my wire mesh came in today and i'm going to focus on this first. 

i was thinking more about this "air gap".

if you have a conducting material facing another conducting material with a small air gap in between, you would not expect the air to act as much of an insulator, but rather functionally behave as a conductor. convection would just be conduction, in context. it would basically be the same thing. however, if you had an insulator in the other side, the gap would just fill up with heat until it got to equilibrium. the gap would then become a part of the insulator, but only because the gradient is reversed. the gap itself would slow the reflection down, not help it.

yet there may be some scenarios where you do want an air gap between aluminum and an insulator that have to do with preventing moisture building up, rather than implementing the radiant barrier. that air gap would have no effect on the reflective or insulating properties of the aluminum-foam combination, but it would prevent water damage behind the foam. those issues did not cross my mind, but they are not relevant to me, because i am insulating a basement. i don't know if i would have thought of moisture as a concern if i was trying to block an a/c from below me rather than above me (i would not need to do this if the a/c was below me. i would just open the windows full blast and blow the heat in with fans. placing thermal barriers on the floor wouldn't make any sense, as they would block the heat from rising. instead, i'd be trying to push heat down from outside. i might have guessed that would create moisture.), and don't want to be pretentious, but that's not what i'm doing.

i think this page is helpful in going over the different contexts and why it's important to be careful.

in the context of what i'm doing, i want to eliminate intentional air gaps and push the insulation tight against the wall. my analysis was correct. however, any inevitable pockets of air that continue to exist will allow for humidity to escape upwards. if i could theoretically completely eliminate these gaps (i know i can't), i would create humidity issues. but, i can't, and i'm not worried about that.

https://joneakes.com/jons-fixit-database/2259-air-spaces-in-walls-myth-and-science---overview#a06Drywall

there would be something staunchly ironic about a bassline written by two british rock icons, one of them iranian, being the most memorable thing about america's 250th birthday.

bowie thinks you're all a bunch of fucking idiots, anyways.

i actually heard that vanilla ice was under pressure to pull out of the america birthday thing.

the zoom website has completely blown up my chromebook twice this week. it has done that before when trying to open a session, but even trying to log into the forum to ask a question has cratered it twice. 

zoom is demonstrating itself as an antisocial company that should be boycotted, but dealing with them is required, until the government drops them, and i expect they will. zoom is going out of it's way to generate unnecessary, recurring costs. somebody else is going to undercut them. zoom's days are numbered.

it would be nice to eventually be able to buy something like a vp59 without being certain that it's going to be phased out in a few months,  but that's not reality right now.

i'm looking at a few usb phones, but the only things you can find nowadays are engineered for microsoft. really, the phone needs to launch as a usb sound card, in the zoom context. that's what zoom should load it as. it should act as a usb phone for zoiper or softsip, but it's just a phone shaped sound card with a few specific buttons, like mute, for zoom. really.

after locking myself in all week, i have not had a headache this weekend for the first time in a while. the acne is also clearing up. it's clear what the truth is.