@zrb@astrodon.social
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

zrb

@zrb@astrodon.social

Software engineer in astronomy. Interested in high-energy astrophysics, leftist theory, and permaculture gardening.

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

zrb, to random
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

the view inland from a small town on the coast

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

coastal upwelling makes for great colors

SteveThompson, to Palestine
@SteveThompson@mastodon.social avatar

"Harvard student groups issued an anti-Israel statement. CEOs want them blacklisted"

https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/11/business/harvard-israel-hamas-ceos-students/index.html

“'One should not be able to hide behind a corporate shield when issuing statements supporting the actions of terrorists,' Ackman said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter."

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@SteveThompson I’m no expert in middle-eastern history and geopolitics and even I can see that the policies and actions taken by the Israeli government in the past few decades (forcible displacement of generational residences, arming civilian “settlers”, taking any and all opportunities for provocation, suppressing peaceful self-organization to leave a violent nationalist faction in control, etc.) are quite clearly directly responsible for this recent escalation and violence.

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@SteveThompson and it’s kinda weird that you’re frothing at the idea of doxxing and blacklisting students who wrote a letter saying so.

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@SteveThompson my friend, that’s the excuse a child makes.

slashdot, to random
@slashdot@mastodon.cloud avatar

Audit Calls NASA's Goal To Reduce Artemis Rocket Costs 'Highly Unrealistic,' Threat To Deep Space Exploration https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/10/13/2256202/audit-calls-nasas-goal-to-reduce-artemis-rocket-costs-highly-unrealistic-threat-to-deep-space-exploration?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@cstross @slashdot @nyrath you could argue that, as a funding vehicle instead of as a rocket, SLS was very successful in sheltering the space budget (and specific institutional skills and knowledge) during a congressional era when austerity and cuts were the norm. As far as I know, Europa Clipper is only a mission today because of its political and legal ties to SLS.

Now, from my armchaor perspective, it has outlived that purpose.

apophis, to random

pronouncing "audiophiles" like "mephistopheles"

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@apophis oh yes, Audiophiles, she was the leader of the Island of the Really-Good-Hearing People in Homer’s Odyssey

nocontexttrek, to StarTrek
@nocontexttrek@mastodon.social avatar

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@nocontexttrek oh great, it’s that pointy-eared bastard again

mircoxi, to random

I don't know if we still do intro posts in this day and age, but yolo.

I'm Jess, 29, Bri'ish, and I go by any pronouns (currently questioning - neutral is always safe, experimenting with she/her).

Amateur game dev, terrible web dev, studying for an MSc in CSec and Information Forensics, and WAY too into retro tech.

I'm relatively new to the Fediverse (I kinda gave up on it way back when Mastodon was first getting popular because of how bad the UX was at the time), so I'll still be figuring things out for a little bit while I look around.

All this to say - hi!

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@mircoxi don’t worry, everyone is a terrible web dev, some people just hide it behind fancy animations

futurebird, to random
@futurebird@sauropods.win avatar

What is the point even anymore? If it's not ad free why pay? (I guess they will have ad free if you pay more??)

Well I waste too much time watching stuff anyways. I got rid of youTube for this and others will follow. Not paying OR watching unless I can avoid ads.

Ads are a huge and harmful force on my quality of life. I will go to great ends to avoid them. I also use blockers, naturally, but blockers aren't perfect. (YouTube still has "mid roll" ads even with the best.)

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@futurebird 🏴‍☠️

indivisibleteam, to random
@indivisibleteam@mastodon.social avatar

It’s official: President Biden just became the first president to join a picket line.

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@indivisibleteam perhaps this time the president could try NOT using the immense political and legal power of his administration to pressure thousands of workers into accepting a contract that they don’t want, which just so happens to be ultimately detrimental to them and beneficial to his large corporate donors

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@indivisibleteam I know that’s probably a big ask, but I’d just like to see him try literally anything more than “make empty platitudes, use the picket line for strategic political visibility, and then write a strongly-worded letter to the bosses finger-wagging for flagrantly breaking the law and committing unfair labor practices”

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@GreenFire @indivisibleteam I’m always looking to fill gaps in my knowledge; could you point me to voting history or executive decisions that show Biden taking actionable steps to improve labor conditions and / or protect worker power?

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@GreenFire @ElSupreme @indivisibleteam The entire point of a strike is to be disruptive. The only leverage workers have against consolidated capital is the threat of economic disruption. The rail companies could have absolutely afforded to pay out sick days; they chose not to, because they knew Congress and POTUS would intervene.

An economy that needs to oppress and subjugate workers in order to keep from collapsing sounds to me like an evil system.

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@GreenFire @ElSupreme @indivisibleteam Also… my friend, you do realize that the four rail unions that rejected the deal represent 55% of all U.S. rail workers, right? This is public knowledge that you could look up, if you cared to.

Saying that the only members who rejected the deal were some MAGA minority is willful ignorance, at best.

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@constantine I can understand the thinking; I too was a liberal, once upon a time. If I can practice empathy and spend a trivial amount of time and effort to show someone a different perspective, I think that’s worth it.

It does get grating, every so often, but at that point I can just leave and come back at another time.

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@GreenFire @ElSupreme @indivisibleteam to be fair, it was a confusing set of events in a confusing time. It looks like BLET ratified the agreement at 53.5% for, and SMART-TD rejected at 50.87% against. As I remember, the other unions voted with similar margins.

Again, I don’t give a fig if terrible things happen to the economy. What good is a strong economy for the majority of American households that are paycheck-to-paycheck and / or food insecure?

nyrath, to random
@nyrath@spacey.space avatar

Model suggests Milky Way warp and flare due to tilt of dark halo

https://phys.org/news/2023-09-milky-warp-flare-due-tilt.html

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@nyrath wild that they were able to get these results, even with what looks like a static orientation of the dark halo! It looks like their model code is on GitHub: https://github.com/jiwonjessehan/MilkyWayWarp

(although the Python code is all on one line, yuck)

zrb, to random
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

I feel like the term "internet troll" is widely misused.

A troll is someone who intentionally espouses a position without actually believing it, specifically to incite a negative emotional response. You can think of them as "trawling for reactions".

Someone who says something you disagree with or holds crazy beliefs online is not a troll if they believe what they're saying. Unless they're trying to confuse or incite you, calling them a troll is unfounded.

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@steal_your_face yeah it’s exceedingly portable and surprisingly light, but I think my favorite thing about the hardware is the 3:2 aspect ratio, especially for writing.

I’ve mostly been on for the past few years.

zrb, (edited )
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@steal_your_face I’ve been running Linux on the 11th gen Intel version for a few years and it’s been great so far. The aluminum chassis feels quite solid and the battery life is enough to get me through the day most of the time. I’m just waiting for the Batch 1 mainboards to ship so I can tack my Intel board to the basement wall as a media server.

malcircuit, to random
@malcircuit@thingy.social avatar

Seriously, fuck these assholes.

<insert goose harassing kid meme>

What the fuck is the cost to everyone of not having rainforests anymore?

WHAT'S THE COST, MOTHERFUCKER

zrb, (edited )
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@malcircuit “it’s incalculable” in economist speak means “if we included these costs that would mean many industries are actually severely unprofitable, and are robbing humanity of its future, just so 2700 selfish troglodytes can visit Monaco for the sixtieth time; also, that would throw off my spreadsheet”

https://grist.org/business-technology/none-of-the-worlds-top-industries-would-be-profitable-if-they-paid-for-the-natural-capital-they-use/

economists, log off

sundogplanets, to random
@sundogplanets@mastodon.social avatar

I'm making up a list of peer-reviewed papers for students to read in a 300-level astronomy class for physics majors.

Any recommendations for papers about important discoveries having to do with galaxies and cosmology that aren't too horribly long? (I'm good on planetary stuff, but I'm not nearly as familiar with the literature on bigger-scale stuff)

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@sundogplanets how about these:

No idea if they’re peer reviewed though.

breadandcircuses, to politics

I’ll be blunt. We have no hope of averting climate chaos or preventing the catastrophic collapse of our modern society without SYSTEM CHANGE.

Keeping capitalism in charge means a death sentence for billions of humans — most of them poor and in the Global South — along with complete extinction for uncounted plant and animal species.

The fake “democracy” we have in the Global North is nothing but a game show owned and produced by oligarchs. As long as they remain in control of the system, nothing meaningful will change. How you vote doesn’t matter, because every important candidate is approved in advance, vetted and managed by those men behind the curtain.

Either capitalism dies or we die. It’s that simple.

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@breadandcircuses @NatureMC @cian

Yeah, alternatives have always existed. Capitalism is extraordinarily new on the scale of human history, but for some reason is accepted as the “default” state of human affairs / the “final” step of history.

No matter how unassailable the power of consolidated private ownership of capital seems, to quote Le Guin, “So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings.”

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@NatureMC @cian @breadandcircuses as far as I know, there has only ever been one colloquial definition of capitalism used by economists, leftists, theorists, etc. (along the lines of “a system under which capital is privately owned”); you can look this up in basically any dictionary.

Yet for some reason many people seem to think it means “when you trade things in a market”. It’s an initial definitional barrier to many conversations.

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@joaopinheiro

Economists; log off.

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