I just got back. Shitty state confirmed.

Yeah, where I'm from you pre-fish and keep them in 2 ziptied laundry basket like God meant for tourneys to go!

I love your username!

"I have an invasive pest on my water toy I likely make payments on while living in one of the shittiest states in America."

lol

No thank you. I like my new neighbours better.

And yet you said nothing when the evil yoghurt overlords were posted last week?

I don't know about you, but I've heard of 2 Banksy pieces in the last few years - the one that was shredded and this one.

A random piece painted on a building doesn't make headlines. This did, even if briefly.

Again, I think it's all staged - Banksy probably had people report it as unsafe or recruited a city worker, outrage ensues, and now it's going to be put back and the art will be displayed in all its glory.

I agree with you in principle, but it seems that this thing had been there for months, and then the moment Banksy painted around it, they removed it.

So this is actually an interesting commentary, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was deliberate - the story isn't "Banksy painted a thing around garbage" and no one gives a shit, it's "CITY COUNCIL IGNORES PROBLEM AND THEN SUDDENLY THROWS OUT ART ZOMG!!!"

He who controls the yoghurt, controls the universe.

However!

When scientists talk about a new planet in the goldilocks zone, they're talking about today (or what appears to be today, but might be many years ago). They're looking at a specific sun as it is today, and commenting on that.

Yeah, in a billion years, it will be different. And that's okay.

> The tape itself has NEC standards

Which is probably not true of random black tape people buy at the dollar store.

> We thought it was 100K ly across, but some researchers in 2015 claimed it's 150K ly.

Just for clarity, this doesn't mean that the measured outer edge is actually that much farther away, but rather that we're finding things farther away.

It's a bit like saying a city is 10km across, but then realizing that there are actually buildings outside that radius. You didn't measure the original wrong, you simply expanded the definition.

CLOSE THE DOOR I"M TRYING TO SLEEP!

> Grape vines do also have a production lifespan (production does start to drop off after a few decades)

Notably, old vines have fewer grapes, but the quality is higher. Young grapes actually need to have a lot of the fruit removed so that the plant puts more energy (sugar and flavour) into the remaining fruit. As it gets older, you do less of that and the plant keeps putting all that energy into a few grapes.

There are centuries-old vines still being used to produce grapes, but the quantity is tiny relative to even a 50 year old plant, which would be considered quite old.

Say you have an heirloom poem that each member of your family has to transcribe. It's in Latin, so you have no idea what it says.

Even with all the checking, we know that every new generation makes minor mistakes transcribing it, which build up over time. The same poem has somehow spread all over the world because your family is all over.

How do you find out when it was written?

Well, you compare the last few generations' worth of poems and realize it's on average 1.75 mistakes each time it's transcribed. Now you compare your family's to another one elsewhere on earth, and there are 500 differences - how many generations ago did they branch off?

You don't even have to remove the windows, you can just board over top of them. If they break, the glass isn't going anywhere, but they probably won't break.

Brain damage would be an issue for any animal. Predators not being able to hunt and track their prey, which would represent most of their brain power, or prey not being able to evade strikes.

Yes, but it also means we need to eat more.

Take two animals with identical metabolisms, one's 10kg and one's 100kg.

If both eat 0.1mg per day of a toxin, then yeah, the bigger creature will do better.

But if the food contains 0.1 mg/kg of food, and the big creature needs to eat 10x more food to survive, then it balances out.

> Doesn't there have to be some reference frame whereby a body is not moving through space at all?

Relative to what? If you're measuring against the expansion of the universe, then you'd have to take VERY precise measurements against the most distant objects, and they're moving in all kinds of directions, but if you could, then sure, you could do that, somehow.

You'd just be moving at an insanely high velocity relative to anything local to you.

And because you're moving at that insane speed relative to, say, earth, you'd have to apply a massive force to actually get up to that insane speed.

> But if all speed is relative, both should see the other speed up, which feels paradoxical.

Welcome to relativity. Say you have 2 objects approaching Earth at 0.1c, relative to Earth. They'd see each other as moving less than 0.2c, because it's not additive, and if they could each see a clock on the other ship, they'd see that clock moving slower than their own.

CMB isn't any sort of special reference frame. It's just one that can be described as somewhat universal, but in theory, you could use the exact same thing with my neighbour Steve - the rotation of Andromeda is measured relative to Steve. That'll make your math nice and fucky, right?

But then the same is true of the CMB. Imagine if we tried to calculate highway speed limits based on the CMB reference frame. Or even the velocity of Sol relative to the CMB, to pick a larger example - how would that help us calculate how long it takes to get to the other side of the galaxy?

So, you always pick a reference frame that makes your math easy. Speed limits are based on the car's relative speed to the road, ignoring the rotation of the earth and all that. Your ability to juggle on a train is unaffected by the speed of the train relative to the tracks. Earth's rotation around the sun is measured against the sun, not the center of the galaxy.

You can still calculate highway speed limits using Andromeda's approach as a frame of reference, you'll just end up doing a LOT more math depending on where you are on earth and what time of day it is. But you could do it if you really wanted to!

...is it not common elsewhere? Where else does one keep shoes?

Maybe if you have a huge selection you pick with your outfit, but most of us keep our shoes in the entrance, no?

The internal forces are causing the outer parts to accelerate around the center. If you swing a hammer while you spin in a circle, it's your hand that's accelerating the hammer and keeping it moving around you. Let go, and it goes flying.

That was their point - you need something keeping it all together outside the center of mass, or it will just fall apart.

What they're saying is that if you turn down the heat, and as a result just cozy into bed, you're not going to lose weight.

You need to actually experience the cold, not work around it.

I'm curious about how much of this will be unique to COVID-19. A friend of mine has long covid, with substantially reduced energy and all that, which was severe for over 6 months after he got out of the hospital... on oxygen for 4 weeks.

Any severe infection or injury is going to have various long-term effects, and we already know that many viruses can cause a lot of these knock on effects.

This isn't to minimize the effects of covid, but rather to advise that we shouldn't be dismissing the next pandemic just because it's not killing people in the short term. Balancing short term pain for society against millions of people with lifelong effects from the disease is difficult, but there has to be one.