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francopoli's comments
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user-inactivated  ·  2021 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Just Joined the Site

Wednesday is Pubski day where there tends to be a long thread with more engagement. Start there to learn the community. If you see something interesting, jump in.

user-inactivated  ·  2100 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: June 27, 2018

I spent some time completely offline. No Youtube, no websites, no any of this fuckery. The Universe and I had a pleasant chat, Nature send a million bloodsuckers after my precious bodily fluids, then I spent a few days in a room doing nothing by playing UT4 with 400 other nerds.

Speaking of reddit, I had to google a Linux error and one of the top links was to Reddit. I click on the link and HOLY WHAT THE FUCK. They changed the layout to Facebook. It sucks, like Digg 2.0 sucks.

Fuck Reddit.

user-inactivated  ·  2181 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: New desktop is en route - what have I missed the last few years?

The Witcher 3 will easily take you 500 hours or longer if you get "side-quest-itis" May be the best game of the 2010's. If you get the Witcher 3, get it from GOG, not Steam.

Speaking of GOG and CD Projekt Red... Cyberpunk 2077 is coming out soon. Looks like the hype is building, the game is getting finalized and it will be out this year. This is going to be my next big gaming purchase once it is out. DO NOT PREORDER VIDEO GAMES!

Kerbal space Program is not that expensive and fun as hell. 100 hours of play time is an easy target. I judge a game by how long it takes me to get bored with it... I have 3500 hours into KSP from back when the game cost $7, back in 2011? 2012? The Expansion adds parts, the ability to add and make missions, and is not needed unless you are into that.

If you are into map reading simulators, I like Galactic Civilization 3 Like most 4x games, the end game becomes tedious, but the early and mid games make the playthrough worthwhile. Civ4 is still my favorite conquer the world game, and Civ6 feels off to me. Not sure why; the game is pretty and after being out a few years the real problems and bugs are fixed.

Banished is a chill little problem solver. If you ever played the city builder games (and all of them are on GOG BTW) this will feel like a modern remake. Good graphics, rational choices, and everything works well.

Speaking of city builders, Cities:Skylines is a better SimCity that anything since SimCity4

user-inactivated  ·  2189 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The problem of hyper-liberalism

The Religious Left is just as vile, toxic and dangerous and the Religious Right. My worry is that the nutjobs on my side are not being called out on being toxic nutjobs like the fuckwits on the far right have been.

user-inactivated  ·  2190 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Distant galaxy with no dark matter suggests our understanding of the universe could be wrong

I like to describe it this way. Don't think of it as "dark matter." Think of it as "dark gravity." SOMETHING is out there acting like a gravitational force. SOMETHING out there is bending space in very predictable ways that we can measure, test, and make predictions about. We know what this "force" is NOT. It is not the normal matter that makes up the stuff you and I and the stars are made of. It is not clouds of gas and dust. IT is also very cold and does not interact with normal matter and light or if it does interact it does so very weakly.

And the kicker is that when you make an energy budget for the whole universe, this "dark gravity" makes up 4x more of the universe than the stuff that you and I are made of. And stuff that is unknown makes me excited to be alive. Maybe this will be the solution to every issue we face as a people. Maybe it will be something we cannot use and exploit. Maybe it will be unknown for dozens of generations until we get a mind and the tools needed to say "Oh, that is what this force is."

The fact that humanity found something out in the universe that is driving the researchers bonkers makes me excited for the future.

user-inactivated  ·  2206 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Reddit and the Struggle to Detoxify the Internet

https://snap.stanford.edu/conflict/

Key take away:

    A small number of communities initiate most conflicts, with 1% of communities initiating 74% of all conflicts. The image above shows a 2-dimensional map of the various Reddit communities. The red nodes/communities in this map initiate a large amount of conflict, and we can see that these conflict intiating nodes are rare and clustered together in certain social regions. These communities attack other communities that are similar in topic but different in point of view.
user-inactivated  ·  2210 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Worsening Cosmic Ray Situation

Happens every 11 or so years. We are now seeing the impacts of a potential geomagnetic flip, the first one in 700K years or so. With a weaker field there will be more cosmic ray strikes on the upper atmosphere. This makes me wonder if they are going to have to re-calibrate the C14 baselines for radiocarbon dating. Also, if the geomagnetic field is weakening are there going to be impacts on the health of astronauts in low earth orbit? are new satellites going to need extra radiation hardening? Is this going to puff up the stratosphere and mesosphere layers of the atmosphere and help deorbit some of the bits of space junk in orbit? The last solar maximum did squat for helping the space garbage problems after all.

user-inactivated  ·  2228 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Barnes & Noble confirms job cuts, expects $40 million in annual cost savings

Louisville has a kick-ass bookstore. I like visiting the place once a month or so They run local author forums. The staff READS in a way that makes me and my goal of a book a week or 20K pages a quarter look like a lightweight. I went in a month ago and said I was reading Alone Together and had a 10 minute conversation on how the internet is creating a bigger demand for long form readers and people are joining the in-person book club because people are starting to get burnt out on social media. Good luck having that sort of interaction in anything other than an independent establishment that invests in its employees.

They also carry magazines, foreign newspapers, local schlock, NYT highbrow and will order just about everything and anything that they can get an ISBN number from. I've intentionally bought from them rather than Amazon because they earned my patronage. The one drawback is that I have to go there on the way home from work and getting in and out during those times is a bit rough.

They also do partner projects with the Library. They used to run a writer's forum to help kids write better school papers but I an not sure they do that any more. After all if they are in the library they might end up buying books as well as borrowing.

Bookstores can and do compete. They have to offer something that a website can't: people. That requires investment in your staff, the community and building more people reading books.

user-inactivated  ·  2240 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: All of Bob Ross's 'Joy of Painting' episodes are now free to watch.

I recall not long ago when Twitch.tv streamed all the episodes, in order. At one point 200K people were watching, more than any other streamer, game or personality. More than DOTA, more than CS:GO, more than League. Over 700,000 followers, more than 14 million views on some episodes.

I cannot tell you why, but these facts warm even my cold, black heart.

user-inactivated  ·  2253 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 6 of 10 most expensive cities in the world are in California. 4 of 10 are in the bay area.

I wrote my mortgage check today sitting on the deck looking over my couple of acres. My favorite $455 check I write every month. My mortgage is less than my car payment.

user-inactivated  ·  2256 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: No Really, Why Don’t Cities Collectively Bargain for Amazon’s HQ2?

The HQ is a blatant cash grab. It is going to cost $10 billion all said and done, IMO, once the bidding war is over. This is a trillion dollar company and $10 Billion is a rounding error. But the taxpayers are going to get soaked for a minimal gain.

Foxconn get $4 billion and it looks like the plant will create 13K jobs, most of those NOT the high paying jobs mentioned. And all the payroll taxes of these employees will go to Foxconn, not the government. $4 bill for 13K people? How much for 50K workers?

The EU bans these types of competitive bidding wars, and I wish we had a functional government in the US that did the same.

user-inactivated  ·  2278 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What are your goals for 2018?

Goal 1. Don't die. I have too much to do.

Goal 2. Get this health shit figured out.

user-inactivated  ·  2325 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Behind the lucrative assembly line of student loan default lawsuits

Health sucks. I've dropped 25K or so this year all said and done. I plan on fighting like the third monkey on the ramp to the ark until they can get shit pinned down and fixed.

Moral to the story? Don't grow up poor, don't be homeless and don't let yourself fall into malnutrition habits.

user-inactivated  ·  2335 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: I Don’t Want My Co-workers to Know How Rich I Am

Great read, thanks. I have the same pangs when I hear people live paycheck to paycheck and here I am living with a year take-home in the bank. No way in hell do I want that getting around at work.

user-inactivated  ·  2358 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: California wildfires kill 21 including elderly couple

The issue is that the people living in these communities have zero. nothing. nada. zilch. This type of firestorm rolls through and vaporizes the water in the concrete in the foundations and sidewalks. Anything less than 4-5 feet underground is melted. Basic infrastructure is nonexistent. manhole covers melt. My Uncle was a lucky winner in one of these fires a decade or so back. He rebuilt, but one of the things you don't think about is that the heat from the fire sterilizes the ground and they have to roll in "live" dirt else nothing grows for a few years. They had to dig out the streets and replace the water and power lines. They had to redo the roadways as the asphalt changed chemically into a weird glassy substance that had sharp ripples in it. They had to fix sidewalks. Cars MELTED and rivers of molten metal had to be dealt with!

At least it looks like Calistoga is not going to be wiped out like they feared. Something like 10 wineries are simply gone.

The pictures of the Santa Rosa area are not showing the scale from what I've seen with my own eyes in events like this. The fire was most likely a mile wide and left NOTHING in its wake. Next year the rebuilding will be in full swing, and that is assuming they can get the skilled labour up there, what with Irma, Maria, Harvey and the earthquakes in Mexico. All those areas need skilled labour as well. Now is a great time to go into construction, plumbing, electrical, drywall if you know people who need jobs and are willing to learn.

Going there to help the economy sounds good on the surface. But think about all the work that needs to be done, the massive influx of people to rebuild and the cash going out for things like infrastructure repair, plywood etc. It is going to be winter in three months, which is wet in that part of the state. So next on the list is mudslide season. Expect articles in a few months about how mudslides are hindering the recovery. hell, it is going to take months to just get the insurance appraisals. (My Uncle did not have any relief from any insurance for something like two months. Only so many appraisers, places to stay while rebuilding etc.)

It is going to be a year, if they get a series of very luck breaks, before they can go full on tourist again. And that is if they can knock down the fires before the end of the month.

user-inactivated  ·  2396 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Starbucks Classroom

    Ms. Delzer is a member of a growing tribe of teacher influencers, many of whom promote classroom technology. They attract notice through their blogs, social media accounts and conference talks. And they are cultivated not only by start-ups like Seesaw, but by giants like Amazon, Apple, Google and Microsoft, to influence which tools are used to teach American schoolchildren.

Why does this make me angry?

user-inactivated  ·  2428 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Have Smartphones Destroyed a Generation?

When I post these types of articles I post the exact title that the editor/author used. I put commentary in the comment. I am glad that you got something else out of the article and did not go in with a preconceived "old fart" bias.

user-inactivated  ·  2440 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Happy Saturday Hubski. Have a homesteader hanging out with some of his barn pals.

Processing astrophotos is fucking hard. But this week I hit that "OH SHIT I GET IT" moment. The telescope had issues that I think I fixed and if I can brave the death heat I am going to do some data gathering this weekend.

user-inactivated  ·  2449 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: New Pictures from Juno's Closest Flyby of Jupiter's Great Red Spot

There is an abnormality with the thrusters. It may be nothing, but they can do all the work they want in the current orbit so they are not risking changing the orbit. I love that they dump the raw images on the internet and the astrophotography community is playing with the data almost in real time.

user-inactivated  ·  2453 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: We’re losing a whole generation of young men to video games

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.

user-inactivated  ·  2518 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Turns out Yik Yak *wasn't* worth $400m. WHO KNEW.

    Turns out Yik Yak wasn't worth $400m. WHO KNEW.

Anyone who has ever used the internet and does not live inside the Silicon Valley Venture Capital bullshit bubble?

user-inactivated  ·  2524 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Old Handsign Meaning "OK" Triggers Girl Who Once Saw a Pepe Meme Doing It

It is an old 4Chan joke. To explain it would take about an hour, but the central core is that a significant portion of 4Chan users have some form of autism. It's been weaponized to attack Shia LeBeof, to attack Scientology, to find ISIS camps. It has also been used to mess with people and ruin innocent (well kinda innocent) people.

"Peak Autism" is a self-effacing joke at the expense of the person speaking. The term is usually used in reference to someone with no social awareness who does not get a joke or obvious sarcasm.

Example? What do you call a group of Autistic adults sitting around a table? Engineers.

user-inactivated  ·  2524 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Men won't volunteer to help the Scouts for one depressing reason: they'll be labelled paedophiles

    It's a difficult situation. Are there any ideas floating around about how to solve this situation?

A kid living in the west right now is living in a place of health and safety that has NEVER existed before in human history. We have lost the collective societal memory of everyone burying their young children, and done so in roughly two generations. Go find a 100+ year old graveyard and look at the family plots. Infant, Infant, toddler, toddler, 10 year old killed on the farm, 16 year old killed in war, and a few women dead in childbirth to finish off the picture. Hell go find a graveyard from the 40's and 50's and look at the kid's graves; you will easily be able to pick out the smallpox and measles outbreaks by the dates and clustering of ages.

Despite the shitshow that is the media, crime is at historic lows. As in it may have never been this low before. The odds of you being a victim of a violent crime are nil unless you are a part of the illegal drug trade.

Short of throttling the free press and changing education from the ground up while at the same time forcing families to stay together no matter what? The reason things are this bad are purely moral panics. And the only way I see to end those is to end the First Amendment. I find that unacceptable so there has to be another way.

user-inactivated  ·  2529 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Any multi-lifetime space projects on the map?

Alan Stern, the lead on New Horizons has spent an entire career making this mission happen. His first proposal for a Kuiper Belt/Pluto Probe was in the mid-80's. This is a whole career pushing for a singular mission.

The Jupiter moon missions are being pushed by people who were engineers for the Voyagers.

Something tells me that you do not mean a whole lifetime to get something launched, but there are a few examples.

user-inactivated  ·  2530 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: There might not be a ‘Planet Nine’ after all

That quote was from Cosmos, speaking about the discovery about the new-found moon circling the planet. I know it is out there, just need to work on my google-fu because sweet fucking retards of shit. You do a space search anymore and it is all churches and conspiracy tards and flat earth fuckery. These people must have tons of cash. Seeing that most of these guys are in their late 60's my guess is retired and nothing else to spend their SSI on. (sorry end of rant).

The Neptune, perbutations? They cleaned the main telescope used during the data collection, this caused a change in the pointing of the equipment. This explains why nobody else outside of France were able to find the change in speed. It was not until Voyager 2 went by Neptune in 1989 that the exact mass of Neptune was worked out; with that data point all the math using Neptune to find "Planet X" went away.

user-inactivated  ·  2571 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Sci-Fi club no. 29: Cowboy Bebop Discussion

Beef is expensive. If you don't have refrigeration, then you milk cows and make butter because butter lasts longer and you can cook with it. Milk you have to use asap, and when you don't have Pasteurization it goes south even faster. And when you need to farm all the grain you can to pay taxes, you are left with the shit at the sides, root veggies, chicken, pork on rare occasions, and tons of butter.

Coq-a-vin is another example. This used to be poor people food; the old chickens that were nothing but tough meat and gristle needed long cook times to make edible. Throw some cheap root veggies in that and you get a good soup that has a decent nutritional base.

The, admittedly racist, stereotype of Black southerners eating watermelon and fried chicken? same thing. Chickens are cheap to raise and breed, you can eat the eggs, feed them kitchen waste, and then when they are no longer productive, eat them. Frying chicken parts in oil is an efficient way to get the most out of the food when every dollar counts. Watermelon was cheap to grow as a side project and many slaves grew it to sell for extra cash.

Hamburger was poverty food, now a staple. Sausage was a way to get edible food out of the offal and slaughterhouse waste with the added benefit that you can store it for weeks/months. Same with Haggis and Shepard's Pie. The cycle is fairly standard.

user-inactivated  ·  2576 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why everyone hates the GOP's new healthcare plan

The bill is 66 pages long, six of those pages are dealing with the nationally important issue of how lottery winners will interact with Medicare. WHY IS THIS NOT A JOKE? WHY?

user-inactivated  ·  2591 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: David Brooks finds a way to blame the children

17 year olds are hurting for jobs, and they are doubling down on sports, after school activities etc to build a portfolio to get accepted into a scholarship program. These kids no have any money, and fuckwits like Brooks are shaking their fists at the sky demanding they be like they were in the 60's. The license itself is cheap, but the car, insurance, gas et al is expensive.