BamaATL

Seems like a normal day in Houston

That's why I added alleged, because people get excited and tie old clips to vids very frequently.

Alleged initial strike

Just in poking around a found a few interesting theoretical ideas. One that stood out to me is actually to use liquid mercury combined with centrifugal force that causes a parabolic shape to be formed, making it ideal for telescope (I'm unclear how this would work in zero g, perhaps microgravity is enough). These have been built on the ground, but have some pretty big drawbacks here on earth, the first being that it can only sit vertical, the second being that it's extremely sensitive to any changing conditions. An immediate draw back would be potential containment, if you have in stop spinning for any reason, the mercury would just float off (far from ideal). I'm sure someone smarter than myself could think of something. The most pragmatic (with our current skill set), and Webb works with this system is using the hexagonal mounting system, making lots of small mirrors, each on servos that could be finely tuned as needed. These mirrors are extraordinarily expense, but perhaps with mass production you would capture some level of economies of scale. If you could combine that with 3D printing the rig in space, it would seemingly be expandable as you go. Obviously you would need either a human presence or robotic one that accomplish the necessary tasks of assembly and any troubleshooting as you go. With this idea, unlike Webb, which had to fold up in the most complex origami man has ever created, the unfold and have everything go exactly perfectly (what an extraordinary accomplishment), you'd have some leeway. A solid mirror, ground and polished, is still the ideal scenario, but for now, making that a reality on a large enough scale in terms of size and in terms of replication seems well beyond current abilities. Those are just a few ideas that popped up from a google search, I'm sure there are a lot of other ideas with a lot of promise out there.

That wasn't at all meant as a shot at you, I understood what you meant, it was just to say I think you and on the same track, just looking at it differently. I don't know much about making mirrors, and certainly not how they do it on these telescopes, but I do wonder if they have done any zero g small scale tests on ISS. It seems far more practical to transport the necessary raw materials to orbit that it would ever be to make and transport something so delicate here on earth and then attempt to launch it on a billion pounds of explosives. I could see there being many potential upsides to manufacturing something like this is space, given the need for impurities to be purged, etc. I'm just not sure how you could make concave or convex surfaces without gravity, I suppose some form of vacuum sealing (which is interesting because could a vacuum seal work in a vacuum? I suppose not, you'd actually likely have to do the exact opposite) .

Not what we currently have anyway, it's a glorified search engine, nothing more. AI implies sentience, and while everything we are doing perhaps points to this being possible, no where near it now. (It irks me a bit that everything right now seemingly be marketed as AI, and it's anything but). I do think @McCroskey is on the right track, but it's not so much software that is needed to really search, it's hardware. Right now we have a handful of satellite telescopes out there, but that isn't enough, nor are they big enough for this sort of search. Hubble's mirror is a shade under 8 ft, Webb works differently but it's the size of a small house footprint. Bottom line, we have neither enough of these, nor do we have any that are really big enough to seriously search for exoplanets and their properties. Imagine if we had 10 Hubble's at 10 times the size of the mirror, or even bigger. That would give us much greater ability to really search, obviously at first near Sun star systems and work our way out. I do think that this is the way to more seriously search for both potential life and to greater understand probability of habitable planetary bodies and their rarity. Alas, we are no where near capable yet of accomplishing such tasks, but perhaps in the near future we will be able to do so. You then of course we need new and better software, but without the hardware, its sort of useless.

I'm glad to hear it, which must be a sign of maturity on my part. When I was younger, I certainly preferred young women that made bad decisions.

If we eject Trump from the planet I'm even more motivated.

The problem being overlooked with any modeling, computer or otherwise, is that it requires participation from a large enough sample size. Ultimately, the vast majority of people either aren't asked to participate, and of those asked, how many refuse? Think about it, how many times have you ever been asked to participate in a survey, and how many times have you refused. I'd be willing to be that most of us have refused way more times than agreed to participate. It's sort of like customer feedback surveys, companies know that all they are going to get in terms of feedback is from those that are disgruntled. That doesn't mean there isn't valuable data for company with those sort of things, but to think that its anywhere near a complete picture is laughable.

There is no conspiracy, this is pretty straight forward, nut job gets gun, decides due to his own self made delusions its a good idea to attempt to kill Presidential candidate, fails, gets caught. The end.

This woman is the actual full blown embodiment of the mental health crisis within the Republican ranks, someone that desperately needs help, and won't have a hope in hell of ever getting it because of her voting choices. The fact that she's anywhere near anyone running for political office to include something as minor as a small town council person let alone within a whisper of a potential President, is just pitiful. It speaks to the gross negligence of the "adults in the room" in the leadership of the Republican Party and their willful acceptance of what they know to be wrong, crazy, and dangerous, etc. for the sake of power. When the Republican Party repeatedly abandoned whatever morals they may have once had for the sake of Trump and power, this was the inevitable result, people that have no business whatsoever being anywhere near power, within in a whisker of it. The scary thing is, it's not like Loomer is some sort of outlier among this group, she's just the flavor of week, there are plenty more, all similarly damaged people ready to take her place in a heartbeat.

Just to give an update on ads in Georgia, I'd say it's 3 or 4 to one in terms of volume in favor of Harris. Trump ads mostly make claims like we are paying 3 times as much for gas (which is humorous, as gas today was $2.82 a gallon, which when one considers inflation, is actually significantly lower than when he was in office (easily over $3 per gallon, pre-inflation)). His ads are blaming housing costs on Harris, along with grocery inflation. Then we get some weird ones with no talking just showing a black family at a pool with "Trump" written (it's fucking really weird). The Harris ads a very effective in my mind, mostly about not going back, forcing corporations and billionaires to pay their share, attacking 2025 and tariffs.

Yeah, a guy giving lots of money to PACs then been given sandbag info and encouraged to then pony up more, why I never.

I'll believe Tester is beaten when I see confirmation of it, not until then. This guy has a career of beating the odds. I don't think Florida is in play, but it wouldn't surprise me if Rick Scott can be taken down.

Sure thing bud, we will get right on that.

Interesting tidbit about that, I was a senior in 2001 when Maddox got elected and it was actually the involvement of the Greek machine that put him over the top, which is pretty ironic all things considered (I think he was a Sigma Nu, though I don't off-hand remember). Anyway, as I mentioned the city itself is pretty liberal, and to your point quite diverse, the county on the other hand is not.

Walt Maddox, former Dem candidate for governor, got his political start in Tuscaloosa as mayor. Like a lot of places the city is pretty liberal (by Alabama standards), the county not so much.

He won't get a friendly reaction from the student section, but the power brokers of the state will be there, and he will get love from them. That having been said, if he's wasting time in Alabama, a state he has in the bag, that means he's not campaigning in a place he needs. What we could all be pulling for is a medical emergency and Alabama's shitty health care system to really shine.

Gotta hand it to Lauren, wearing her anal beads as jewelry is expedient.

That sounds a smidge racist to me.

Man, yall's tailgates seem a bit depressing.

Also, who the fuck wears a class ring?

Yes, but how is impacted by the Salem Witch Trials?

Well, in this case the Secret Service could miss him while shooting at him.