🎓 Doc Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@qoto.org

If our civilization collapses, extraterrestrial archeologists can look at this and be impressed. Three satellites following the Earth in an equilateral triangle, each 25 million kilometers from the other two. Each contains two gold cubes in free-fall. The satellites accelerate just enough so they don't get blown off course by the solar wind. The gold cubes feel nothing but gravity.

Lasers bounce between each cube and its partner in another satellite, measuring the distance between them to an accuracy of 20 picometers: less than the diameter of a helium atom! This lets the satellites detect gravitational waves - ripples in the curvature of spacetime - with very long wavelengths, and correspondingly low frequencies.

It should see so many binary white dwarfs, neutron stars and black holes in the Milky Way that these will be nothing but foreground noise. More excitingly, it should be able to see mergers of supermassive black holes as far as... the dawn of time, or whenever such black holes were first formed. (The farther you look, the older things you see.)

It may even be able to see the "gravitational background radiation", the thrumming vibrations in the fabric of spacetime left over from the Big Bang. This radiation was created before the hot gas in the Universe cooled down enough to become transparent to light. So it's older than the microwave background radiation, which is the oldest thing we see now.

It's called LISA - the Laser Interferometric Satellite Antenna. And we're in luck: ESA has just decided to launch it in 2034.

Survivors of Israel’s ground invasion in northern Gaza tell chilling stories of kidnappings, torture, and the rampant use of civilians as bait and human shields. The world still has no idea how inhumane Israel’s genocidal war really has been.

https://mondoweiss.net/2024/01/the-shocking-inhumanity-of-israels-crimes-in-gaza/?utm_content=buffer47255&utm_medium=social&utm_source=mastodon&utm_campaign=buffer

#Palestine #Israel #Gaza

@freemo

@Hyolobrika @volkris @realcaseyrollins

@freemo @volkris I actually disagree with this, depending on what you mean.

When people say “tolerance”, they usually refer to either allowing people to speak, or not barring people from taking office.

Any ideology that bars people from speaking or holding office based on their beliefs alone will bleed into fascism given enough time and power.

Now to be clear, there’s a big difference between tolerance and acceptance. Listening to an idea doesn’t mean you should embrace it. But it’s possible to have enough discernment that you hear someone crazy say something crazy and say “that’s crazy” rather than “why isn’t he in jail yet”.

New posting! This one contains a few reflections on what I do, and don't, miss about my life in #academia.

https://totalinternalreflectionblog.com/2024/01/28/only-in-the-abstract/

@freemo @josemanuel i know it’s just a figure of speech but i think it’s not good to call this behavior childish. children have to (and are eager to) learn how the world works. they engage in such make-believe games as a means of learning about reality. it’s the polar opposite of these people which have reduced the world to a delusion.

@LaNaehForaday

And then you also realize that every single immigrant at our border IS SEEKING ASYLUM right?

Irrelevant how many want asylum. In order to be an asylum seeker you must apply. You are allowed to enter illegal to apply, so you arent illegal the moment you enter. But once you’ve been here for some time without applying for asylum you are no longer an asylum seeker, you are just an illegal immigrant at that point.

So again, I have no problem with them entering and seeking assylum with the government after entering, that is perefectly legal. But those who never register absolutely should either be deported, or at least forced through the process to determine if they.

And no, not everyone entering the border is an asylum seeker. Many are im sure, you saying just because someone entered illegal they are 100% asylum seekers is absolute lunacy.

And frankly prosecuting FUCKING HUMANS FOR WANTING A BETTER LIFE TURNS MY STOMACH

Turns mine too, Im all for giving them an appropriate legal path to help.

the nice thing about my ADHD is that if my apartment is haunted I will literally never notice it

“silly me, always leaving these cupboards and drawers open and the sink running at full blast,” I say, as a frustrated ghost screams into a pillow in the corner

@augieray The interpritation here isnt a great one.

The wording is proper to say that we expect arithmetic growth but get exponential. But it is incorrect when the section starts with "in other words"... We do not **underestimate** the risk in approach, we misunderstand the growthrate of approach. This isnt the same because a linear growth can exceed an exponential growth during the relevant range of the function.

I attached an image as an example. Here I picked an agressive exponent to show the effect more clearly, the plot is of x vs x^5. Notice how during most of the graph the linear one actually significantly exceeds the exponential. This is my point, seeing linear growth will actually "overestimate" the danger of covid as you close distance not underestimate it, at least at first.