JoeSchmuckatelli

Yup

I started writing this whole thing about cannibalism at Jamestown in the 1600s. The early days of any significant human migration are insanely dangerous - but given time, will and a sufficient population base, success can happen. The whole space thing really is a long view project. We know it's the most hostile environment humans have ever explored. That should not stop us, any more than running the numbers on deep sea mining short term profitability vs asteroid mining should make us abandon the less profitable endeavor.

I rewatched Dune last night. Was the first time the Frau had a chance to see it. Great movie. Now I'm looking forward to seeing 2. https://youtu.be/_YUzQa_1RCE?feature=shared

... And they are doing something cool! Shrug. Mars colony doesn't excite me. A truly innovative rocket of this scale that works? Game changer. (Even if deep sea mining is likelier to be profitable in the near term than any industrialization of space... Eventually we do have to get off this rock or die. (Ask the dinosaurs)

Poop. I had a plan to have my students watch this. ... Guess I now have to teach something. BTW - Etruscans had a non-IndoEuropean language, in case anyone needs to know that for the quiz scheduled for after Thanksgiving Break!

I do have to play them on Mute, given all the shout outs to oddball names on the scrolling chat. FWIW, I do appreciate your sharing X content - I'd be banned in hours for arguing with Flat Earth believing election deniers.

Oh crap. I'm not on X. Thank God for NASA Spaceflight.

Oh very much so. @kerbiloid- you have seen our Congress, yes?

It's the Kraken Ban.

For those interested - the volcano on Iceland is rated as 'imminent'. Sky news is streaming (for those wanting to watch the last hours of a residential community). https://news.sky.com/story/iceland-volcano-live-updates-cracks-appear-in-roads-amid-fears-of-imminent-volcanic-eruption-13008004

Oh - and something really weird - I think I just posted on S & Sf from my regular account on my phone (Chrome) @Dakota @Gargamel... Did you guys flip a switch or something?

Woot!

I too played with themes to no effect. I've tried multiple browsers and platforms to no avail. Even the Alt doesn't work on edge, but does on Firefox. The problem with the primary was intermittent and sometimes shifting - where I would have access on mobile but not PC or on PC but not mobile... Until one day I had no access from either for weeks. The Alt is a workaround but I can only use it on Firefox / PC... But at least I have access again!

God - it's been so long since I looked at those specs, I can't remember. OFC my Win7 box was the one I 'learned' about bad PSU / underwattage - and I tossed the thing long ago.

I feel your pain! I'm loving the real estate of the 32 inch monitor. I just wish I could move it to my wife's office b/c she has much better natural light than I do. However, she's working from home regularly now - so not happening. I'm really feeling the limits of my 3070 when I get a chance to game. Debating on the 7900 xtx now or wait for the Nvidia Supers (rumored for Feb/April next year). Key phrase is 'when I get a chance'. A 6 month delay does not seem like that big of a wait when I consider my availability to game won't likely happen until June (summer break). I'm still appalled at the pricing - but 8gb of vram and 3070 performance at 4k is painful... And I'm still addicted to my frugal 'price/performance' habits. Value - and getting value out of the money paid is one of the core drivers for me that I just cannot convince myself to bite the bullet and spend what they're asking for the current generation easily.

Think about how very, very many businesses are involved in the manufacture of car parts. I used the analogy of comparing driving safety to flying safety to illustrate that comparing the two industries could be inapt. Also, when looking at different industries - the quantitative number of people involved likely increases risk (similar to my analogy about driving vs flying). Automotive is HUGE. Space is tiny and shipbuilding small. Google tells me there are 2 million Americans involved in Automotive manufacturing but only 100,000 in Ship building. If we even just claim that an average manufacturing worker faces a 0.001% chance of mishap on a given day - looking at the two numbers side by side would show that there is a higher likelihood of automotive manufacturing mishaps than shipbuilding. (again, illustrative)

Also, for those interested, I just discovered another tension wrt the standard model of cosmology (LambdaCDM), called the 'S8 Tension' .* The S8 tension is fairly simple to explain: it is a parameter used in simulations of dark matter that characterizes how 'lumpy' or strongly clustered the matter in the universe is. The value can be derived from measurements of low-redshift observations, like 'weak gravitational lensing surveys'. (Observational). The value can also be predicted via the standard model - by tuning the model to match known properties of the Cosmic Microwave Background. The problem is that CMB experiments find a higher value of S8 than do weak gravitational lensing surveys. Cosmologists don't know why, hence the 'tension'. Anyway, the S8 tension just got more interesting after the FLAMINGO group decided to do something novel. Most simulations of dark matter seeking to emulate the observed supercluster and filaments seen in the universe only consider the effects of dark matter - they don't try to include baryonic matter in the simulation. The FLAMINGO** group did. Because DM is only affected by gravity, adding in normal baryonic matter - which is affected not only by gravity, but also gas pressure (winds driven by supernova explosions and actively accreting supermassive black holes, for example) changed the result of the simulation in unexpected ways. https://www.space.com/largest-computer-simulation-of-universe-s8-debate (emphasis mine) https://academic.oup.com/mnras/article/526/4/5494/7310881 I find these tensions fascinating areas of cosmology to read about. They remind me that physics and cosmology are not 'complete' sciences, where everything is known. Researchers are constantly 'picking at the edges' and finding discrepancies. I'm also glad to see them getting published. There was a period of time about 30 years ago where any time anyone questioned the LCDM model, they were mocked and shouted down (on boards like these - looking at you, BadAstronomy). Dogmatic thinking isn't useful in science. *Freely admit, I don't know much about it - but it is interesting. **FLAMINGO is a project of the Virgo consortium for cosmological supercomputer simulations. The acronym stands for Full-hydro Large-scale structure simulations with All-sky Mapping for the Interpretation of Next Generation Observations. FLAMINGO Project - Videos: https://flamingo.strw.leidenuniv.nl/video_gallery.html Really beautiful and trippy simulations!

If You Account for the Laniakea Supercluster, The Hubble Tension Might Be Even Larger https://www.universetoday.com/164198/if-you-account-for-the-laniakea-supercluster-the-hubble-tension-might-be-even-larger/

Too soon to say 'I told you so?'

I suspect that's in line with the quantity of businesses and people involved in automotive manufacturing compared to ship building. Americans drive an average of 17,000 miles per year per person - while we only fly an average of 1,000 miles per year per person. While the airline industry and airline travel have a much higher safety rating than the automotive industry and travel - and also despite frequent comparison - I really don't think the relative safety of one reflects accurately on the other. E.G. if a significant number of the flight miles and aircraft were privately owned/maintained rather than being public transportation? The rates might be worse for personally owned aircraft than passenger cars. But the two industries just don't operate in anything approaching similarity.

Does YouTube have the ability to sandbox GPU time? I ask this because I have been sitting here, no games running, merely watching a YouTube video, and suddenly my GPU spins up. Fans going quite loud and dedicated GPU memory usage climbed to ~2gb. (The abrupt spool up made me pull up Task Manager and see what was going on - there was a brief spike in "3D" to abt 21%) My first guess is that something started sandboxing GPU time - but I don't subscribe to any folding ops or anything like that. The whole event lasted about 2 minutes. (weird) Any ideas on what the event might have been?

I'm new here... go easy on me!

As someone who used a similar trick quite often on the WOT forums, I appreciate the humor. Well played.

You actually have to go back to the end of the Soviet Union and the Clinton administration. Not that I'm blaming either; but America quit looking outward about that time and started navel gazing. Domestic affairs became the focus of politics. Yes, that changed with 9/11, but then we decided to go on adventures in the Middle East - and spent the staggering amounts of money in that endeavor and not space (which had already declined). Buying cheap rockets from Russia solved two problems; it was a way to send money to Russia without annoying the old Cold War hawks, as well as trying to keep rocket tech from proliferating.

At moderators - my posting from an Alt is at the request of @Dakota - please excuse the violation of forum rules. We're trying a workaround to get me access to Sci & Space again. Obviously, these posts are off topic for my favorite thread. I'd ask them to be deleted once this test is complete. Thanks!