft blankets or detailed embroidered designs or naturally hydrophobic designs or the like? Oh! Or this is japan, what about essentially jumping into 3d-printing by making custom orders of obscure plushies and miniatures and such Etsy-style things?

Honestly, other than hand-making Mami presents, all this seems like fun hobbies for Sabrina in a normally paced story, but with our aggressive optimization of her free time its hard to justify anything less absurd than deifacting Gold and similar scales of profit xD And Narratively, Firn's already (jokingly?) approved the plan to custom order laboratory equipment for one-off designs that the grateful scientists will ask ZERO questions of their new deity if we just need quick offscreen cash, or if we want to actually focus on it I think we all enjoy more bonding time with Momura.

Maybe suggestions on where to raid next, instead of the Yakuza? I mean.... she's probably been able to steal exotic vehicles before, but now we have both Grief Planes and Sayaka's borrowed lightning teleport, why stop there? Is the only reason to not raid Triads and Vory and MS-13 the lack of already knowing where they are?

Insight!! We want money in large part to barter with fellow magical girls yes, not just for things like renting apartments? What about raiding counterfeit-shops and stolen goods (assuming we don't take the time to try and return it... not like we called the cops on the Yaks right?) as well as just weapons and money from the criminals? Meguca are largely teenage girls, theres got to be all sorts of shiny electronics they'd accept in trade. (Which brings us back to custom-order luxuries like plushies and figurines and posters and custom-logo clothing and video-game replica weaponry and such)

Obviously, the next financial step is for Azure Sanfrancisco to steal the Leaning Tower of Pisa and then ransom it back.

If that doesn't generate enough cash, there are lots of other landmarks available.

[X] Bargain, detail services
-[X] Confirm.
--[X] Ask, size/scope of contract may expand in future.
-[X] Ask Yuki Tour Fukushima's other groups, enumerate members.
[X] Call friends.
-[X] Tell them about Yuki's Nydus Network.
-[X] Ask to include O&K in meeting with Yuki. SOCIAL reasons.
--[X] Don't push, Update O&K upon agreement.
--[X] Get big meeting location, all allies invited

[X] Before leaving:
-[X] Retain one Seed's worth of Grief, remainder to KB. Ask post-process seed.
[X] Whenever appropriate:
-[X] Thank Rin. For today and for back then. Acknowledge her efforts to do the right thing.
-[X] Offer to include the Sendai Group in the pact, or make separate one with us.
[X] Yuki.
-[X] Back to Mitakihara.
--[X] Everyone's invited.
-[X] Meet your friends at the school gates.
--[X] Praise Mami. (Warn her Yuki's a fan).

Our meeting in Mitakihara would be better as a community platform, as I see it. Draw in all our magical girls, and Kasamino, and a party from Asunaro. What are your thoughts on bringing University group and Ishinomaki? The merit is that we are trying to demonstrate the path they have not taken before, cooperation. Mami gets to make a speech!

This should be a closed-door area, such as catering or karaoke, or get a restaurant on exclusive? Cafe is suited to smaller groups, this is a big occasion. Someone can help us choose?

We need to confirm what the neighbors are like in Fukushima. We will be painted with the same brush once we make an agreement, let's not be surprised. Easier to visit now, don't have to teleport.

Our final arrangement on Anri needs details. Sabrina has the option to pay attention to detail. Bargain - and define what those details are. Getting details wrong makes the future difficult.

A few words left. I like the value-added payment model, not certain how to balance that in current time, @The Phoenixian .

Edited. I want us to ask Kyuubey to bring back up from it's Gate the leftover structure from a processed Seed. We want this answer, it will require time to think about. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The Phoenixian said:

-[X]Ask them if anything is wrong is Sendai

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We've already asked about Sendai.

"How's things in Sendai been?" you ask, glancing at Rin.

"Uneasy," Rin says. "We're not really sure what to do. We give the University group a wide berth, and we just... hang out, now that we're not forced to fight."

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IIRC, we decided to not ask again without at least giving Rin a good reason to open up. That's why I want to acknowledge her efforts; standing up to her friends to do what's right is no small feat.

Also, if we keep prodding, they might not take it well. We've got this thing about poking our nose in other people's business, and the Sendai group suffered for it.

The Phoenixian said:

Keep two seeds:
There are a couple several reasons for depositing "all but two" instead of "all but one."

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I figured we'd make the Clear Seed later, so keeping only one Seed's worth of Grief right now would mean we're left with two at the end.

[X] Onmur

Racoras said:

Not entirely clear here why we need to be calling friends again about the meeting, when I thought we'd already told them...or is this just confirming that we'll have an in person meeting to discuss the pact?

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Ask Onmur. I just ran out of time and copied those sections in verbatim.

Onmur said:

We've already asked about Sendai.
IIRC, we decided to not ask again without at least giving Rin a good reason to open up. That's why I want to acknowledge her efforts; standing up to her friends to do what's right is no small feat.

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Something about the way that stuff is set up just feels unnatural to me though. I could expand to the old "I'm not sure if my help would even be accepted but I get the impression something is wrong" but the buttering up just rubs me the wrong way.

Onmur said:

I figured we'd make the Clear Seed later, so keeping only one Seed's worth of Grief right now would mean we're left with two at the end.

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I was figuring we were making the clear seed and then leaving. (And even ordered it that way) No reason not to have the spectacle where everyone can see it.

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EDIT: Made two changes to the vote:

Deleted asking to include Oriko in chat: Plan would put Oriko in the same room as Madoka.
Moved Nydus network talk the meeting.

EDIT2:

There's another thing worth talking about. If Anri is being guarded by Fukushima and her lips are as loose as we assume, then there's a significant chance she'll tell Fukushima about our promise to look into dewitching Yuuri sometime during her imprisonment.

While Nadia is one guca, I had thought the Fukushima meeting would be a meguca thing only. Edited.


Now Rin? We completely owe her at the very least some thanks. We pushed her onto the spotlight, isolated from her friends, discussed all the evil shit she and her friends were doing, pushing it all in her face while... if we had any plan at all in Sendai it was to use their newest and less corrupted member and try to turn her against them.

Rin's shouldering a lot of shit right now, and we're the one who not-so-gently shoved her to do just that. I see that Rin's not doing so well right now, and I think we should acknowledge our part.

It occurs to me Rin went and did a brave thing and did the right thing and... doesn't get to actually see the good of it. She did her best and now she gets to deal with a lot of shit, but does she get to see she did good? No, because each Sendai group is doing their own thing, and while that's understandable, there's the fact Rin doesn't get to see how her actions affected Chouko and co..

She only gets the burden and most likely some resentment from her friends, too. A little. Can't talk for Akiko, though. :/

So making a tentative edit there. I'll delete it if people blow up at it.


Oh, and telling Sabrina's friends about the Nydus thing is so Mami can think of a place Yuki could use, ahead of time.


[X] Yuki
-[X] Confirm.
--[X] Offer to shape the gold.
-[X] Ask about other meguca groups.

[X] Telepathy friends.
-[X] Ask (Homura, really) whether it's safe to include Madoka and Hitomi in the meeting.
--[X] If not, ask to include O&K. SOCIAL reasons.
-[X] Tell them about Yuki's Nydus Network.

[X] Make the Clear Seed. Mention you'd like to check on it now and then (and why).
[X] Dump Grief with KB. Keep two Seed's worth.

[X] Rin and Sakura:
-[X] Thank them.
-[X] Share (with Rin) that the Universtity Group is doing much better.

[X] Bring up the possibility of the Sendai group joining the Defense Pact.

[X] Yuki.
-[X] Back to Mitakihara.
--[X] Everyone's invited.
-[X] Meet your friends.
--[X] Praise Mami. (Warn her Yuki's a fan).
--[X] Find a cafe or tea house to chat/discuss.

Onmur said:

[X] Rin and Sakura:
-[X] Thank them.
-[X] Rin: Try and acknowledge your responsibility for her burden, and her courage for confronting her friends and doing the right thing.
--[X] Share that the Universtity Group is doing much better.

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This part can get pretty explosive courtesy of Sakura. Well, let's see how that goes.
For now,
[X] Onmur

Oh, and I just typed Homu Homu in Google image searcher and found this:

[x] The Phoenixian

[x] The Phoenixian

[X] Rin and Sakura:
-[X] Thank them.
-[X] Rin: Try and acknowledge your responsibility for her burden, and her courage for confronting her friends and doing the right thing.
--[X] Share that the Universtity Group is doing much better.

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Deleted this line. I think the 'letting Rin know she did good' is actually what I wanted.

Onmur said:

Deleted this line. I think the 'letting Rin know she did good' is actually what I wanted.

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I'm not sure telling Sakura that the University group is doing better will help. Rin, yes.

Redshirt Army said:

I'm not sure telling Sakura that the University group is doing better will help. Rin, yes.

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Sakura gets in the way a lot when I think of how and what to say to Rin. :/

-[X] Share (with Rin) that the Universtity Group is doing much better.

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Telepathying Rin privately would be a good way to not just tell her that her choice has led to good things, but also to ask her about any problems she might be having without having to worry about Sakura's reaction.

Oh hey, look how far we've got.

Onmur said:

Slith10 said:

There we go, cute.
Also sums up the nature of our problems as well.

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So... the kitty is Sabrina, and the ducks are the traumatized girls that need her help?

"I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH PAWS FOR ALL OF YOU!"

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[Q] Inform Sayaka she needs to master clones-

"You already told me that."

-[Q] SO SHE CAN HAVE ALL THE HANDS REQUIRES TO HEADPAT ALL THE MEGUCA IN OUR STEAD!

"... Mami why do you like this weirdo?"

"She's cute. And likes me."

*Hugs happen*

SaltyWaffles said:

And yeah, we're gonna have to find some way to acquire more money on a reliable basis. Sakura would be fantastic for that, except that she's pretty damn selfish and hates our guts more than anyone (and has ever since she laid eyes on us), for some inexplicable reason.

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It's not inexplicable at all. We gem'ed her. and right in front of her best friend.

Onmur said:

Oh hey, look how far we've got.


[Q] Inform Sayaka she needs to master clones-

"You already told me that."

-[Q] SO SHE CAN HAVE ALL THE HANDS REQUIRES TO HEADPAT ALL THE MEGUCA IN OUR STEAD!

"... Mami why do you like this weirdo?"

"She's cute. And likes me."

*Hugs happen*

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Sayaka: You guys are too much sometimes
Kyouko: I know - I'm puking sugar overhere.