rjshae

I stink, therefore...

I concur. Even many of his supporters say he'd be great, if only he'd shut up and stop saying stupid things. I find now the news services are grabbing just the bits and pieces of his rambling that they can assemble into a rational statement. It almost doesn't matter what he says, people will just pick out what they want to hear. Expect four more years of stupid concepts, instability, and a misguided foreign policy. I plan to tune him out as much as is humanly possible.

N/M

I've been enjoying the Fargo serials on Hulu. Typically I don't like police procedurals, but I do seem to enjoy crime series that show both sides of the story and take the time for character development.

The thing I don't really get about MAGA is, where's the plan? If supporters want to succeed, how are they going to do it? Nobody seems to be asking about that. About all the first term administration of DJT accomplished in that regard was adding tariffs, but that's a recidivist approach that history demonstrates will fail. Nations become great through advancing knowledge and technology, combined with resources. If you don't keep up with advances, others will leave you behind. But the MAGA party is decidedly opposed to various aspects of modern science: just take their views on RNA-based vaccines, for example. They merely seem content to roll back the clock, and succeed by making it worse for others. It's a zero-sum perspective with little chance of success.

Is it actually free speech when a significant number of said posts come from bots? Once nobody can spot an actual human opinion, you're just polluting the discussion.

Possibly. I do think the strong streak of isolationism that's now appearing was heavily influenced by DJT. I'm also not convinced that the party's embrace of disinformation and conspiracy theory would have been as strong. Although the distrust of science and an independent press was certainly in the works and likely has allowed the party to gain greater control of their messaging.

That is perhaps true for M-dwarfs (or a selection bias effect?), but this hypothesized star has 80% of a solar mass. A comparable star is Epsilon Eridani, which has a jovian planet and an rich asteroid system extending out to 75 AU. There may be other planets around Epsilon Eridani, but the star is active so radial velocity signals get drowned out. Planets in wider orbits may not show up because of the duration of the orbit and/or stellar activity. We need better technology.

I suppose the difference this time is the application of numerous computer simulations that are used to reproduce essentially all of the observed properties of TNOs. A K-type star is a significant interloper that would have been even more severely disrupted by the more massive Sun, possibly losing members to the Solar System. I wonder if this happened while the Sun was still part of its origin stellar association?

A Stellar Flyby Jumbled Up the Outer Solar System (Universe Today) It does explain a lot. I wonder if it does better than the 9th planet hypothesis that was raised a few years ago to explain the orbits of TNOs? Here's the original paper: Trajectory of the stellar flyby that shaped the outer Solar System (Nature) If they could find a captured object from the other star, that would be solid evidence.

Acolyte wasn't great, but it wasn't horrible either; just okay. I actually think it would have worked better as an animated series.

What I do find is that tends to end meaningful discussion, which is probably one reason it is used. "The other side does it too," just affirms confirmation bias because then neither side is doing anything wrong and you don't have to question your own beliefs.

It's more disturbing than funny to think that somebody has found a way to make the lithium battery explode remotely. I hope there's another explanation.

All this fuss about Taylor Swift's endorsement of Harris reminds me of Oprah Winfrey's support for Obama back in 2008. A pair of economists estimated it added a million votes for Obama. In this case, does it make any difference? Perhaps it brings out more of the youth vote? That group has historically had a low turnout.

It may be consequential, but politics is often stupid and ridiculous. Many people find real life much more interesting, and only pay attention when the election rolls around.

I finished watching the 30 episode Chinese language version of Three-Body on MPlex. It was pretty decent old-school sci-fi although the subtitles were on the poor side. The coolest sci-fi element was watching the tanker pass through the monofilament barrier in the penultimate episode. Some of the concepts were perhaps a bit far fetched, but hey it's sci-fi.

We went to watch Twisters. It was entertaining for the most part, but loud. So darn loud. We couldn't even hear each other's comments. Looks like cinemas are targeting nearly deaf people now.

I'm really hoping I get to roll out Jim Carrey's loser video again. Fun times.

The original Chinese version of Three Body (Problem) is streaming on MPlex, so I've been watching that with subtitles. It's been of pretty decent quality thus far.