You can buy "skylights" that are essentially internally mirrored tubes that accomplish essentially the same thing. I don't believe they're super cheap right now, but I imagine they could be if they became more widely used.
I know someone who installed one in their bathroom and have been surprised at how well it works.
Yes, I encountered one for the first time in the bathroom of a holiday let and, having no idea what it was, got very confused as to how I was supposed to turn it off. Fortunately we had an experimental nuclear physicist in the party who was able to explain that turning the light off would actually be a very bad idea.
As a building science scholar, I do not recommend skylights or solar tunnels, as they increase the likelihood of roof leaks in the future (as any roof penetration does). Also impairs thermal management due to lack of insulation between the conditioned space and the exterior.
I installed a Velux skylight on one of my previous remodels (replacing an existing low quality skylight), and I still regret it versus decking over the void and deleting the tunnel.
I'm currently renting. But i just want to add that the skylight in my house is the single best thing about it. I'm in a location which is pretty well shaded on all sides of my house. The windows that i do have are relatively small and do not let in all that much light. My house is permanently dim, great for sleeping, terrible for starting work in the morning.
In this scenario, the skylight in my bathroom while i do the morning ready is a godsend. Are there other better solutions? I'm sure there are, but is the prevalence of issues with properly installing skylights much larger than the prevalence of issues with windows?
Would a faux skylight led panel serve this purpose? Windows occasionally must withstand driving rain, a roof must withstand falling rain (on whatever cadence your climate dictates, Florida vs California are wildly different environments for example). Broad strokes, water is the enemy and you’re attempting to avoid intrusion whenever possible.
In short, no, unless you have tens-of-thousands[1][2] to spend on this panel. Rays of sunlight are parallel, an effect that very difficult to emulate.
There are folks who have developed DIY versions, with impressive results[3], but in that case you're trading off way more effort, potentially requiring maintenance, and a lot more space required.
I’m talking a $100 LED panel from Home Depot, not a full replacement to create a virtual skylight. Is it the appearance of sky or just the light? The light is easy, seeing sky (real or virtual) is hard.
I'm aware of those--I have one, except mine is 5x brighter. It's just not the same.
It doesn't cast the gorgeous shadows sunlight does. It creates glare that makes having the panel surface directly visible, no matter how obtuse the angle, unacceptable.
Sunlight's parallel rays make it so that it's not your window that's bright, it's the things that your window shines light on that are lit up. You can look at your window or the sky all day without any discomfort. And that's just not the case for traditional light panels.
I’ve got a skylight that I hate (faces southwest so in the high summer sun it turns into a heat ray of death) and was planning to have removed, decked over and shingled. Since you are a building science scholar, I am wondering if the tunnel actually needs to be deleted or if I could just put some rigid insulation board at the bottom of the tunnel and then drywall over it?
No need to remove the tunnel if you prefer not to. Rigid foam to a depth that meets the R value for your zone and AHJ requirements (“local code”). Check if any inspection is required before drywalling over the rigid foam.
It's been a while since I've rented, but I assume this is covered in the agreement when you make a booking. I'd guess their butts are covered from the fraud perspective. Maybe misleading advertisement though?
How many places in a densely populated city can you precisely drop a bomb with no risk to civilians? Yes, technology has improved, but my point is that better tech doesn't just automatically make war less awful.
I don't believe the people operating the weapons are different in ways that make civilian casualties obsolete. In WW2 it was a decision to bomb population centers, not an accident. That decision can be made today too.
Even 100% accurate precision weapons are only as good as the target information supplied to them. Bad Intel and misidentified targets are very real factors that can cause a precision weapon to strike something they shouldn't.
Terry Pratchett had a plan for things he was working on at the time of his death:
> Pratchett told Neil Gaiman that anything that he had been working on at the time of his death should be destroyed by a steamroller. On 25 August 2017, his assistant Rob Wilkins fulfilled this wish by crushing Pratchett's hard drive under a steamroller at the Great Dorset Steam Fair.
Good call. You can hardly find cases where the heirs of great authors didn't simply leech off the estate, normally with little to no regard to artistic integrity.
Considering that the creation process heavily involved Christopher in that their father-son story time inspired a large part of it, one could probably qualify him as a coauthor in terms of non-financial attachment to the works.
(Oh, and Dweezil is the one who's trying very hard to maintain his father's legacy, the rest of the family is cashing in and selling out at every opportunity.)
I think that was the right call. Pratchett's works after the Alzheimer onset weren't bad by any means, but they became very formulaic and didn't have the creativity of his best books. They're not helped by Moist van Lipwig being imo his most boring protagonist.
I really liked the first Moist von Lipwig book. The second one is ok. The third (Raising Steam) is just...bad. It's not funny, it's not anything. You can absolutely tell that Pratchett was losing his abilities.
To me it felt like he was hurrying to kind of tie a bow on Discworld and settle at least some of the longer-term plot threads he'd been playing with, similar to The Shepherd's Crown (which is better). The train theme of the book felt apropos, because he was loading a bunch of his characters on the express train to a reasonably happy ending.
I don't love Moist the way I do Sam Vimes, but the last handful of Industrial Revolution-themed Discworld novels are among my favorites. Maybe it's because I'm a software developer who trained in economics, but the discussions of monetary systems and public policy in satire is much appreciated.
It's what's more important? Doing fan service for fans who will revere your grocery list because it brings them joy? Or leaving behind a body of work you're really proud of and is widely respected?
I make it black and white but it's not obvious to me you always want to publish things just because some people will devour them.
> It's what's more important? Doing fan service for fans who will revere your grocery list because it brings them joy? Or leaving behind a body of work you're really proud of and is widely respected?
Since you'll be dead and utterly unaffected either way, I'd go with pleasing the fans. Also, it's really a freebie for your legacy if it's understood that it was written under the influence of dementia and published posthumously.
On the other hand, if I thought it would be depressing or unpleasant to fans more than please them, I would want it destroyed.
But that's what I'd do. Terry Pratchett had every right to make his own decision on this. Even with dementia, that's 100% his call. (Of course, his assistant should make sure he was fairly consistent on this point, when most lucid.)
I get where you're coming from in a way. But speaking personally, the idea of people peeking at my creations before I'm ready for them to is anathema. Like, some fundamental violation of the self.
I think you may be slightly misinterpreting the parent comment. When they say the NIF's task is weapons research, I think they meant that the facility was built with that task in mind. When I read your comment it sounds more like you're talking about the current task of the people working there.
Both valid points of discussion, but different ones.
I know someone who installed one in their bathroom and have been surprised at how well it works.