Oh, the drama! “I could have died!” Listen, sweetheart. You “could have died” crossing the street. Or climbing a ladder. Or slipping in the shower or bathtub. Life is full off “I could have died” moments.
Get over yourself and live life.
Tesla breaks into the previously protected Malaysian market:
Professor of physics at MIT, co-founder and president of the Future of Life Institute, co-author of open letter “Pause Giant AI Experiments”, supporter of “effective altruism”, biography states “my scientific interests range from artificial intelligence to the ultimate nature of reality”.
Thinks India landed on the far side of the Moon.
First, we would not have had live footage without a lunar orbiter to relay.
Second, I did not see Modi dancing to Pink Floyd.
At least Tegmark didn’t say “dark side of the moon”.
Of course, what’s funny is that one of main reasons to go to the lunar south pole is because there are permanently shadowed crater floors there where ice may have collected from cometary impacts over the ages. (Plus, adjacent to the permanently shadowed regions are mountain peaks that receive sunlight 80–90% of the time, avoiding the problem of the 14 day lunar night on most of the surface.)
My intuition (not a strong force) tells me that solid ice in the vacuum of space, in permanent shade on the Moon’s surface, would have some half life prior to sublimation of vapor and loss to the vacuum. Is this so? Or are hydrogen bonds, van der Walls forces (and/or others) sufficiently strong to prevent this?
Sublimation in a vacuum, like any other thermodynamic process, is strongly dependent on temperature. Estimates of the temperature in permanently-shadowed regions near the lunar poles range between 25 and 70° K, at which temperature the vapour pressure of water ice is extremely low and, if mixed with regolith where an equilibrium will be established between the ice and trapped vapour, sublimation may be negligible. A variety of experiments have shown that there is water in these polar regions: the LCROSS impactor smashed a rocket stage into one and a probe following it directly detected water among the ejecta. Several experiments by probes in lunar orbit found the signature of hydrogen in these regions, interpreted as most likely in the form of water.
Until we land probes in the area or send explorers, the exact form this water takes (ice on the surface, buried ice, or diffuse water molecules mixed with regolith), its quantity, and the feasibility of harvesting it remain largely guesswork. But so far, results are consistent with water ice being relatively abundant in the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles.
We know, for example, that the icy moons of Jupiter and the planets beyond are stable for periods of billions of years in their environment. Ice in the permanently shadowed craters on the Moon would see a lower temperature than the outer planet icy moons experience due to sunlight.
More political weaponization of the DOJ
From the quoted article (emphasis mine):
The numbers are accurate. But Mayor Justin Elicker called them cherry-picked and misleading. He noted that violent crime has decreased 29.2% since 2020. Although homicides are up, the number of shootings has come down.
So, criminal marksmanship is improving!
Emergency medical care is decaying.
Overdose rates have hit 12-year highs and almost doubled in Lisbon from 2019 to 2023. Sewage samples in Lisbon show cocaine and ketamine detection is now among the highest in Europe, with elevated weekend rates suggesting party-heavy usage. In Porto, the collection of drug-related debris from city streets surged 24 percent between 2021 and 2022, with this year on track to far outpace the last. Crime — including robbery in public spaces — spiked 14 percent from 2021 to 2022, a rise police blame partly on increased drug use.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/07/07/portugal-drugs-decriminalization-heroin-crack/
So India filmed their own Capricorn One? Good for them. They’ve entered the tier of “great power.”
Stein’s Law: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”
How well is this time series fit by an exponential growth curve? Well, let’s see. When you plot exponential growth on a semi-logarithmic chart, it should approximate a straight line. So what do we have here?
Yup, close enough for government work.