Last night our cable internet box randomly died. It’s totally fried and must be replaced. This happened just as my husband got home from work, waking me up to tell me the governor of NY had issued a warning about power outages during the Coronal Mass Ejection (there was a big solar storm last night) — basically I thought the world was ending and put my laptop in the oven. (it’s a faraday cage)
@Crispius@futurebird A faraday cage may protect electronics from an electrical pulse from the sun that, if bad enough might fry them? That was my desperate thinking.
It doesn’t help that my husband keeps calling solar storms “Carrington Events” which sounds much more ominous— especially if you know anything about the original Carrington Event— (telegraph lines caught fire due to a massive solar storm)
It’s looking like the cable internet box going dead is just a huge coincidence— but can you blame me for freaking out?
I had a dream the power went out in the Bronx and everyone went outside to look at the sky. Some people were scared because there was a sparkling arc of light above the silent black silhouettes of the buildings: but it was just the Milky Way and so few people had ever seen it with their own eyes (due to light pollution) that at first some thought it was the aura of a vast world ending solar storm.
@futurebird We had a "glowing cloud event" in Berlin once, with slightly less light than we have now. No one really knew what it was. Absolutely fascinating.
Wasn't this exactly what happened in Los Angeles a long while back:
"So foreign are the real night skies to Los Angeles that in 1994, after the Northridge earthquake jostled Angelenos awake at 4:31 a.m., the observatory received many calls asking about "the strange sky they had seen after the earthquake.""
@albertcardona@futurebird Whoa! I had no idea. I’m so envious of people in Iceland. Some of their cities have designated dark nights to give everyone a chance to really see the stars. I wish we could do that in NYC. Think of how memorable it would be. Don’t little New Yorkers deserve to know what the night sky really looks like? We’ve stolen the stars from them — but we could make it right. If we tried.
@futurebird@albertcardona
It's been my experience that most little kids in NYC never want to leave their own neighborhoods, let alone know what the world around them is really like. I've met people who thought "going down south" was taking the ferry to Staten Island.
The city really can feel like the center of the whole universe— I try to keep some perspective. Even in realizing that NYC isn’t even the largest most World City of World Cities anymore.
I see a kind of salvation in urbanism. But also the potential for myopia lurking everywhere.
@futurebird@drakenblackknight@albertcardona Trust me, that kind of miopia is by no means limited to cities. VT is a wonderful place in many respects but has its fair share and then some of that problem.
@futurebird
I can honestly believe that dream would happen.
Item 1: My wife was commuting home during the summer when the Canadian wildfire smoke blanketed half the country, and people were exclaiming that a total solar eclipse was why the sun looked red.
Item 2: There was a copypasta a while back about a little girl born and raised in a major city was spending a week in rural Texas and got scared because she saw the Milky Way (something she never saw before due to light pollution).
@drakenblackknight@futurebird There was that earthquake in Los Angeles which caused a major blackout. Quite a few people saw the milky way for the first time and thought they were seeing a gas leak, caused by the earthquake!
The last big one, I cycled home from work (just dumb luck I'd taken the bike that day), hung out with my neighbours, then went to the local pub, whose owner had bought a stack of mini blackboards from the local toy store and was tracking tabs on them. The Milky Way was right over our street. It was fantastic.
@lampsofgold@futurebird I think it would be therapeutic in so many ways. Is it really politically impossible? to insist that we all have a chance to see the stars every few years?
@futurebird@lampsofgold I've been living in cities for decades and I've been craving a real starry sky. (I went to summer camp in Northern Quebec.)
I love the idea but it would likely fail for the same old tired reason. It would have to be voluntary, they can't just cut everyone's power, but Fascist-Americans would take it on themselves to turn all their lights on even brighter than usual.
As always, a few psychopaths spoil everything. If we could fix that, everything else would work.
@TomSwirly@futurebird I’ve actually come to think that this kind of sentiment is the primary reason we can’t do things like this. We negotiate ourselves out of a position before we’ve even asked the question so of course it never happens. It doesn’t mean it’ll always be a slam dunk but it’ll for sure never happen if no one asks the question
@qkslvrwolf@lampsofgold You really hit the nail on the head here -- conservative assholes (is there another kind of conservative??) don't really care about whether what they want fits their paradigm, they just want what they want and anyone who doesn't can go jump in the lake.
@futurebird If your cable is a copper wire and not fiber optic then that’s exactly the sort of thing that’s likely to have a large induced current isn’t it? Just like telegraph wires during the Carrington Event. A laptop or phone isn’t big enough to induce a large current I don’t think.
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