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The Weird, Random or Interesting Things That Fit Nowhere Else Thread


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Posted

Since reading a book about the New Horizons mission to Pluto I have found everything about the little guy of our solar system just fascinating. But this especially:

 

nh-mountainousshorline_0-800x637.jpg

 

How can a planet with so little gravity and only the most tenuous of atmospheres have enough gas density in that atmosphere to actually move the methane and nitrogen ice on it's surface enough to form dunes?

 

F1.large_-800x753.jpg

 

 

F4.large_-800x884.jpg

 

 

I found this write up fascinating: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pluto-has-dunes-but-theyre-not-made-of-sand/

  • Like 4

"While it is true you learn with age, the down side is what you often learn is what a damn fool you were before"

Thomas Sowell

Posted

Miss America pageants are dropping the swim suit competition: https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Culture/miss-america-scrapping-swimsuit-competition-longer-judge-based/story?id=55638426

 

This first thing i thought when I read this was "Miss America pageants are still going on?"

"While it is true you learn with age, the down side is what you often learn is what a damn fool you were before"

Thomas Sowell

Posted

I think 'who cares' is precisely the reasoning at this point; according to them, people who still tune in (and I think ratings have been down for years) are primarily tuning in for the talent portion, not the swimsuit and evening wear competitions.  So they're maximizing the reality show like aspects of the program (personality and talent) and scrapping the rest to try and reinvent the program for a modern audience (and scrapping the Pageant name, its now the Miss America Competition).

  • Like 1

I cannot - yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do "must" and "cannot" meet? Yet I must - but I cannot! ~ Ro-Man

Posted

Just as an aside, the whole pageant circuit is also a scholarship program for women. My wife was able to cover a couple semesters of school by participating in them.

Posted

Old article

 

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/moscows-metro-dogs

 

 

 

Rather than chasing the dogs away, metro workers fed them. Riders, too, were kind: if a tired dog fell asleep in the middle of a marble station, people walked around the animal to avoid waking him. The dogs have learned to recognize stations from the announcers’ voices—though Neuronov added that he doubts the oft-repeated assertion that, like humans, the commuting dogs occasionally fall asleep and miss their stops. “There are three models of metro dogs,” he explained: dogs who live in the subway but do not travel, dogs who use the subway to travel short distances instead of walking, and entrepreneurial dogs who spend the day riding back and forth, busking. This last type of dog takes long trips, working the crowd for treats and emotional contact. (On trains, dogs “seeking tenderness” are particularly inclined to approach women over forty who are carrying large shopping bags.) And, according to the results of a study Neuronov conducted of the Red Line, some dogs hop on the train for purely recreational reasons. “Like in human society,” he said, “there are dogs who are inclined to see new places.”
  • Like 2

Why has elegance found so little following? Elegance has the disadvantage that hard work is needed to achieve it and a good education to appreciate it. - Edsger Wybe Dijkstra

Posted

 

Old article

 

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/moscows-metro-dogs

 

 

 

Rather than chasing the dogs away, metro workers fed them. Riders, too, were kind: if a tired dog fell asleep in the middle of a marble station, people walked around the animal to avoid waking him. The dogs have learned to recognize stations from the announcers’ voices—though Neuronov added that he doubts the oft-repeated assertion that, like humans, the commuting dogs occasionally fall asleep and miss their stops. “There are three models of metro dogs,” he explained: dogs who live in the subway but do not travel, dogs who use the subway to travel short distances instead of walking, and entrepreneurial dogs who spend the day riding back and forth, busking. This last type of dog takes long trips, working the crowd for treats and emotional contact. (On trains, dogs “seeking tenderness” are particularly inclined to approach women over forty who are carrying large shopping bags.) And, according to the results of a study Neuronov conducted of the Red Line, some dogs hop on the train for purely recreational reasons. “Like in human society,” he said, “there are dogs who are inclined to see new places.”

 

 

I approve of traveling dogs. Or, well, dogs in general.

 

Dogs are awesome.

  • Like 1
Posted

 

 

Old article

 

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/moscows-metro-dogs

 

 

 

Rather than chasing the dogs away, metro workers fed them. Riders, too, were kind: if a tired dog fell asleep in the middle of a marble station, people walked around the animal to avoid waking him. The dogs have learned to recognize stations from the announcers’ voices—though Neuronov added that he doubts the oft-repeated assertion that, like humans, the commuting dogs occasionally fall asleep and miss their stops. “There are three models of metro dogs,” he explained: dogs who live in the subway but do not travel, dogs who use the subway to travel short distances instead of walking, and entrepreneurial dogs who spend the day riding back and forth, busking. This last type of dog takes long trips, working the crowd for treats and emotional contact. (On trains, dogs “seeking tenderness” are particularly inclined to approach women over forty who are carrying large shopping bags.) And, according to the results of a study Neuronov conducted of the Red Line, some dogs hop on the train for purely recreational reasons. “Like in human society,” he said, “there are dogs who are inclined to see new places.”

 

 

I approve of traveling dogs. Or, well, dogs in general.

 

Dogs are awesome.

 

 

I'm more of a cat person myself, but I've warmed up to dogs.

Posted

All that will get you is a bunch of links to FAKE NEWS 'get rich quick schemes'. LMAO

  • Like 1

DWARVES IN PROJECT ETERNITY = VOLOURN HAS PLEDGED $250.

Posted

All that will get you is a bunch of links to FAKE NEWS 'get rich quick schemes'. LMAO

 

Hurry up and watch this video before it gets banned by the rich.

  • Like 3

No mind to think. No will to break. No voice to cry suffering.

Posted

iuuq_NV_00tubujd2_SL_usbepsp_SL_qm054690

 

I'm safe. :3

Civilization, in fact, grows more and more maudlin and hysterical; especially under democracy it tends to degenerate into a mere combat of crazes; the whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary. - H.L. Mencken

Posted

"While it is true you learn with age, the down side is what you often learn is what a damn fool you were before"

Thomas Sowell

Posted

I've read through part of this and still can't figure out if it's a hoax or not. It's hardly unheard to to write a completely bogus study that "sounds right" and appeals to certain biases just to see if it could get published. It is the exact thing you'd expect, pseudo-intellectual junk science that passes for legitimate studies. It's long but the gist of it is a study of the "Rape culture" and "homosexual" activities of dogs in dog parks and human reactions to them. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0966369X.2018.1475346?journalCode=cgpc20&

 

The thing that makes me thing this is a hoax is it essentially assigns human motivations and desires to explain the activity of dogs. Anyone who has spent more than 5 minutes in the company of a dog knows that does not work. Hey, the are sweet, lovable, smart (in their way) but they are not humans. They can't learn to think like humans. But humans CAN learn to understand them.

 

Of course the whole thing is not really about the dogs as it is about the human reaction to them. Which presumes dog owners don't really understand their furry friends. And for the most part I don't think that's true at all.

"While it is true you learn with age, the down side is what you often learn is what a damn fool you were before"

Thomas Sowell

Posted

It certainly sounds completely unscientific as it's trying to apply 'black feminist categories' to the dogs and whether they feel oppressed. It may be interesting as far as studying animal behavior goes, but they're doing it wrong by applying human behavior to it.

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