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francopoli's comments
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user-inactivated  ·  2048 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: New York City has more skyscrapers than these countries

    But some of New York City's glory has faded since the late 20th century. It lost the mantle of having the tallest building in the world when Chicago built Sears Tower (442.1 meters / 1,450 feet) in 1874, and New York City hasn't reclaimed it since and won't likely anytime soon.

1874... Does anyone edit their shit any more?

user-inactivated  ·  2060 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Tesla stock leaps after Elon Musk tweets about taking electric car company private

You mentioned in a thread about Blue Origin and Amazon that we may have to trust space travel to psychopaths with billions of spare wealth to throw around. Aliens is starting to look like a documentary.

user-inactivated  ·  2072 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 288th Weekly "Share Some Music You've Been Into Lately" Thread

user-inactivated  ·  2076 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How to Beat LinkedIn: The Game

The thing that shocks me about Linkedin is how much non work related stuff people post there. As if facebook is not terrible enough, you post politics, conspiracy theories and memes on the social media you use to look for jobs?

user-inactivated  ·  2078 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: “Deepfakes” Creates Fake Celebrity Porn.

    I think that privacy as we think of it is going to go the way of the dinosaurs.

I think you are dead wrong. Privacy is a dead concept. There are cameras everywhere and every bit of info about your life, even stuff you don't know exists, is in a database that is being shared. Your hacked data is being sold due to security breaches at companies you have NEVER interacted with (Equifax is just one example).

And on top of that, the young people I interact with have no concept of a private life. EVERYTHING they do is under public scrutiny. By the time these people get into a position to make and enforce laws, I'll be dead. Yet I still care about this issue. Privacy is a vital human right. It is needed for a free society to exist. It is needed for a representative democracy to exist. Privacy is a critical core need for a sane, healthy, human mind.

And this critical component of who we are was taken from us to sell advertising, starting in the 1950's.

user-inactivated  ·  2080 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Special counsel Robert Mueller asks for immunity for five potential witnesses in Paul Manafort trial

That would be the icing on the fucking cake, would it not?

user-inactivated  ·  2089 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Unreliable Witnesses

Human memory is shit, easily altered, and the worst way to recall an event. The courts are finding this out. When video contradicts someone's story, I'm inclined to believe that the person honestly thinks the event happened as they remember it. But memories can be fudged. People can remember things as an event when they never happened. Our brains are amazing things and the more I know and learn about how the mind works the more in awe I am that we Humans have been able to do ANYTHING other than hunt antelope on the plains of Africa. You do not remember an event... the way your brain works is that you recall the last time you remembered something. each time you pull that memory a game of Chinese fire drill is going on in your grey matter.

The brain and the mind fascinate me.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4183265/

My Uncle loves her and has a facebook feed full of her quotes and talks. This alone cements my opinion that this person should not be a judge, much less a Supreme Court Justice.

user-inactivated  ·  2094 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: July 4, 2018

    And have at least a year worth of money to get by on should I be laid off tomorrow

That is the best feeling in the whole world. I'll die on that hill. Looking at that savings, and seeing that number? That is what freedome feels like.

user-inactivated  ·  2096 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Ky. governor cancels Medicaid dental, vision benefits after losing work requirement ruling

    I'm not finding a rationale except fuck the poor

The GOP platform in a nutshell.

user-inactivated  ·  2099 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Science fans of Hubski. What bit of science related trivia are you always excited to share with someone?

Smallpox killed as many as 10% of all the human beings that have ever lived. I've seen that as high as 20%. Today there is a conversation on the ethics of destroying the last live samples of Smallpox, which today lives in two laboratories: one in the US and one in Russia.

In 1967 the World Health Organization, along with multiple governments, pushed to get rid of one of out biggest mass murderers. Smallpox was declared eradicated in 1980. Smallpox is terrible and we are better off that it is gone.

Not so much a science, although the science behind vaccines is amazing, but I put this story out there to show what we can do on this spinning ball of rock once we put all the nonsense away and get down to the work.

  WHO page on Smallpox
user-inactivated  ·  2100 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Best evidence yet for alien life on Saturn's moon found by scientists

Not really. For life as we know it you need a few very simple things. First, you need liquid water. Gotta be liquid; ice and vapor won't work. Second, you need carbon. Third, you need a source of non-carbon atoms, for example at the bottom of a body of water. Finally, you need an energy source.

Enceladus has all of that. There is a pool of water about the size of the Indian Ocean. There is an energy source keeping this water liquid for long periods of time. Cassini flew through the plumes and found evidence that this water is in contact with stone/rock, similar to what we find at the bottom of the earth's oceans.

And the new data is that in those plumes, was organic molecules.

Did they find life? Nope. But all the stuff we would expect to find on a place where life can exist is all there. We need to go back to Enceladus, land, and see if anything is alive in that puddle.

user-inactivated  ·  2108 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: June 20, 2018

Everything that I want to share is buried under an NDA of one form of another. It sucks. The stuff that excites me? The NDA has an NDA. And that is not a joke on the status of American society; I literally cannot talk about the contents of the NDA other than to say I am under an NDA. To be pedantic about the situation, I cannot even name the reason, OR EVEN THE ORIGINATING ENTITY OF, the NDA only that it exists and I am held to its constraints. From what the language says, I cannot even mention WHY I am under the NDA. I'm having serious flashbacks to tech bullshit from 20 years ago.

Everything else in life sucks. Been a shit month. The year has been shit for the hobby as the air is full of clouds and rain, not good for astronomy. Spring ends at 0200UTC Thursday and I've been under a starry sky 5-6 times the whole season.

user-inactivated  ·  2111 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 283rd Weekly "Share Some Music You've Been Into Lately" Thread

user-inactivated  ·  2113 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Maybe Just Don't Drink Coffee

The only special shit I do to coffee is a French Press. I guy the lowest tier fresh stuff, grind it at the house and french press. I even bought a kettle.

The stuff at work is the cheapest garbage that they could find and still legally call it coffee. I have to put a hit of half-and-half in it to mask the taste of the used socks I am certain they add to the grounds.

The best coffee is free, the next best is hot. And yea I am addicted and need the drug to be able to deal with people.

user-inactivated  ·  2120 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Demi Lovato proved what we didn't want to admit: male sexual assault is still seen as a laughing matter

    What drove me to comment as I did is that so often, these stories come with an unspoken (or sometimes explicitly spoken) tag line of "and where are the feminists who say they're for equality?" When it happens, it always comes off to me like the News commentators who ask about black-on-black violence after a white cop kills a black kid.

Then I did not comprehend a meaning correctly. That's on me.

    But again, I need to reinforce that the only people I see talking about these stories are intersectional feminists and queer people.

Then you must be looking in online spaces. Guys don't talk about shit like this in public forums because anyone running a background check on your for a job, security clearance, etc that finds posts about you talking about self harm and suicide? You don't get the job. Even these posts, if found by a company running a background check, could be career death for me. There are things I'd love to talk about but do not dare say here because Hubski is google indexed and will show up in spot #1 on any search of my name.

But back to the topic you bring up. Men don't talk about this shit in public because nobody gives a shit if men kill themselves, so why bother. And if they do, a major spotlight ends up right in their face and nobody wants that.

user-inactivated  ·  2127 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: PSA: The hubwheel is not a "like" button.

    users never use a system as intended

The official motto of every fucking I.T. Worker.

user-inactivated  ·  2132 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Great Fertility Reversion

I'll be dead in 10 years, so everyone dependent on SSI can go get fucked. This generation killed unions, pensions, is waging a war on education, and crying about lazy kids wanting handouts.

Fuck 'em.

user-inactivated  ·  2135 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Trump cancels Kim summit amid North Korea 'hostility'

And nobody who has been paying attention is shocked. At lest he waited until they destroyed the nuclear tunnels before screwing up the summit.

user-inactivated  ·  2138 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: 279th Weekly "Share Some Music You've Been Into Lately" Thread

I've been cranking the Rumjacks pretty much nonstop over the last few weeks. Will move back to black metal here in a few days.

user-inactivated  ·  2141 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Santa Fe High School shooting in Texas: At least 8 killed, sheriff says - CNN

Oliver North will reign in the NRA and make it better /s

user-inactivated  ·  2150 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: May 9, 2018

Take a break and come back in 3-4 months. We'll keep the beer cold.

user-inactivated  ·  2157 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: TotalBiscuit Cancer Update: YouTuber John Bain Liver Failing, Warns Fans ‘I Don't Have Long Left’

He is one of the more important online e-celebs in an industry that does 70+Billion in revenue a year. Why would it feel strange?

user-inactivated  ·  2158 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Americans Are A Lonely Lot, And Young People Bear The Heaviest Burden

I have two hard science hobbies that put me around two very different groups of people; I attend a few events a month. I do one "professional" level event a quarter and should probably increase that. I'm starting to be convinced that most people complaining of 'social anxiety' are just set in a sedentary mindset and need to get out of that comfort zone and make a new habit of being around people. (And yes, there are people with a real medical issue and they need help, but they are rare.)

It is easy to sit at home and do... nothing? That is not the correct word. Absorb passive entertainment is what I am thinking of, but there has to be a better word. There are a lot of people out there, and I am one, that need to work hard to change personal habits. Once I get into that easy slide of go home open a book and notice that it is 0100 I have to fight and get out and do something more productive. Everyone does. Reading threads like this makes me understand Jordan Peterson's fame and not dismiss it like I did when he first came out onto the scene.

My dad would have called these 'kids' lazy. That also is not the correct word. An object at rest will stay at rest until acted upon by an external force. That external force is you and your will. Nobody is going to swoop in and rescue you, you are not going to win the lottery, and you won't get a better job unless you get out and make contacts and interact with people outside of the internet. Just like I have to really force my brain to want to exercise and eat right, just like I have to force myself to stick to a sleep schedule, so do most people have to work on those positive habits that get them out of the house and face to face with people. and it don't really cost that much, hell some of the things I mentioned are free. Get a library card and hang out in the local branch. Go to an author forum. Planet Fitness is a bad gym, but it is also $10 a month. Start working out and exercising, and in 3-4 months you will notice the same people there when you go. Once you are in the motion of going to the gym, start saying hello to people.

    And if you don't have friends or family to do things with, go anyway. Go be around people. Pick something and go do it.

Or so what you said in fewer words.

    The world doesn't seem so lonely when you participate in it.

Bingo. This is the root of the issue. Go read the "twoXchromosones" subreddit and look at the issues some of those people are complaining about, as an example. The ones saying their lives suck don't do anything. This was the deal with the incel subreddit as well. "Women hate me." Ok, dude, what do you do. Nothing. And then they get made when you tell them to suck it up and start doing shit.

I live alone, but am not lonely. I have hobbies that sometimes involve me to be by myself for most of the day, yet I also interact with people regularly. I have a better thought here, I really do, but in the process of typing this reply I lost it. drats.

user-inactivated  ·  2158 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Trump says he will be impeached if Republicans are routed in midterms

The 2018 election is going to be a turnout election. IF voter turnout is 20% the Democrats are going to lose everywhere. If the turnout is 50% that means that more new voters, younger people, and people in the middle go to the polls. If they can hit that 50% there will be a wave. The rest of the year watch the get out the vote drives kick in hard.

IF, and I say IF Beto gets within the error bar, shit is going to get very serious everywhere. I just hope that the DNC can take a moment and remember that there are down-ticket races and overcome the damage that was done during Obama.

I'm hopeful, but very cautious.

user-inactivated  ·  2158 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The Myopia Boom

One of the reasons that telescopes were invented in the late 1500's was due to the Gutenberg Press. Books went from costing a year's salary to a month's, in some cases a weeks' pay; the wiki page says that 20 million books were in circulation by 1500. Now that more and more people were able to read, and afford the books to do so, the need for eyeglasses increased. The rise of the Dutch glass-works industry and the optical glass they made lead to the first spyglasses; rumors of the leaking of said information leading to death are exaggerated. It is not really a shock that a Dutchman filed the first patents for a telescopes. Note that although the patent was filed in 1608, spyglasses were in use on ships for at least a decade prior.

My hope is that all the new reading and looking at screens will produce a similar jump in optical aids, and I can hopefully live long enough to get robotic eyes to replace the shitty under-performing units I was born with.

user-inactivated  ·  2171 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why do young men worship Professor Jordan Peterson?

I first saw people talking about him on 4chan a while back, right about the time he was starting to rise. Then he was on a Joe Rogan podcast, 2ish years ago. He's blown up on the internet of late mainly due to the god-awful, terrible, just horribly bad interview he did in the UK.

user-inactivated  ·  2172 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: What's the best weather app?

This is what we are doing, after a fashion, for our observatory. We have a hook in that a guy at NOAA likes our club and is going to see what he can do for us.

Air Quality monitor, All-Sky camera, Weather Station, Internet Connect everything. In a spot in the country where there are no other weather reporting stations in 30 miles. We are also crying poverty and seeing about grants etc as we are "helping" the community.

user-inactivated  ·  2173 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Global shipping in 'historic' climate deal

Interestingly, the jets that are coming down the pike fly higher and faster, and will produce vapour trails and contrails in the Stratosphere. After 9/11 they got a chance to do some data gathering and noticed that daytime temps are lower in areas with contrails, but it also does not cool down as much at night. So, if we run a bunch of aircraft to make clouds to reflect sunlight, what exactly will that do?

One of the potential solutions talked about a while back was to change global airline flight paths to go over the North Pole area to increase upper level clouds and block sunlight from melting the polar caps. But if those same clouds trap heat, could it also be a negative.

The problem of aviation is that the margins are tiny and any increase of operating expenses will cause a massive lobbying push for handouts.