JoeSchmuckatelli

You'd be better off asking people your own age. The mating rituals that worked in the 70s or 90s or whatever are likely inapplicable today. Although - I can give you a classic. It is literally the best pick up line of all time. ... See someone you like. Make eye contact with them. And say the following: "Hi!"

Yeah - I can see the shape of my 'over the holidays' reading list coming into view!

A little science to go with your pareidolia: So happy to see you: our brains respond emotionally to faces we find in inanimate objects, study reveals | Australia news | The Guardian

This article is torture - but I gather there is a SA company harvesting methane from the atmosphere and Porsche is using it as an alternative fuel? https://www.foxnews.com/auto/porsche-replacing-gasoline-air-water

On my phone - what are the green flags - and why?

Check PC Gamer - I see a new article quoting a 'trusted KSP Forums Source' in our future!

Very Kerbal

Yeah - it's funny, but if I ever studied plasma in college I certainly don't remember much more than 'it exists as a state of matter'. Prior to the instant discussion of fusion my most recent reading had to do with million degree intergalactic plasma. I hadn't heard of neutrons being able to escape until I saw the video on how Tokamak reactors work. So I'm basically trying to get an image in my mind for how plasmas work... (Might have to start googling 'magnetar and plasma'!) This goes back to the question I asked back when we were talking about intergalactic plasma about whether the plasma state was unique or an actual state of matter for a given element, i.e. can oxygen have a liquid, gaseous and plasma state that regardless of state it is always oxygen - or does entering the plasma state do something to the elemental particles such that once a plasma, given the correct circumstances it might precipitate out to a more basic element when it cools below the plasma threshold. All interesting stuff!

Hydrogen does not have neutrons (from what I remember from 35 years ago). That's cool - learning something new today!

F

This may be obvious to some - but I just want to confirm something. Generally speaking, if you convert an element into a plasma, once the heat dissipates, the plasma can revert back to the original element. Hoping that is correct. So... if you contain a plasma in an electromagnetic field, the neutrons can escape that field because they are not charged particles. So... am I correct in assuming that if you took Methane for instance and heated it to a plasma state, contained that plasma in an electromagnetic field for long enough for all the neutrons to escape... when it cooled, would you be left with just Hydrogen?

Those temps seem insane... and the device really small.

Nope. This is all @Pthigrivi. He's the hero of his own story, after all. Every one of us - at least those of us past a certain age - have all had to wrestle with these kind of thoughts periodically through our lives. We all have moments where everything seems like (ahem) a 'brownstorm sandwich'. As you go through these moments of life, you gain tools to help later on down the line... but the truth is - when you're in the fog... you're in the fog. It's why I suggested he analyze his own perceptions of things. Question the things he knows; who knows, he may find some cracks in walls he thought looked solid at first glance. @Pthigrivi - good luck with this! It's a hard and lonely road. Some days, as @SunlitZelkova said the best you can do is put one foot in front of the other. Keep on Keeping On!

So - the purpose of my responses has been to try to get you to analyze your perceptions for confirmation bias. There is a real risk for people to learn a little bit of something and then get caught up in an echo chamber of things that confirm the thing you first learned. I suggest that you may be caught up in a negative loop where things look bad, perhaps even hopeless on a variety of levels - and across subjects. This is a decision on your part to only accept the bad news. ... Hopefully that last part annoyed you. Vis CC - we have a very long and well argued thread right here on these forums - with me saying 'yeah its not as bad as it sounds' and others pointing out that I might be wrong. Read through it. (Hint: The timeline is slow, we are not all going to drown and while if the worst (likely thing - not extreme thing) comes to pass - some will lose and some will gain. But life is pernicious and people are strong and we will get through this.) Economy is cyclic. People who have fought wars against one another can become friends later on (c.f. England / USA). Etc. ... Not suggesting you become a Pollyanna... But attitude is a choice. You need to discipline yourself to look for silver linings and resilience.

What if you had a SSFO? Drop a spaceplane in until it's below plasma speed in the atmosphere, pump in the good stuff, seal it off and rocket back out again. Given the density, you shouldn't have to get that deep into the atmosphere to do the work. Might be able to keep enough velocity to make escape not entirely in the realm of SF.

The 'hint' wasn't 'Christmas'... it was 'soon'.

That is a challenge they've set for themselves. I'm hoping it works out. There's a difference between someone who games regularly and willingly jumps on board EA titles - and someone who is very discerning/particular about their time and what they play. The 'regular EA player' has a much higher tolerance for a lack of polish. They generally like gaming and are willing to participate in the process of helping a studio make a good product; willingly giving up some polish for something interesting to do with their time. The other player generally wants a polished game that they can just play. Bugs, rather than being something to identify and patiently await a fix, break the immersion and their reaction is quite often negative. I've three people in mind as I type this. If the game is in a good state when I recommend it, there is every possibility their imaginations could be captured by KSP2 as mine was with KSP. If it's not... they likely won't play it past a couple of hours. ... Side note: The fact that the Devs are willing to go full-on Open EA suggests they are confident. Otherwise they'd have been better served with a KSP Forums Invitational Closed Beta - where those of us who've stuck around all these years (including some really talented players who know KSP like the back of their hand) could help 'fix it'. I'm thinking they believe they don't need a closed Beta - which is either a mark of confidence or simply a factor of the current economics of 'release to EA to get revenue and protect the reputation' shennanigans that have become common.

My actual concern for the team is that the game is good enough at EA release to generate interest in the non-KSP player. For a casual person to see it on Steam, figure 'why not' give it a try and discover they like it. I want the 'buzz' to be positive, not 'quirky little space game redux with major problems that might be worth a look down the line'. Nothing takes the wind out of the sails like that. Again - I'm confident I will like KSP2... I want my kids and their friends to be like 'hey - this is cool!' (for which reason... I'm not recommending it to anyone until after I've seen it. I will put up with a LOT for a KSP Two - but most people want something pretty damn close to finished before they jump on board. Frankly - I will likely wait until after I've seen the Science update part of the roll-out to be sure. If, then, I feel like it's a stand on its own two feet title, ready to be shared... I'll be an ambassador. Until then, I don't feel it would be fair to the team to treat EA as anything other than a Beta I'm willing to test.)

Still over two months to wait. I'm cautiously hopeful for a well optimized KSP2 with good frames. Confident I will enjoy the game... just hoping this period of waiting for EA turns out successful for the team. Hype. Tempered.

So many options! (I like mine.)

I could have sworn I had the previous video to this one linked: this guy does a deep dive on a new, commercial Fusion attempt quite different from the ignition method we got all excited about recently. @HebaruSan - you may be interested in this. For those interested - here's the previous one:

Diversification is key ...or Russia could decide to rejoin the world as a peaceful neighbor.

This actually deserves its own post: Each dot in this picture, which covers about one-twentieth of the sky, represents the location of a galaxy mapped by the Sloan Digital Sky Survey and its Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey. A statistical analysis of 1 million galaxies in the survey has found evidence of parity violation. (Emphasis mine) Physicists believe they have detected a striking asymmetry in the arrangements of galaxies in the sky. If confirmed, the finding would point to features of the unknown fundamental laws that operated during the Big Bang. “If this result is real, someone’s going to get a Nobel Prize,” said Marc Kamionkowski, a physicist at Johns Hopkins University who was not involved in the analysis. As if playing a cosmic game of Connect the Dots, the researchers drew lines between sets of four galaxies, constructing four-cornered shapes called tetrahedra. When they had built every possible tetrahedron from a catalog of 1 million galaxies, they found that tetrahedra oriented one way outnumber their mirror images. Asymmetry Detected in the Distribution of Galaxies | Quanta Magazine The tetrahedron is the simplest shape that has parity, or handedness. It looks different when reflected in a mirror.

Good summation!

Keep reading. There is a point with CC that you get to as a lay reader where you think 'well that's it. Everyone is an idiot and we are totally ____d' Keep reading - but read the science articles. Read the conversations between climatologists when they criticize this thing or that thing about their presumptions and models. Read about the new discoveries that aren't even considered in the models. Read about the climate successes and the ecosystem recovery and return of diversity and those areas where active people are taking responsibility and making changes that are effective. Before long you start to see the shape of things again and realize that doomerism is premature, the earth is resilient (and so are humans), sea rise isn't going to be fast (or even alter the coastlines so that you would not recognize the continent on a map) and the model prediction you get is likely the worst possible scenario. You see there is time and we are doing things that improve our lot, protect our coasts and reduce our risks. Those changes are slow, not dramatic... But they are having an effect. Touch Grass!