Whatshisname ruled the USSR for over 20 years … tried putting his name all over everything. Renaming major cities for example … and within a short time after he died, Russians pulled down all the statues (smashed with sledgehammers) and renamed the cities. Hmmm. wasn’t Ozymandias …

Thanks for the pointer. Very informative insights into what’s going on in this area … news stories seldom take the time to explain these details.

really care about … build quality

Glad for you that has changed lately. Apple’s is the only (and most expensive) hardware I’ve ever had severe problems with … twice. (In between, that clone they killed worked great for 7 years.) Not buying it.

It has been fun watching that Old Guard tearing themselves apart -every day-.

LOL Wishing doesn’t make it so.

Well sure … but then, a majority of Americans actually VOTED FOR HIM. So … what’s that worth at the Bogega?

Yeah! Like, hmmmm… was it really a storm that brought Arecibo down? Or … was the storm just used as a cover by ET hackers?

Well yeah. But that’s to be expected in astronomy, they have to keep changing the model as they learn more and more. Who knew 40 years ago that stellar atmospheres could broaden radio-frequency lines?

Fair cop … but society’s to blame !

Two hours and 45 minutes though!

An interesting point … but unless you can see the serial killers per capita, it’s distorted.

When it comes to (single) homocides, the picture shifts substantially, the Americas are still at the top but Africa runs a close second. The PDF linked below (UN Drugs & Crime charts) has a very good set of PER CAPITA graphs to show the distribution worldwide. Here US homicide rates are much lower than Mexico and northern South America.

https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/gsh/2023/Global_study_on_homicide_2023_web.pdf

Get near-enough to the north (or south) pole and mercury turns into a solid.

Which is a better thing than when some gets spilled on the floor because it spatters into a thousand droplets that you have to chase around the floor , can’t mop up , can’t vacuum up … and can vaporize more easily and poison you.

Hmmm. Maybe it turned into a tax haven … like neighboring state South Dakota, mome of Kristi Noem.

Or maybe it’s: no state income tax. Or a maximum property tax of 2% (city + county). No capital gains, estate, or gift taxes.

Or maybe the 77% Republicans. Or the death penalty.

“You’re Going to Have to Trust Us”

Is that anything like “Don’t Be Evil”? (Google motto, 2004. No definition of evil followed.)

Reagan once said “Trust But Verify”. So … where can we do that at? (and who pays?)

I always liked this picture. Suppose you’re in a space suit, orbiting around the Earth. Gravity keeps you continually free- falling ‘down’ towards the surface below you. But, in orbit, you also have a velocity that’s tangent to the Earth’s surface. So while you’re falling, because that velocity is just right, the surface is curving away from you at the same rate!

So you remain at the same distance from the surface, and the ‘pull’ of gravity remains the same … orbit!

I guess that’s okay, if we really got our money’s worth.

/s

Tux, FF and VLC have been dailies in my life for over a decade. Many MANY thanks to them, and to ALL those pipple.

Here’s a back-up, science paper on MOF from Nature with measured numbers. 8 liters per KG per day isn’t 1000 gallons until you get to 2 tons … but it’s about 200 liters per out of 25 KG … easily carried.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-58405-9

"The effects of temperature, relative humidity, and powder bed thickness on the adsorption-desorption process are explored for achieving optimal operational parameters. We found that Zr-MOF-808 can produce up to 8.66 LH2O kg−1MOF day−1, an extraordinary finding that outperforms any previously reported values for MOF-based systems… "

Gotta go with ‘Contact’ (based on a Carl Sagan book) and ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ (Kubrick).

‘The Martian’ tried, good film but but made Mars look waaaaay too friendly …

I don’t recall ‘I Robot’ straying too far out of line … but not in the same league …

Proyas’ ‘Dark City’ likewise, but is more imaginative and artful …

That’s a-peeling

The feeling of intimacy is totally bogus and the techies have a term for it … RLHF = “Reinforcement learning from human feedback”. Users are training the LLMs to act more human. Can’t get that from stealing copyrighted text from online. And it’s still free !!