Category: Uncategorized

Fake Coffee

Someone asked me recently what I would say if some of those who are critiqued for their “cup acting” in this video were to reveal that the cups in question were actually full of liquid, and that this was all in my head. And the truth is we’re past the point where this is about truth: it’s about how the persistence of empty cups has fundamentally altered the way I experience television, and exploring the reasons why that’s happened (and will continue to happen for entirely logical, practical reasons that my brain won’t compute because that’s just how it’s going to be).

Drake equation correlations

Overall, the independence of the terms of the Drake equation is likely fairly strong. However, there are relevant size scales to consider.

  • Over multiple gigaparsec scales there can not be any correlations, not even artificially induced ones, because of limitations due to the expansion of the universe (unless there are super-early or FTL civilizations).
  • Over 100s of megaparsec scales the universe is fairly uniform, so any natural influences will be randomized beyond this scale.
  • Colonization waves in Brin’s model could have scales on the galactic cluster scale, but this is somewhat parameter dependent.
  • The nearest civilization can be expected around , where is the galactic volume. If we are considering parameters such that the number of civilizations per galaxy are low V needs to be increased and the density will go down significantly (by a factor of 100), leading to a modest jump in expected distance.
  • Panspermias, if they exist, will have an upper extent limited by escape from galaxies – they will tend to have galactic scales or smaller. The same is true for galactic habitable zones if they exist. Percolation colonization models are limited to galaxies (or even dense parts of galaxies) and would hence have scales in the kiloparsec range.
  • “Scars” due to gamma ray bursts and other energetic events are below kiloparsecs.
  • The lower limit of panspermias are due to being smaller than the panspermia, presumably at least in the parsec range. This is also the scale of close clusters of stars in percolation models.
  • Time-wise, the temporal correlation length is likely on the gigayear timescale, dominated by stellar processes or advanced civilization survival. The exception may be colonization waves modifying conditions radically.

The hospital may kill you

based on a recent ER experience that involved staff cluelessly looking for me for 30 min even though i was sitting right in front of them, this isn’t hard to believe at all. if you are struggling with the basics, what hope do you have with real problems? the kicker was that that hospital then spammed me a few months later with a call for donations to continue to operate their 3rd world boiler room.

Robot educators

Ms. Watson wrote things like “Yep!” and “we’d love to,” speaking on behalf of her fellow TAs, in the online forum where students discussed coursework and submitted projects. “It seemed very much like a normal conversation with a human being”. Shreyas Vidyarthi ascribed human attributes to the TA—imagining her as a friendly Caucasian 20-something on her way to a Ph.D. Students were told of their guinea-pig status last month. “I was flabbergasted”. “Just when I wanted to nominate Jill Watson as an outstanding TA”.

They’re easy to identify though: No one in academia answers emails right away. To look realistic, build in a 3 week response delay.

experiments in urban living

All of this seemed very far away on a Sunday night this winter, in the basement of a renovated 4-story brownstone in the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. The building, Kennedy’s new home, is run by the co-living startup Common, which offers what it calls “flexible, community-driven housing.” Co-living has also been billed as “dorms for grown-ups,” a description that Common resists. But the company has set out to restore a certain subset of young, urban professionals to the paradise they lost when they left college campuses—a furnished place to live, unlimited coffee and toilet paper, a sense of belonging.

Searching for Hannibal

this is insane:

they were scouting for a spot that could have been a watering hole during Hannibal’s era. they found a layer of “churned” soil they call the MAD, for “mass animal deposition”—a euphemism for dung. they discovered genetic material from several types of bacteria, including a high concentration of DNA fragments from Clostridia, which is frequently found in feces. Clostridia are pervasive in soil as well, but the team also detected fatty compounds that come from the gut. That combination is what they would expect to see in a place where a great number—100s if not 1000s—of mammals had defecated.

Unified Weapons Master

fighters use a suit for 90-second bouts and then rest while they are cooled by compressed air blasted into a network of silicone tubes contained in the suit. The air passes out through 1000s of tiny holes held against the skin by an undergarment. Scoring is done by 52 sensors, which 10K times a second measure various forces, including blows, accelerations and vibrations, generated by the impact of hands, feet and weapons. The data are wirelessly transmitted to a computer to calculate the fractures, tissue damage and other injuries which are likely to have been sustained had the fighters been unprotected.

Can You Not PAC

We really want white dudes in urban districts to think hard about why they think they’re the most qualified option to represent their communities. We’re psyched that there are so many groups aimed at recruiting and supporting women, people of color, and LGBTQ folks running for office, and we think it would also be great if instead of spending $100Ks on democratic primaries, upwardly mobile straight white dudes would just take a step back.