Astronomy is a hobby for old people, mostly men. It also is a hobby for people with time and disposable income, but that is a separate rant. The median age of an amateur astronomer given by people in marketing is 54. Visual astronomers, like me, are a decade older. And we are dying off. The number of people buying high quality large visual telescopes is numbered in the hundreds per year. AstroPhysics, one such vendor sells under 200 telescopes a year most going to research universities. Stellarvue, another company of high quality gear, sold about 300 telescopes last year. The number of companies building these devices are in the single digits. Two companies building large Dobsonians style telescopes for visual observing see the writing on the wall, took their final orders and are closing forever. The three best mirror makers are no longer taking orders for visual mirrors, focusing instead on equipment for astrophotography and university research institutions as they upgrade decades-old telescopes. Looking at what Celestron offers and has in stock now, you have gear aimed at the instragram astrophoto community (median age 40) and shit-tier beginner garbage.

The pandemic ripped a massive hole in the astronomy community. So many older people either died or won't go to club events or star parties due to the Pandemic risks. We are a tightly knit community of weird people with a weird hobby and any loss of one of us is a massive loss of talent, skill, and knowledge. There is about to be a flood of good, higher end, visual astronomy gear on the market, but no buyers. Visual astronomy is hard, and very few people any more want a hard hobby. In the next few years there is going to be some high end gear that ends up donated to the dying astronomy clubs where it will collect dust until it is thrown out because it is taking up space. I saved one such device, rescued from an estate sale from a man I never met but talked to for years online. The 'scope is in my car outside this library I am using for wifi. I have a pad for it, and once lumber is not worth more by weight than platinum I intend to build a home for the telescope. I need to buy a few car batteries on the way home now that I think about it so I can power my new gear.

I know the argument incoming. But space is popular. No, it is not. Useless celebrity cunts like Neil Tyson are popular. I've met him before he was THE Neil DeGrasse Tyson back at TAM6... geezus that was only 8 years ago?

The last star party I helped run and organize ran afoul of the local college social media religious fanatics because we did not have "women friendly" facilities. At a primitive campground in a national park with no electric, running water or cell service. A place chosen for its off-grid location and lack of lights, electricity, and its isolation from even aircraft overflights. This was a shock to the dozen or so women astronomers that had been attending the event for a decade, the wives that tagged along for the peace and quiet and the two wives of the organizers running the organization since the 80's. We lost the financial and in-kind support from the local college because the lack of conveniences was "exclusionary." When the college pulled out, we lost the park service assistance with permits and the other hundred little things you need assistance with to make an event like this work. The state agency that had been helping us with portable toilets, traffic control, signage etc stopped returning our calls. From what we were able to gather, there was some popularity on social media for astrophotos in 2018-2019 and the group that wanted to participate were pissed they could not upload images to their websites or charge their phones and equipment. They complained to university officials and the state park service about us. There was a demand that we lug in a generator and build showers. The star party no longer exists; the two older couples all but said "fuck this shit" and noped out. They blame the pandemic, but the real reason is that none of the older volunteers feel like dealing with this crap, a lot of work for ungrateful people, no money and all the joy having been sucked out.

I got forced back online to buy gear. Since I am online, I reached out to some people I know in multiple clubs across the country. People bought telescopes during the pandemic, saw the hobby is hard, and dumped that gear on whatever organization showed up when someone googled "local astronomy group." The clubs that saw massive growth in numbers of members are now struggling with the loss of the clubs culture as people that have been around for years are pushed out by the flood of new people. I hope they ride the wave, get tons of new blood, volunteers and cash, but I've seen this before and these types of clubs will rarely last once the old timer volunteers are gone. The death knell of any niche hobby is popularity. If you are into a small hobby with a close community, pray to your deity of choice you never get noticed or popular. Its a shame because with the internet, the 10 people in Idaho into blacksmithing can get together virtually and learn from each other. They can share tips about gear, technique and design, and get better with effort and passion for something they enjoy. Then some big social media celebrity gets a following of people, notices you guys doing your own thing and seemingly enjoying yourselves and now your hobby is shit and you cannot buy equipment, your forums are flooded with new people without a clue drowning out the people with knowledge and those 10 original people all slip away offline and won't talk about their achievents and passions due to the connection with the influx of toxic shit and idiots. This story may be anecdotal fiction, or it may be a second hand account from the guy that moved my trailer to the property and helped me tie it down. Go find a knitting group that has been around 10 or more years if you think this is only a dude-bro issue. Because damn, those poor people got fucked over, hard, by the newcomers with their "bitch and stitch" stores and runs on yarn, thread, canvas and equipment. Back before I moved, a lady into video games and knitting told us all how she was kicked out of her knitting group because her being a 60 year old woman with grandkids and a husband of 40ish years made some of the new people uncomfortable. (The new people kicked her and her two "grandma" friends out of the facebook group and changed the venue on her) I watched cooking groups implode in real time due to the popularity of the terrible cooking channels and youtube famous "chefs." Giant 1000 people LAN parties died the same way, popularity of video games killed them and nobody will volunteer to run them any more. The new people that think they can get famous gaming do nothing but whine and stir shit swamping out the old timers; the culture that made these events fun died.

This rant is not just about a hobby I love dying (in this case literally). Its an old man rant on the state of the world and how social media is evil. Fame is a moral evil and social media feeds off its pursuit. Fame is the death of honor and dignity. Nobody chasing fame is a decent human being in my opinion. The character needed to dig in and get good at something, that mentality of put in the work with a plan to get good at something, that drive, that passion, that "This is fun and I don't give a shit who else cares" attitude is fading. Post a stupid video that hits the right algorithm on social media and the next thing you know you are being flown to be on a talk show and now can sponsor some crap product and cash out for simply existing. I've heard kids say they want to be youtubers, not realizing that those famous people work 100 hour weeks and the only reason they got famous is pure stupid chance. Tell them the work that goes into making a video worth watching, and you can see their face try to process a foreign concept for the first time. Social media is a moral evil that gives the unaware the idea that fame is good and easy. The few good parts of fame are shared and normalized; the bad, the struggles, the work is shoved into a memory hole because it only got three upvotes or likes. Everything worth doing has been converted into an instant gratification treadmill and that is why social media is terrible.

I am not sure anymore if the concept of "happy" exists. I think this idea is something we have a faith-like dedication to, to our detriment as a society. There is an emotion attached to accomplishment, not quite self-esteem, but something along those lines. You want to find a "happy" kid in a school? Find the kid that busted his ass to get a good grade on a test and ask him how he did it. Watch their face light us as they talk about the work they did. Is that happiness? Or is it something else? Find the kid that just completed his first skateboard trick. Find the kid that just built her first 3-D printed model from scratch. Find the guys in whatever shop class still exists and ask them about the stuff they are building. Find the kid that just nailed a guitar riff after 20 hours of trying. Find someone that just baked their first sourdough that does not suck from scratch. Those people will light up like a commercial parking lot if you get them talking about what it took to be successful. Is that "happy?" Or is it something else? Excluding the people with medical issues that need help, I think one of the reasons so many people are down, depressed and unfulfilled is because people are not DOING anything any more. Watching a movie is not DOING something. Consuming products is not DOING something. Merely existing is not DOING.

Hobbies are dying, and go ahead and argue if you want but I've seen the sales numbers. This could just be the ramblings of an old bitter jerk that walked away from a good job to go live in BanjoStan in a 700 square foot off grid trailer to watch the world die as he prepares to dance with the Reaper. Or it could be the observations of someone that first hand saw the decline of union labor, the stagnation of wages, the destruction of the middle class, the implosion of the nuclear family, the housing crisis and rent affordability bomb, all that big picture stuff no longer serving people that need or want to work for a living. If you are working two jobs to pay rent because multi-billion dollar hedge funds are destroying house affordability, you won't have a passion project. And guess what folks, overwork and no down time are not going to make you happy if all you are doing is treading water. One thing I picked up from the pandemic is the number of people that were forced to stay home, then started feeling better. They cooked at home, they worked out a bit, they felt less stress. Now that people are going back to work, I hope they can keep any hobby they picked up and use that to get a sense of accomplishment and feel good about themselves. and it makes me happy as hell that shitty service providers like restaurants and retail are closing because they won't pay their people and treat them with respect. Out here, the local wallmart is cutting hours because even at $18/hour nobody will work for them. Better to make $15 in construction outside and not deal with screaming idiots, mentally ill church people with entitlement complexes, and a management structure that sees you as sub human.

Life is way too short to hate your situation; I'm still angry it took me this long to figure that one out.

I'm just gonna post this here, since I'm sick of tormenting Hubski with these types of articles. This is a devastating long read.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/the-lab-leak-theory-inside-the-fight-to-uncover-covid-19s-origins

Quite a wild week.

First, I am done with my PhD. The defense went well. Different than I expected and quite tough, but the examiners were happy. The worst was my boss telling me that "we would have given you a summa cum laude, but you didn't publish yet". And the reason I didn't publish yet, is him. Then he wanted to give a short speech and decided to tell the anecdote that my previous PIs gave him contradictory recommendations about me. My Masters' supervisor was very positive while the guy that supervised my first PhD attempt (where I left after 3 months) told him that he should "not touch me". But you know, he gave me a "chance" and he is happy about it... And then went on to talk about our "conflicts" (which were quite few in 6 years in the lab). I was like.... I worked here for 6 years, and that is what you come up with? fuck you. Anyway. there was cake, and arabic food, and non-alcoholic drinks (so my father doesn't freak out) and all was well :)

Here is me, mid-incantation. I have a tie-dyed labcoat I wear to festivals (so people know where to get their drug infos and testing). My lab made me a new one to add to the collection :)

One of the few good family pictures! And one of the few times people will ever see me in more fancy clothes

Second, I might have a spot for a PostDoc! Through some contacts in an NGO that supports psychedelic research in Europe I got connected to a lab in Frankfurt, ran by two female PIs. One working on mice and the other on monkeys. They are doing cross-species translational studies in behavioral neuroscience. Additionally, they are interested in researching psychedelics :) Had two interviews with them and they liked me (and I like them!). They are a younger generation of idealists and it sounds quite nice. The only issue, I need to get my own money. Which means, writing grants... But I am excited to get a chance to work on a topic I am interested in with people that seem to be interested in supporting me for a change.

After the defense (which my family attended) we head to the alps (with a short visit in Ulm, the city I lived at before moving to Heidelberg). A day later, my aunt and grandma from Germany joined us. They just landed back from Mexico a day before and booked a room in the same hotel as us. My grandma was quite tired when she arrived, we all thought it was jetlag. The area we were at has strict COVID guidelines for unvaccinated people. So my grandma (85 years old) and my aunt had to do an antigen test every morning. Two days later my grandma tested positive. The test was repeated and again positive. The hotel urged us to pack our stuff and head back to Germany (in retrospect, they were just scared shitless and me and my parents shouldn't have left, but that's another story). My grandma and aunt head back to my aunts' place and me and my family were on our way back to Heidelberg. Yesterday I started to have a cough. Today I had a fever and a headache. The antigen test turned out positive today in the morning, currently awaiting the results of the PCR test.

Grandma is doing okay. Mild symptoms. I will also be fine. I am just super pissed because my goddamn aunt scared my grandma so much that she didn't get vaccinated, even though she had appointments back in February. And now, through her anti-vaxx shit and lack of responsibility (who the fuck flies to Mexico right now??) she managed to get my grandma and me infected and multiple people across Germany into a 2-week quarantine. In addition, ended a two-week holiday for a whole family which was quite expensive for us (we are not a wealthy family) and adding much more extra costs for everyone involved.

I always asked myself "who the hell are these people bringing all these variants into the countries?". Well, "my aunt" is now a definitive answer.

So, yeah, I will be spending my holidays at home, instead of the Austria alps or berlin. Exactly what I needed after a 6-month thesis crunch. I hope my infection doesn't go that bad. Luckily I already had one shot which is supposed to reduce the severity of infection and transmission.

So, if you have any recommendations for TV shows, games, movies, books (audio), let me know!

View from our room in austria, it was lovely!

There was still some ice on the tops. This one looked interesting...

COVID AIN'T GONE YET

So my wife has a colleague. Known her for... fifteen years? Trained under her backintheday, filled in for a couple years when her practice exploded, threw a couple employees her way, their network was built by me. Things have been congenial and polite through COVID 'cuz (A) they're Republican (B) they're anti-vax. So we don't hang out like we used to.

Colleague has a 80-year-old mom who lives with them. And about a month ago they decided fukkit let's vaycay so they ran off to Hawaii for ten days, leaving our posse to cover half their practice. Came back not feelin' great.

They decided to shine it on.

So we've got one person coming into the office with active, confirmed COVID and another person who would if only she weren't so goddamn sick and we're trying to keep this from becoming a public health problem and counseling their one about-to-bail-now employee as to how to not end up in dire peril with the health department. None of this was direct, mind you, all of it was back-channel, our hands are scrupulously clean. Ain't nobody died, errbody on the mend, and when we asked "hey wanna go halvesies on a crate of medical supplies" the answer was monosyllabic.

They ain't talkin' to us. Not because of anything we did, but because their worldview was wrong, our worldview was right, and now we're the bad guys.

Got another friend. She's delivered every grandkid for her ex-boss from back when she was an EMT. Which is a tradition that meant that rather than sticking to her own back yard 80 miles away, she decided to come deliver 20 miles north of us... in our support structure, where we know the EMTs, we know the hospitals, yadda yadda. Home birth, which is always less of a controlled experiment, and the mom was acting woozy and weird. Things stretched out to the point where it wasn't happenin' so it's time to transport to the hospitals we use.

At which point they show up, mom has a temp of 104, crash to emergency c-section, baby hits the NICU, grandma gets kicked out of the suite, and both mom'n'dad pop a rapid COVID positive. But not before they've tromped through half the goddamn hospital.

Greetings from Big Brother! as healthcare providers we can look your ass up in the vaccine database. Which means we know that while this couple said they were vaccinated to the friend? They also said they'd NEVER get vaccinated to the grandma and as it turns out, dad was vaccinated, mom wasn't. 'cuz, you know, lying to your healthcare provider is small potatoes compared to I dunno sub rosa supporting treason.

We'd been talking about going back to home births but we just had this catastrophe where another mom was so stoned out of her gourd that labor pain transmogrified into "my hip hurts" so they sat there smoking spliffs until we had to come crash their house because they weren't gonna make it. That combined with this "Patriots will happily lie to liberal traitors to get what they want" mentality is noping us the fuck out of that.

Right now? 97% of COVID cases are among the unvaccinated. If you're in the hospital? With COVID? There's a 99.7% chance you didn't get two shots.

So yeah we're rolling back protections but that's not because COVID is gone. It's because if you get COVID now it's because you fuckin' earned it and if you earned it, the hospitals now have the bandwidth to deal with your irresponsible, lying ass.

The conversation between the friend and the dad (mom just got off Oxygen yesterday, is still in the ICU) was framed around "well we meant to get vaccinated we just... forgot." Which, okay, if that's what you need to maintain your friendship across the gap of "thanks for driving a hundred miles to leave a flaming bag of poo on the doorstep of one of your friends" more power to you. We'll just not mention the Big Gulp's worth of nyquil and other shit you shouldn't be taking in labor that y'all were using to mask your symptoms 'cuz at the end of the day they aren't our patients (except they are now because we have pediatricians so fuck us I guess).

But fuckin' hell man my kid don't have a vaccine yet and neither do her friends, and the variants coasting around these days are mean.

So also fuck off.

https://sci-hub.se/

We have based our algorithm on the data from this article from Soundcharts.

Once we have the number of monthly streams from Spotify, we multiply the price-per-stream of each platform by the number of Spotify streams.

"Elon Musk walks into a pipefitter's union hall. The average wealth shoots up by a billion dollars per plumber."

So... the "this article" referenced has numbers. Those numbers don't match up to anyone else's numbers and everyone else's numbers don't match up to anything either. There's this need to believe that you can simply figure out how much money someone makes off of Spotify because then we can continue to feel good about paying a pittance to listen to our favorite artists over and over and over again. Your link:

Another major streaming player is Amazon Music.

As the other platforms, Amazon, don't publicly share the price-per-stream. This value approximates to $0.01196.

Taken into account this value, 83K monthly streams are needed for reaching the $1000 mark, the lowest so far, but still high!

The link they took their data from:

In full detail: Amazon Music Unlimited, Napster and Tidal got the top-3 rates at $0,0119, $0.0106 and $0.0099 respectively. However, don’t get too excited about Amazon’s numbers. The lion’s share of the tech giants subscribers are in fact over at Amazon Prime bundled streaming service — and for Amazon Prime, the average rate came to just 28% of the Unlimited’s payout, or $0,0034.

I worked with a guy who made his revenue entirely off of Youtube. He broke the economics (for him) down quite simply: any video with less than a million views earned him nothing. Did not even show up on his invoices. Any video with more than a million views made him about five thousand dollars. Each subsequent million views earned him about a thousand dollars. But those numbers were really wiggly and I guarantee that's what Youtube was paying him.

Look - a plane ticket from Seattle to Los Angeles used to cost about $300. I've probably bought a hundred of those. The least I've paid is $29 (no airline miles or other nonsense used - Delta was trying to assassinate Alaska Airlines). The most I've paid is $437. The most I've seen, however, is $5998.

And flight prices are hella easier to scrape than Spotify royalties.

flac Sorry for the wait. Been busy. Here is what I did. I think the song was probably better before :)

Tbh, the feature of this website I am most interested in is chat, but I am having difficulty obtaining a hub wheel.

This week has been great. I'm worried my mil is going to kill my cat bc she is psycho, and everyone in the house being vaccinated and starting to live our lives again shatters her Karen fantasy of being the only one allowed to leave the house and have all the power in her mind.

I started dieting bc I finally weighed myself for the first time in a year and I gained a lot over quarantine.

Hopefully I will finally get to see my parents for the first time in months on mothers day unless MIL snaps and poisons us all first.

My website is getting more page views than ever, but I'm still only making about $200 a month in sales, which after shipping costs and costs of materials actually comes out to like $80 a month.

I'm not trying to be a debbie downer, I am actually very excited for the months to come, and I'm not too bothered by the things I mentioned above, I just wanted to talk about what is on my mind.

Also I learned this week that tumblr hates Elon Musk... like why tho? People really do not care how much good a person does for the world, if they are on Forbes list they are automatically public enemy and I think it's stupid.

I bought a used crock pot on Ebay. I'm gonna try my hand at hot process soap making this week. It'll save a day on waiting to unmold loafs, and I will know for sure this way they are gelled all the way through.

I don’t believe in “work-life balance.” I don’t think our experience of living is binary. Life is life and can include work, nature, climbing, biking, picking up aluminum, parent care, child care, studying, and so on.

If we need, say, music in our lives and don’t have it, be attuned to the hunger. If you don’t feed yourself what you need (rest, contact with others, touch, hockey, whatever) you might become passive-aggressive, aggressive, or even develop panic attacks.

Moving in two weeks. Excited to be not living with my roommate anymore who doesn't know how to clean up any common area but can also clean his bathroom damn near weekly. Also excited to not be living with him because he makes a very hostile living area by just not saying anything which always makes me feel like I pissed him off somehow. Like dude we live together say hi or something. I can go weeks without talking with the guy. Much less excited to be moving back in with my parents, but the saving grace is I know it's very short-term. Not going to rent for a few months it's time to save like there's no tomorrow because I'm going to be heavily in debt in a year so now's the time to save. Gotta break the eggs to make the omelette. So that's the sacrifice I'm making.

Also, if y'all didn't see, I set up a NCAA March Madness bracket for full bragging rights if anyone chooses to join. Looks like we did one successfully 9 years ago and there was an attempt 8 years ago that was unsuccessful to get people to sign up, and nothing since. I'd say y'all are going down, but I'm guessing just as much as y'all are.

For Cumol

It's a two part recipe. Fancy up tahini and the actual hummus. Tahini will be first, followed by the hummus. I tried to find it online but all of them were ever so slightly off in one way or another. This is what the book says, plus the little changes I make.

Yield 4 cups, which is about double what you need for the hummus recipe, so I always halve this part.

1 head garlic

3/4 cup lemon juice (~3 lemons)

1 1/2 tsp kosher salt

2 generous cups tahini (Find super high-quality stuff, I got a dude near me that uses his parents' sesame crusher from Syria and stuff is phenomenal)

1/2 tsp ground cumin

Ice water -- variable amount

Don't peel the garlic, just rip the cloves apart and throw that, the lemon juice, and 1/2 tsp salt (other full tsp will be used later) into a blender. Blend it so the garlic is broken into a coarse puree. Only takes a few seconds. Then let that rest for like 10 minutes or so, allowing the garlic to mellow.

While that's sitting for 10 minutes, in a bowl throw together the tahini, rest of the salt, and cumin. Once the lemon garlic is done with its ten minute rest, get a very fine mesh strainer, and pour the lemon juice through it into the bowl with the tahini. Press down on the garlic chunks to get as much of the liquid out as you can.

With a good whisk (I've broken crappy whisks before doing this) start mixing that like there's no tomorrow. It's going to get really tough. As it thickens and toughens up, add ice water bit my bit (per the book ~1 1/2 cups, but I never measure I just keep adding until it's right. And it'd be 3/4 since I halve it, but again, you do you). Keep adding until it's super smooth. It'll lighten up in color and when I say super smooth I really do mean it. It'll be smooth and creamy and you'll have to stop yourself eating it all with a spoon and actually putting it in the hummus as it's supposed to be.

So now that we're done with that, we got the hummus recipe. I don't follow it perfectly because I think there's one step that's unnecessary but again, you do you.

1 cup dried chickpeas

2 tsp baking soda

1 1/2 cups tahini from above

1 tsp kosher salt

1/4 tsp ground cumin

Okay so here's where dude gets crazy. He wants you to soak a cup of dried chickpeas and one of the two tsp of baking soda in a bowl covered with at least 2 inches of water overnight.That's what I feel is unnecessary. I just use a can because it's damn near the same quantity and then I don't have to actually plan ahead. Idk can size in Europe, but over here a can of chickpeas is 15.5 oz and that size works perfectly.

So then he has you throw the chickpeas into a pot with the other one tsp of baking soda and bring it to a boil, then cover and lower to a simmer for an hour. I've forgotten the baking soda before, don't do that. It helps the skins all fall off in some magic science way. So as all that is simmering for an hour, skim the skins off every once in a while. Make sure they're all covered in water the whole time. And if they go longer that's totally fine the goal is to really cook them through and make them very tender and damn near fall apart. You'll probably have some fall apart that's fine.

While all that's boiling, put the tahini, salt, and cumin in a food processor. I use all the tahini not just 1 1/2 cups, not worth keeping that extra bit I wouldn't use it for anything, though I'm sure it'd have plenty of good uses, like a salad dressing or something, or just a straight spoon. Once the chickpeas are done boiling and you've skimmed off a good portion of those skins, dump them in a strainer to drain them, and then throw the cooked chickpeas in the food processor with the other stuff. Turn that on and let it run and run and run. I let it go for a few minutes just really make sure it's all really super smooth. And then, since you were boiling the chickpeas, it's still nice and warm at this point and you should really just eat it all in one sitting :)

Agreed

I have somehow tricked Emory into accepting me to their MPH program on top of the Johns Hopkins MHS. Global epidemiology and epidemiology respectively. Now only waiting for EuroPubHealth (will be notified by March 3) and Georgetown (no notification timeline).

Apartment lease ends at the end of March. I'll be moving in with my parents for a few months before shipping off to wherever I go come late summer/early fall. Parents still don't know I've applied. Waiting to hear back from EuroPubHealth before I tell them I applied so I can have some idea of whether or not I'm staying in these great United States.

Covid cases slowing down sharply which is great. It's allowing me to do a lot of data cleanup which was badly needed.