@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

michael_w_busch

@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online

Planetary astronomer, studying piles of rock in space. Reader of books. Drinker of tea. He/him. This is a personal account. To bigotry no sanction.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

johncarlosbaez, to random
@johncarlosbaez@mathstodon.xyz avatar

I want to read this book: A Darwinian Survival Guide. Sounds like a realistic view of what we need to do now. You can read an interview with one author, the biologist Daniel Brooks. A quote:

...

Daniel Brooks: What can we begin doing now that will increase the chances that those elements of technologically-dependent humanity will survive a general collapse, if that happens as a result of our unwillingness to begin to do anything effective with respect to climate change and human existence?

Peter Watts: So to be clear, you’re not talking about forestalling the collapse —

Daniel Brooks: No.

Peter Watts: — you’re talking about passing through that bottleneck and coming out the other side with some semblance of what we value intact.

Daniel Brooks: Yeah, that’s right. It is conceivable that if all of humanity suddenly decided to change its behavior, right now, we would emerge after 2050 with most everything intact, and we would be “OK.” We don’t think that’s realistic. It is a possibility, but we don’t think that’s a realistic possibility. We think that, in fact, most of humanity is committed to business as usual, and that’s what we’re really talking about: What can we begin doing now to try to shorten the period of time after the collapse, before we “recover”? In other words — and this is in analogy with Asimov’s Foundation trilogy — if we do nothing, there’s going to be a collapse and it’ll take 30,000 years for the galaxy to recover. But if we start doing things now, then it maybe only takes 1,000 years to recover. So using that analogy, what can some human beings start to do now that would shorten the period of time necessary to recover?

https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-collapse-is-coming-will-humanity-adapt/

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@johncarlosbaez I do not appreciate the parts of that interview where Daniel Brooks appears to treat the large majority of humans as disposable.

Quite possibly including himself: His imagined "prepper" small town would likely not be able to provide the appendectomy he once needed.

(Peter Watts does make a relevant point there; regarding Brooks' book being co-opted.)

One can work for the needed immediate systemic changes to maintain vital infrastructure without suggesting abandoning people.

ai6yr, to random

👀 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/22/us/justice-alito-flag-appeal-to-heaven.html #christiannationalism #scotus #terrorism #insurrection

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@evilotto @ai6yr I submit that going "no true Christian" or pointing out the contradictions between Samuel Alito's claimed beliefs and his actions is not that helpful.

Authoritarians do not care about hypocrisy.

Similarly; there is a contingent of American atheists who are willing to work with Christian nationalists because they value being able to engage in racist, sexist & otherwise bigoted forms of social control than they value having a secular government.

setiinstitute, to space
@setiinstitute@mastodon.social avatar

#PPOD: This stunning photo was taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) onboard the ESA's Mars Express spacecraft. Phobos is the larger and closer of Mars's two moons, the other being Deimos. One hypothesis of their origin involves the possible capture of primitive asteroids. Unfortunately, Phobos is being pulled apart and closer by Mars's tidal forces and gravity. Credit: ESA/DLR/FUBerlin/ @andrealuck CC BY (https://www.flickr.com/photos/192271236@N03/53635851891/)

#mars #phobos #space #science #scicomm

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@Nic @setiinstitute It is not true-color, but that is a real image from the Mars Express spacecraft.

There is an artifact from how it was taken: The spacecraft was tracking Phobos, so Mars appears with a wobbly blur to it.

CelloMomOnCars, to solar
@CelloMomOnCars@mastodon.social avatar

Smelting Without Fossil Fuels: Power Shatters the 1,000°C Barrier for Industrial Heating

"Swiss researchers have developed a solar energy method using synthetic quartz to achieve temperatures above 1,000°C for industrial processes, potentially replacing fossil fuels in the production of materials like steel and cement."

https://scitechdaily.com/smelting-steel-without-fossil-fuels-solar-power-shatters-the-1000c-barrier-for-industrial-heating/

Caveat: this is a lab result, albeit a promising one.

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@CelloMomOnCars @ai6yr It is not obvious to me that this solar thermal furnace is either useful or necessary for decarbonizing steel production.

A large fraction of steel smelting is already done in electric arc furnaces; which can be powered by any non-fossil-fuel generator, albeit at potentially lower efficiency?

ai6yr, to random

Hmm... #lutefisk

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@ai6yr @dogfox @mjausson @mjausson There was a time when some of my Irish ancestors may have preserved butter by fermenting it in a peat bog for a year or so.

Modern recreations are said to be an acquired taste, with a very strong "not nice" smell of rancid milk.

Personally, I have not needed to try that.

ai6yr, to random

Southern Florida once again has "EXTREME" Heat Risk today 5/18/24.

Extreme - This level of rare and/or long-duration extreme heat with little to no overnight relief affects anyone without effective cooling and/or adequate hydration. Impacts likely in most health systems, heat-sensitive industries and infrastructure.

https://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.gov/heatrisk/ #FLwx #heatwave

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@researchbuzz @ai6yr While Miami keeps flooding; the hurricanes are getting worse; and everyone in Florida is suffering through extreme heat events; the Florida GOP is trying to stop the state from talking about : https://floridaphoenix.com/2024/05/15/desantis-signs-bill-erasing-the-term-climate-change-from-state-law/

malcircuit, to random
@malcircuit@thingy.social avatar

Sci-fi: What if humanity built generation ships? That'd be cool, right?

Actual human history: You mean a designed, self-contained, indefinitely stable, culturally and ecologically sustainable society where everyone cooperates to work toward a far-off goal they will probably never see achieved?

Sci-fi: ...

Actual human history: dies laughing

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@malcircuit @nyrath

One thing I appreciated reading through Kelly and @ZachWeinersmith 's "A City On Mars" was that they made that point; as well as elaborating on what might happen to different social structures in such an environment.

Although they were focusing more on humans in the solar system; rather than people who would be indefinitely isolated by years of light travel time.

ai6yr, (edited ) to random

Oooh, look, Halloween in June!

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@ai6yr The particularly SoCal experience of having the advertised moulage artist for CERT drills.

I once had a drill in Los Angeles that was actually scheduled on Halloween so that we all could walk back afterwards without freaking everyone out...

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@ai6yr That CERT drill was outside the UCLA medical center. So I walked past a block of fraternity Halloween parties across the street with my shirt covered in fake blood up to the elbows.

And that was how I learned about the series "Dexter".

mastodonmigration, (edited ) to random
@mastodonmigration@mastodon.online avatar

So now SpaceX, with no working spacesuit, and years behind on it's multi-billion dollar moon lander, is lobbying NASA to go to the Hubble Space Telescope.

"A successful private mission could improve Hubble's ability to point at celestial objects and, by boosting its orbit, extend its life by years... however, an accident could leave the multibillion-dollar telescope broken — or, even more tragically, tethered to the dead bodies of the astronauts sent to repair it."

https://www.npr.org/2024/05/16/1250250249/spacex-repair-hubble-space-telescope-nasa-foia

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@mastodonmigration @simonbp I consider the peculiarly billionaire behavior of having no relevant experience or skills and then imagining that one should be allowed to recklessly endanger extremely expensive public property.

michael_w_busch, to random
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

twitter.com/?mx=1 is currently useable.

twitter.com is not.

Under Elon Musk's management Twitter evidently cannot even manage to consistently redirect a URL.

Addendum:

When I wrote this over on Twitter, it apparently automatically changed the links in my tweet to the non-functional "x . com" URLs: https://twitter.com/michael_w_busch/status/1791342757883109855

Which is not what I wrote.

If Twitter is going to change what I write without my consent and without cause; this may be it for me posting over there.

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

twitter.com works again.

But if I write "twitter .com" without breaks, Twitter is still automatically changing it to "x .com" without breaks - without my consent and without cause.

So I guess I will be posting over here instead.

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

Twitter continues to automatically change users' posts without consent and without cause.

Because under Elon Musk's management the company apparently wants to stop people from writing "twitter .com" without breaks.

vicgrinberg, to random
@vicgrinberg@mastodon.social avatar

I love Ursula LeGuin to bits (in three languages) - the shelf is (part of the) proof. But I never got the excitement about "The Ones Who Walks Away from Omelas".

I know what the story, the metaphor tries to say. But all that I see is how this is a story about walking away. Not stay and change: be the change, start the change, convince the others that things need to be better. But a story about keeping one's conscience clean and walking away. And the injustice left behind continues.

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@vicgrinberg Omelas has always struck me because of how opposite it is to The Dispossessed in that regard, despite Le Guin having written them within a year of one another.

nyrath, to random
@nyrath@spacey.space avatar

Derek Lowe's "Things I Will Not Work With", a series about insanely dangerous chemical compounds.

In this episode, The Higher States of Bromine.

https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/higher-states-bromine

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@klausman @nyrath One of the earlier entries in Derek Lowe's series (from 20 years ago now!) was nickel carbonyl: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/thing-i-won-t-work-2-nickel-carbonyl .

I knew about that stuff and how toxic it is because it has been suggested as a step in processing asteroid metal in free-fall.

But I later encountered it mentioned by Gordon Dickson in his last Dorsai! book; where he had someone use it as an improvised chemical weapon...

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@nyrath Derek Lowe's entry on chlorine trifluoride was particularly evocative: https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-save-you-time .

I first read that when I was working in an office across from a chip prototyping lab that kept a supply of it to burn oxide layers off of silicon wafers.

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@Sevoris @klausman @nyrath The planetary scientist John S. Lewis, who proposed that particular gas-phase system for processing nickel-iron, emphasized that the set up would be humans inside a shell of radiation shielding well off to one side; controlling the robotic systems doing the work.

But the idea still involved hauling around spacecraft loaded with tanks of carbon monoxide (and also halogens, because halocarbonyls are a thing that can exist).

That was quite a bit of risk all by itself.

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@nyrath @Sevoris @klausman I cannot change the laws of physics.

michael_w_busch, to northcarolina
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

Do not allow this or anything remotely like it, .

For so many reasons.

Roey Hadar @roeyhadar
2024 May 15

NC , a BAN ON WEARING MASKS IN PUBLIC, passes Senate 30-15.

The bill removes an exemption allowing masking for medical reasons.

Republican supporters say it will not criminalize mask wearing for health reasons but Democrats and the state's legislative analyst say it does.

michael_w_busch, to Minnesota
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

Looking out the window at the sunset:

Check your masks and run the air filters, .

(A side effect of having lived in California: Telling the air quality by the color of the Sun).

QT MN Air Quality Index @mpca_aqi
2024 May 12

An air quality alert for Red/Unhealthy for All continues for all of Minnesota. Smoke has reached St Cloud/ Marshall, and will soon reach the Twin Cities. The smoke is following a cold front moving from north to south and will linger overnight.

astronomerritt, to random
@astronomerritt@hachyderm.io avatar

Does anyone cook with lard any more? Lard was sort of ever-present when I was a kid, but I was raised by my grandparents so I don't know what aspects were really out-of-date, which were normal, and which were just, well, poverty.

I can tell you that my grandmother's idea of a curry would have most folk recoiling...

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@astronomerritt I have sometimes cooked with lard, tallow, schmaltz, and duck fat (the last of which has lately been popular among American chefs, for no particular reason).

But using pork or beef fat in a curry always seems wrong.

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@astronomerritt There were some claims of duck fat having lower saturated fat content than other animal fats being a good thing; but the evidence on that is pretty limited.

Re. tallow: I've mostly used it in shortening for pastry and for frying things. If we extend that to include beef pan drippings, the list of possibilities is longer.

jasonkoebler, to random
@jasonkoebler@mastodon.social avatar

Scoop: Solar storm is causing farmers' tractor GPS systems to go haywire. Many have shut down planting altogether during a critical period. A Deere dealer said accuracy is "extremely compromised"

https://www.404media.co/solar-storm-knocks-out-tractor-gps-systems-during-peak-planting-season/

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@jasonkoebler Attention @sundogplanets , for the intersection of farming and space weather.

arstechnica, to random
@arstechnica@mastodon.social avatar

In the race for space metals, companies hope to cash in

Mining asteroids could reduce the burden on Earth’s resources. Will it live up to its promise?

https://arstechnica.com/science/2024/05/in-the-race-for-space-metals-companies-hope-to-cash-in/?utm_brand=arstechnica&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@maxthefox @CartyBoston @arstechnica The costs of space resources returned to Earth would be very much higher than the costs of the same resources mined on the ground.

That is the case even for the most expensive rare earths and the platinum group metals; despite the hype of the current set of space resources companies (and much to my disappointment when I first understood it).

The energy costs alone are orders of magnitude different.

michael_w_busch,
@michael_w_busch@mastodon.online avatar

@maxthefox @CartyBoston @arstechnica With ARRM, we proposed to move asteroid material to Earth (technically lunar) orbit for processing. The products would have been sandbags and maybe water for astronauts. There is no resource in the rock piles worth shipping to the ground.

Different propulsion would not change that.

And there are no high-concentration deposits of rare earths on the Moon or asteroids; while there are abundant low-concentration deposits on Earth that no one now uses.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • megavids
  • kavyap
  • DreamBathrooms
  • thenastyranch
  • magazineikmin
  • khanakhh
  • InstantRegret
  • Youngstown
  • ngwrru68w68
  • slotface
  • rosin
  • tacticalgear
  • mdbf
  • Durango
  • JUstTest
  • modclub
  • osvaldo12
  • ethstaker
  • cubers
  • normalnudes
  • everett
  • tester
  • GTA5RPClips
  • Leos
  • cisconetworking
  • provamag3
  • anitta
  • lostlight
  • All magazines
    •