@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.

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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

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.

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.

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.

ThomasConnor, to Astro
@ThomasConnor@astrodon.social avatar

My biggest weakness as an astrophysicist is knowing whether to put a "t" in the name every time I need to write Loren{,t}z

zrb,
@zrb@astrodon.social avatar

@ThomasConnor maybe the length of the name depends on your relative radial velocity to the reader

rose, to random
@rose@503junk.house avatar

deleted_by_author

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    zrb,
    @zrb@astrodon.social avatar

    @bluestocking @rose but when you point out the insane taxpayer burdens and systemic issues of things like car-centric city infrastructure, landlord subsidies, or the existence of police departments, all of a sudden you’re “not looking at all of the context” and “not all of it is like that!”

    natania, to history
    @natania@mastodon.world avatar

    Just your friendly reminder that the Middle Ages were not

    1. a sepia toned wasteland of filth
    2. completely void of education or reason
    3. relegated only to Europeans
    4. a guaranteed death sentence by the age of 35
    5. a culture solely defined by the Church
    6. full of torture devices

    zrb,
    @zrb@astrodon.social avatar

    @natania you mean the medieval period wasn’t plagued by weird-looking cats and dogs with the face of a tired-looking middle-aged man?

    zrb,
    @zrb@astrodon.social avatar

    @natania maybe they were the ones who killed you at age 35

    breadandcircuses, to environment

    Alan Urban asks, "What Happens When It Gets Too Hot To Live?"

    July 3rd was officially the hottest day ever, with the average global temperature reaching 17°C for the first time in recorded history. July 4th was even hotter. July 5th was just as hot. And July 6th was even hotter than that, prompting the UN to warn that climate change is out of control.

    They’re absolutely right. High temperature records are being broken every single day. Last month, Beijing had its hottest June day in history. So did Mumbai. And Morocco. And Lancaster. And countless other cities and countries around the world. June was the hottest month ever by a huge margin, and this month will be the hottest July ever.

    In America, the focus has been on the Texas heat wave, which has lasted for weeks and made Texas one of the hottest places on Earth, even staying hot at nighttime. Meanwhile, North Atlantic sea surface temperatures have been at a record high for months, and Antarctic sea ice extent has been hitting record lows for most of the year.

    So what the hell is going on?

    The main reason the planet is getting hotter is climate change. Unfortunately, only 5% of TV news segments mentioned climate change in their coverage of the Texas heat wave. No wonder Americans aren’t more alarmed.

    For those of us who understand what’s going on, all of these high-temperature records are terrifying. The planet is currently about 1.2°C above the pre-industrial baseline, but we’re likely to reach 1.5°C in the next few years. And if James Hansen, the world-renowned climate scientist, is correct, we’ll probably reach 2°C by 2040.

    Just 17 years from now.

    Think about that for a moment. It has taken nearly 40 years for the planet to go from 0.4°C to 1.2°C above pre-industrial times. And now, the planet is going to warm that much again in less than half the time. This means the planet is warming exponentially.

    It gets even worse. Many people have the impression that 2°C of warming will be twice as bad as 1°C of warming. So when we get to 2°C, we’ll have twice as many droughts, twice as many heat waves, twice as many wildfires, and so forth.

    But it doesn’t work that way. As the planet warms, the impacts will also get exponentially worse.

    This article is very frightening, as it should be. We have to know what's coming and we need to prepare for it.

    There's much more, including an explanation of how "wet bulb temperatures" work, and the staggering number of humans who will be exposed to those deadly extremes.

    FULL ARTICLE -- https://archive.li/nO00k

    zrb,
    @zrb@astrodon.social avatar

    @breadandcircuses 95 F wet bulb temperature is fatal for humans, and to a lot of other animals too. That’s 95 F at 100% relative humidity, or 100 F at 82%, or 105 F at 68%, etc.

    People without access to air conditioning or cooler areas will die in those conditions.

    rose, to random
    @rose@503junk.house avatar

    Something I've been loving on the Steam Deck is CRPGs. Some of the newer ones (like Disco Elysium) have controller support, but many of the classics don't.

    Right now, I'm playing Knights of the Old Republic, and it 's fine with the Steam Deck's touchpad and a few mapped keyboard buttons.

    When I see things like, "Steam Deck doesn't support all games unlike the <random Windows handheld> supports everything", or "the trackpads are useless", I just don't understand how I could play things like KotOR on any other handheld.

    zrb,
    @zrb@astrodon.social avatar

    @rose I’ve been using the steam controller exclusively since it came out, and I will keep using it until it (and my spare) die

    zrb,
    @zrb@astrodon.social avatar

    @rose honestly, the sneering pushback from PC gamers against trackpads and controllers is baffling. Discrete button schemes like WASD and mouse clicks limit game controls to the lowest common denominator; every popular game since 2000 that has flying sections, the flight controls are dumbed down to the point of tedium just so KB+M players don’t find it too difficult.

    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

    @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

    @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

    @joaopinheiro

    Economists; log off.

    pokateo, to random
    @pokateo@mapstodon.space avatar

    give me a follow on the new site and let's explore together! 👉 www.threads.net/@pokateo_maps

    zrb,
    @zrb@astrodon.social avatar

    @pokateo no I’ll stay here, but thanks though

    stylinstainless, to random
    @stylinstainless@mastodon.online avatar

    deleted_by_author

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    zrb,
    @zrb@astrodon.social avatar

    @stylinstainless we’ll do anything* for our veterans

    *that doesn’t involve sacrifice, effort, or even just mild inconvenience

    douglasvb, to california
    @douglasvb@mastodon.social avatar

    Nice day out at today. We even saw the local freight head north! I think it might have been switching some cars at the power plant on its way north from Salinas before it crossed the slough.

    At Moss Landing they're demolishing the old power plant units that used to feed into the twin huge smoke stacks. I wonder if they'll remove those stacks as part of that work.

    Elkhorn slough tidal flats with big power lines visible in the distance.
    A local mixed freight train with two engines and about 20 cars heading across Elkhorn slough.
    Elkhorn slough in the distance with brown fields of wild grasses in the foreground.

    zrb,
    @zrb@astrodon.social avatar

    @douglasvb wow, beautiful views! I was on the Coast Starlight just last week, but unfortunately it derailed in Moorpark so we never reached the coast to be able to see this. Next time though!

    zrb,
    @zrb@astrodon.social avatar

    @douglasvb I personally was able to get a rental car from Moorpark, but the rest of the passengers were bussed back to LA Union Station, and I assume Amtrak got them to their destinations somehow

    rvaweather, to random

    Tweeted to NWS Wakefield asking them to please consider setting up shop on Mastodon, since they too are being rate limited, which is a real problem during severe weather events. I recommended DMV.community, naturally, given the regional focus aligns with their "jurisdiction"

    zrb,
    @zrb@astrodon.social avatar

    @samerfarha @rvaweather plus, from what I remember from working on a small piece of NOAA web infrastructure, they have a ton of requirements for “operational” code (i.e., owning the servers and having frequent backups)

    zrb,
    @zrb@astrodon.social avatar

    @samerfarha @rvaweather they barely tolerated us using GitHub. I’m surprised that NWS relied on Twitter for so long instead of publicizing RSS feeds

    gwynnion, to random
    @gwynnion@mastodon.social avatar

    It's only taken 4 hours and some painkillers for me to not limp around the apartment feeling concussed.

    zrb,
    @zrb@astrodon.social avatar

    @gwynnion I’m sorry to hear you were injured, hope you get well soon!

    marsroverdriver, to random
    @marsroverdriver@deepspace.social avatar

    These takes always seem so stupid to me. Are there too many options for you? Then just always take the one on the left. That's equivalent to what would happen if someone else arbitrarily reduced your choices; you're just doing it yourself, with a trivial algorithm that requires no thought and so should cause you no stress. And then the rest of us, who might prefer having choice, get to keep it.
    https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2023/06/grocery-shopping-option-overload/674502/

    zrb,
    @zrb@astrodon.social avatar

    @marsroverdriver respectfully, this is a bad take; sort of like saying “oh you have anxiety? Have you tried calming down?”

    Analysis paralysis doesn’t come from the fact that there are many choices; rather from the ambiguity of which choices are optimal, and / or which ones you would regret later and should avoid. That may not be a rational way to think about the cereal aisle in the grocery store, but our minds don’t work rationally.

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

    @marsroverdriver the issue, as I see it, isn’t the wide selection of choices of products; rather, that it’s normalized, expected even, for advertising to gaslight, mislead, and exaggerate.

    It becomes an exhausting exercise to try and find quality in the sea of cheap imitation.

    zrb,
    @zrb@astrodon.social avatar

    @marsroverdriver case in point, have you ever tried to find a product at the grocer that doesn’t contain or high fructose corn syrup? Gods forbid you live in a and want to avoid those two things.

    A wide selection on the shelf is absolutely useless if all the choices are awful.

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