Honest question: Do people think stars look like the star shape because of diffraction spikes in refractor telescopes? I thought the star shape pre-dated any refractor telescope. And I don't know how many people would have seen refractor images back in the days to make it so culturally engrained?
The post-processing used in astronomical observations is a really interesting topic. I'm following the debate around the black hole images with great interest. I don't know enough about the specifics to have an opinion, but it is very interesting and has overlap with some of the things I do for work.
This is usually done to keep things going as normal as possible for as long as possible. Once people start noticing something is wrong, the best people start looking elsewhere. Before you know it, not only is the company in financial trouble, but it can't recover because some of the best people left. At least one time I witnessed, the company was working on layoff plans and even limited bankruptcy, but at the same time negotiating with the investment firm that owned part of the company to get more money. If they got the money, everything would be fine. It wasn't till that fell through, they had to start laying people off.
How can a regular person block shipments of arms or dismantle AIPAC? That's not possible.
What does boosting voices of soon to be dead people do to stop them from dying? What does organizing or donating do?
Trump has promised Israel everything they need, no questions asked, no limits. And they already have so much, they don't really need a lot more. They can already destroy Palestine, they can already destroy parts of Iran and Lebanon. They just need the extra stuff and funds to do it quicker and destroy more of those countries.
And don't think for a second Trump and their cronies won't block any money flow from the US to anywhere near there and divert it to Israel instead. And block organizations in the US from doing anything. Israel is already blocking aid for Palestine even from organizations like the Red Cross. What are small organizations going to do?
Plus the time to act has come and gone. Time is up, this is going to happen within months. We can't organize, lobby for policy change, set up aid and demonstrations. It's done, there is a deadline and that means death for a whole lot of people.
All we can do at this point is look with shock and horror as the far right grips the world and destroys a lot of the things we hold dear.
You've said things yes, but not how to do those things (some of which are plainly impossible) or how those things will help (none of those things will actually help). Doing useless stuff just to feel like you tried isn't actually helping anyone. Israel is going to kill a lot of people and finish multiple genocides and there isn't a damned thing anyone can do about it.
This is reality and it's bad. It isn't a maybe it will be fine maybe it won't situation. Trump has promised wealthy powerful people a lot of stuff to get him into power. And they put him into power specifically to do that stuff. They have plainly said exactly what they are going to do, laid out an agenda and promised to follow it as best they can. The final hurdle was the election, which even if it went a bit bad for them could have still worked with lawsuits about voter fraud or plain insurrection. But it didn't went bad for them, it was a major victory. They couldn't have dreamt of a better outcome. There are no more hurdles, no more barriers, no more limits. At this point it's denial to think they aren't going to do what they set out to do.
I feel there are things we can do for our own mental health and maybe the people around us. But as for the big picture, it's done, it's over. We've seen first hand what happens if this kind of thing goes down in a country and the outcome is always the same.
The Americans are the only ones to have used them in terms of destroying enemy assets (and sadly in that case it was used against civilians). But as a deterrent it's been used by a LOT of countries all around the world and is still being used for that purpose right now.
An argument could be made the Cold War could have been an all out world war if it weren't for nukes, with the short peace after WW2 be considered just a break and not the end.
I hope nukes won't be used, but Ukraine is in trouble and if they are backed into a corner and facing destruction who knows what they will do. Same could apply to Iran before long, if they have the ability to get nukes somehow, it might be their only hope. Just please let it be as a deterrent and not actual nuclear war.
It's the yeti invasion isn't it? I will send my thoughts and prayers your way. I'm atheist, so the prayers will probably work about as well as those of a religious true believer.
Well once the US stops support and drops out of Nato and Putin starts steamrolling across Eastern Europe countries after they decimated what's left of Ukraine, I'm sure all the borders will be closed.
Not that it does much good. If the option is get tortured and killed or try your luck with an illegal border crossing people will always try. Even if the border police starts shooting like at the North Korean border, people would still try.
It's actually a plastic ribbon with a metallic foil in a zigzag pattern on top of it. It's extremely cheap and does a pretty good job. It usually sits on top of a metal bar that can deflect a tiny little bit.
That's because of the way these scales work. They use a material that deforms under stress and when it deforms the resistance changes. By putting current through this material and measuring the voltage drop, it can be mapped to how much stress the material is under and thus how much weight is on the scale.
This is a pretty roundabout way and has a lot of caveats, but it is very cheap. So cheap scales always work this way. That's why they aren't super accurate and have deviations depending on things like temperature. Another big downside is any permanent deformation ruins the calibration, giving incorrect results. That's why you never put more weight on kitchen scales than it says, it will break them.
The issue you are running into is the way it measures. It applies a very specific voltage and current in order to get the result. The lookup table it uses is only valid within a narrow range. When the battery voltage goes outside that range, it can no longer perform the measurement. Even though there's plenty of juice for things like the little processing chip and the LCD display. They don't need a lot of power and can do with low voltages. But it can no longer weigh anything so it just errors out with a low battery warning.
Yeah it shouldn't be an excuse. Sure the billionaires are terrible per person compared to a regular person. But they are still a minority. Most of the air traffic is regular folk traveling for work or fun. And freight being hauled by plane or trucks because of all the useless stuff people buy. Most of the cars driving every day are regular folk.
By far the worst thing are cruise ships, dumping out huge amounts of pollution just for people to go on holiday.
Billionaires are terrible and should not be allowed to exist as they do today. But it isn't a reason not to do something yourself. If enough people do it, it will make an impact.
Sure in general, if a driver can get back on track, it's better to have a yellow. Not to interrupt the session and get going.
I think after Bianchi (RIP) they changed the rules that if there are people on track or they are needed on track, it needs to be red or SC before it's allowed. And with the mandatory SC deltas for all cars. Later the VSC is introduced and got incorporated where under certain conditions a VSC is enough for a marshal to be on track. Like for example to get a bit of debris off the track with a brave person running out and grabbing it. With the damage to the barrier, people were required to be on track, so it should have been red as soon as possible to get that going.
And it's a hard job, I fully get that and it's hard to make the right call all the time.
But in this case, with the state of the car and the state of the barrier, I don't see it as something that should depend on what the driver inside the car is doing. And we've even seen teams and drivers getting punished for trying to drive back cars in an unsafe condition.
Bullshit reason in my opinion. Of course Stroll would attempt to do anything to get back to the pits, that's his job. And like he said, from inside the car it's hard to see how broken it exactly is. But for anyone outside of the car is was obvious that car was destroyed and wasn't going to come back on it's own in any safe or timely manner. It should have been red flagged right away. Even if Stroll got it going and carried on to the pits, there would still be need for debris clearing and barrier repair. And with the state of that car, he would have put oil and debris all across the track in doing so, requiring even more clean up.
It should have been red right away. There have been so many issues this year where race control is slow to put out a flag or VSC. And weird choices when to use the SC and when to use the VSC. They need to do better in the future.
People will probably just post a Powershell script on Github to make it update directly from the official servers without paying the extra fee. It's funny how the most popular activation scripts are on Github, even though Microsoft owns Github and could easily just delete them.
Honest question: Do people think stars look like the star shape because of diffraction spikes in refractor telescopes? I thought the star shape pre-dated any refractor telescope. And I don't know how many people would have seen refractor images back in the days to make it so culturally engrained?
The post-processing used in astronomical observations is a really interesting topic. I'm following the debate around the black hole images with great interest. I don't know enough about the specifics to have an opinion, but it is very interesting and has overlap with some of the things I do for work.