?? Flying Over the Earth at Night
Video Credit: Gateway to Astronaut Photography, NASA ; Compilation: David Peterson (YouTube); Music: Freedom Fighters (Two Steps from Hell)
apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap25120…— Astronomy Picture of the Day ?? (@apod.shinyakato.dev) December 8, 2025 at 3:00 AM
Congratulations to Eileen Higgins on being elected the first Democrat to be mayor of Miami in nearly 30 years!! Americans are speaking out in election after election …when will Republicans start to listen?
— Amy Klobuchar (@amyklobuchar.com) December 9, 2025 at 8:38 PM
The author and philanthropist MacKenzie Scott revealed $7.1 billion in donations to nonprofits in 2025 Tuesday, marking a significant increase in her annual giving from recent years.
— The Associated Press (@apnews.com) December 9, 2025 at 3:00 PM
… Writing in an essay on her website, Scott said, “This dollar total will likely be reported in the news, but any dollar amount is a vanishingly tiny fraction of the personal expressions of care being shared into communities this year.”
Scott acknowledged donating $2.6 billion in 2024 and $2.1 billion in 2023. The gifts this year bring her total giving since 2019 to $26.3 billion.
Scott’s donations have captured the attention of nonprofits and other charitable funders because they come with no strings attached and are often very large compared to the annual budgets of the recipient organizations. Forbes estimates Scott’s net worth at $33 billion, most of which comes from Amazon shares she received after her 2019 divorce from company founder Jeff Bezos..
With the exception of an open call for applications in 2023, it is not possible to apply for her funding nor to reach her directly, as Scott maintains no public facing office or foundation. Organizations are usually notified through an intermediary that Scott is awarding them a donation with little prelude or warning…
Unlike Scott’s gifts, most foundations or major donors direct grants to specific programs and require an application and updates about the impact of the nonprofit’s work. Scott does not ask grantees to report back about how they used the money.
Research from the Center for Effective Philanthropy in 2023 looked at the impact of Scott’s giving and found few of the recipients have struggled to manage the funds or have seen other funders pullback.
Kim Mazzuca, the CEO of the California-based nonprofit, 10,000 Degrees, said her organization was notified of its first gift from Scott of $42 million earlier this year.
“I was just filled with such joy. I was speechless and I kind of stumbled around with my words,” she said, and asked the person calling from Fidelity Charitable to clarify the donation amount, which is about double their annual budget.
10,000 Degrees provides scholarships, mentoring and other support to low-income students and aims to help them graduate college without taking on loans. Mazzuca said that usually nonprofits grow only gradually, but that this gift will allow them to reach more students, to test some technology tools and to start an endowment…
Plagues & Pandemics Update – December 10, 2025
Baud
Via Reddit
Gin & Tonic
Such a delight to see that her ex-husband, despite their marital differences, is equally charitable and generous.
Uh, hold on, I’m being told that may not be correct….
Baud
The earth is so pretty and round.
Kosh III
Klobuchar asks “when will Republicans start to listen?”
Hopefully Nov. 2028, right after they are trounced in the elections.
Suzanne
This is a fantastic bit of detail. I love that she saves nonprofits the time and expense of applications and updates. That entire process consumes a lot of resources.
Baud
@Suzanne:
She can do it because she’s basically a queen who controls her own money. Most foundations are institutions run by a board that needs to follow rules.
Not a critique of her or you, but I wanted to avoid the impression that foundations are doing something improper simply because they have more red tape.
piratedan
The GOP, laser focused on the details that matter. Many kudos to Ms. Scott, her money, her call on how to distribute those that come onto her radar and it’s not the usual suspects.
piratedan
@Kosh III: I’m thinking when they are on trial for their crimes….
Geminid
STEM for the win! I learned from a Politico article that Miami Mayor-elect Eileen Higgins is a mechanical engineer by training. Also, that Higgins was Peace Corps director for Belize.
Central Planning
@Baud: Round like a plate. Not a ball!
Suzanne
@Baud: There’s actually research that serif fonts are better for most people reading large amounts of text, because they can provide faster letter recognition. Fonts that are designed to make each character more distinct are often easier for people with disabilities like dyslexia, and sans-serif fonts usually aren’t designed that way. If you look at most large-print books for the visually impaired, they use large serif fonts for body text for this reason.
We have sufficient technology now that we can provide options to people.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Yes, court documents usually have to use serif fonts for that reason.
Is the change defensible? Maybe. But not for the reason Rubio apparently gave, which is just cruelty.
Suzanne
@Baud:
Fair. I would love it if others follow her example, though.
Baud
@Central Planning:
If the earth were flat, what fake science would require it to be round?
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud:
I wish you could convince my RWNJ brother of that.
Another Scott
@Suzanne: +1
Every generation seems to have to go through this cycle of font battles, and text and GUI contrast (gray on gray Grrr!) and color space battles, and … It’s usually a big waste.
Arial is better than Calibri, but New Century Schoolbook is better than either for walls of text and print. Not giving Rubio any credit though…
Thanks.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Baud
The new Microsoft default font is Aptos, which has a small serif.
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
I wish I could for your sake, but it’s easier just to look down on them.
2liberal
It’s incredible how Felonious Musk can just trot out and issue another burst of vaporware and jack up TSLA for another month or so. He’s saying he wants to compete with NVIDIA which has 3x TSLA’s market cap , tens of thousands of engineers on staff, and a vital corporate partnership. Musk: “Our goal is to bring a new AI chip design to volume production every 12 months… We expect to build chips at higher volumes ultimately than all other AI chips combined.”
Analysis from Seeking Alpha (not sure if this is paywalled)
“NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA), the undisputed leader in AI compute (for now), operates on development cycles closer to 18–24 months. These cycles are supported by tens of thousands of engineers, billions in annual R&D spending, multi-decade compiler development, deeply embedded software stacks, and partnerships with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited (TSM) that took more than a decade to build. Tesla has no such infrastructure, but somehow Musk is suggesting Tesla can out-engineer the entire semiconductor industry in a single jump.”
This is a statement detached from operational reality
Belafon
Love it, Scott, but could you buy a few newspapers and television stations?
Geminid
@Suzanne: One of Eileen Higgins’ complaints about current city practices was the length of time it takes to get a building permit. Miami’s Mayor-elect wants to streamline the process.
rikyrah
Good Morning Everyone 😊 😊 😊
Belafon
@Baud: Notably, a small one in the lower case L, so that it’s different than capital i.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
Wapiti
@Suzanne: I would think it would save her organization work as well. She’s not paying charities to produce reports that she (or more people that she would need to hire) then need to read and review.
Betty Cracker
Yesterday morning, I asked a friend who lives in South FL and is super plugged into the political scene if she thought Higgins had a chance. She told me all the data she’d seen in the runup to the election indicated Higgins was the favorite, which was news to me. But my friend said she wouldn’t be surprised either way because Miami politics is, well, weird.
Anyhoo, not only did Higgins win, she absolutely trounced her Trump-endorsed opponent. The margin was 19 points last I looked! TBH, I’m almost as surprised “La Gringa” beat a Hispanic opponent in Miami as I am that a Democrat won, but Higgins successfully repped Little Havana on the commission, so she knows how to win a tough district. This is great news, and I hope it makes Republicans throughout the state panic. I don’t know what it means outside of that particular city, but hopefully it signals a sea-change in the state.
Suzanne
@Another Scott: Oh no, no credit to Micro Rubio at all. Doing something potentially helpful merely because you have institutional oppositional defiant disorder means you get no points. Dude is just as shitty as all the rest of them.
tobie
@Geminid: Higgins is also fluent in Spanish. I imagine that makes a difference in Miami.
I love that Mackenzie Scott is donating to organizations that make education affordable for low-income families.
In an age in which we are told all the time that there’s no point to a liberal arts education, and Peter Thiel famously funded people not to go to college, it’s great to see someone encouraging higher learning.
Betty Cracker
Brad Lander is challenging Dan Goldman. From what I know of them from afar, I like both.
Suzanne
@Geminid:
I don’t know anything about Miami’s permitting process specifically, but this is probably a good thing for good governance. IME, the places that throw up the most barriers to development are doing so because they’re trying to keep minorities and poor people out. They make the process long and expensive on purpose.
There are plenty of ways to hear from stakeholders and protect people’s interests without bad process.
narya
@Suzanne: @Another Scott: Not only do I prefer sans serif, I prefer Arial. (I actually don’t like Calibri.) But I am also willing to defer folks who need other fonts for accessibility, no problem. At my last employer, the development (i.e., fundraising) department tried to make Georgia the official font, and I just flat-out refused to use it; it did NOT work in tables, etc. I just ignored them.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
I said last night, I hope Trump blames DeSantis for the loss.
Soprano2
@Baud: OMG, they’re worrying about what font they use? Now fonts are part of “diversity”? How about it’s easier for everyone to read it? Morons…..
WaterGirl
You might want to click on the guy in the sidebar pic today, he is ever so much more handsome when he’s bigger. :-)
tobie
@Betty Cracker: Goldman for me has been such a boost to Democrats at oversight hearings. He’s quick on his feet and cuts through witnesses bullshit quickly. I’m sure his prosecutorial experience has made him such an effective questioner. I’d understand challenging him if he was failing at his job. Tough for Landers that he went all in on Mamdani who ended up not wanting him in his own administration.
Librettist
@Betty Cracker:
Voter demographics – not what they were.
It reminds me of the Chicago machine not able to turn out for the last white guy they ran, or some random Kennedy getting smoked in Massachusetts.
The Miami GOP trying to dick around with the election cycle, so the incumbent held office another year, suggests the entrenched powers knew it was going to be the last go round.
Baud
@WaterGirl:
If I had a nickel for every time someone said that to me…
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: The result in Miami gives some grounds for optimism regarding next year’s Florida elections. The Republican primary contest for governor might also. The front-runner, Rep. Byron Donalds, does not seem a very strong candidate, and his wife Erica’s involvement in charter school scandal may drag him down.
Meanwhile, 31 year-old investor James Fishback is running a very hard-edged, right-wing populist campaign against Donalds. Former Florida House Speaker David Renny is also in the race and it looks like the Lt. Governor will jump in too.
Belafon
@Baud: And just for the historical analogies, the Germans banned Jewish fonts in 1941.
Baud
@Belafon:
There are Jewish fonts?
Baud
@Librettist:
I doubt they changed that much in the last year.
jonas
Definitely. I get the need for accountability and all that, but even small nonprofits these days end up needing an office of people just dedicated to grant-writing, accounting, and reporting, and, like you say, that’s a lot of overhead that could be spent on the organization’s core mission.
Soprano2
@Librettist: Yesterday I listened to a “This American Life” podcast about Harold Washington in Chicago, about his run for office and then after he won. I found it interesting and enlightening. Some of the things he said, a politician wouldn’t say them today even though they’re still true.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: For better and/or for worse, the Goldman/Lander contest looks to be a fight over US policy towards Israel.
Ed. That’s been the principal focus of criticism regarding Rep. Goldman.
dmsilev
So, here’s a hilarious story:
Operation Bluebird wants to relaunch “Twitter,” says Musk abandoned the name and logo
The “Twitter” name still has a lot of impact, and Musk famously tore it up at threw it away because he’s for some reason obsessed with the letter X.
Betty Cracker
@Baud: Yes! Piggy won’t blame himself, even though he endorsed González multiple times. It will be a bonus if he trashes DeSantis for the loss. I think it’s an underreported story, how much Trump has undermined DeSantis to punish him for “disloyalty.”
It always seemed like DeSantis was coasting on borrowed juice since he’s about as charismatic as a cold cup of tapioca pudding. The primary drubbing in 2024 showed how weak he is, and the Republican hyenas in the statehouse have been circling ever since. You love to see it
@Librettist: Great points. That really was suspicious when they tried to keep Captain Corruption in until next year.
Scout211
NOTUS The NRSC is claiming they astroturfed a surge in opinion polls that were designed to push Jasmine Crockett over Talarico and Allred because they thought she would be easier for the Republican to defeat.
Interesting, if true. But to me it only highlights that both Cornyn and Paxton are weak candidates and the NRSC has to resort to underhanded tactics.
LAC
@Soprano2: Anything to shoehorn the word “diversity” in a negative way. That will help with the price of eggs, amirite?
Steve in the ATL
@Baud: indeed. Is it a capital I or a lower case l? No one knows!
Jeffro
trump: damn…to think of how I could have skimmed a couple billion outta that…
Linda McMahon: same
Scott Bessent: same!
Howard Lutnick: same!!
Belafon
@Baud:
alphahistory.com/pastpeculiar/1941-nazis-ban-jewish-fonts/
In short, no, but that didn’t stop them from using bigotry to ban it.
Hoodie
@2liberal: Amazing to me that he repeatedly gets away with these outlandish goals without Tesla’s stock taking a hit. He never achieves them and often doesn’t even undertake them. I doubt any sophisticated investor takes them seriously. It seems like investors stay in simply because they think there’s an unlimited supply of idiots and they’re afraid to start a stampede to the exits. This has the effect of reinforcing an impression among the public at large that Musk is some type of genius, which further feeds the bubble. I wonder if it’s some sort of weird evolutionary adaptation that people are so eager to believe in magic.
geg6
@Betty Cracker:
I would think it’s like a small nuclear bomb going off in the GOP. To lose by that 20 point margin? In their Cuban stronghold city that hasn’t had a Dem in charge for thirty years? They are quaking in their shiny white go go boots.
Jeffro
@Baud: the guy’s a machine, holding down 3-4 full-time jobs and STILL managing to un-woke the State Department’s fonts while on a coffee break
(insert the mother of all eyeroll emojis right here)
I don’t know for sure but I bet calling fonts “wasteful diversity moves” is listed in the DSM-5 somewhere.
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: I get the impression that Ron DeSantis still thinks he could be a viable presidential candidate in 2028. As Abraham Lincoln observed, once the worm of presidential ambition begins to gnaw, it gnaws deep.
Not that there’s much to gnaw on in DeSantis’s case.
Baud
@Belafon:
Fascinating. This really is a full service blog.
Librettist
@Baud:
Kamala carried the city of Miami. This was a tough go for a GOP machine that has largely fled to the burbs or croaked.
Baud
@Librettist:
Thanks.
Jeffro
right??
so smart and efficient!
she probably has a single staffer who looks at existing organizations that are making an impact and goes, “hey Mac…how about $50M to _____?”
Here at the Fro household we have switched quite a bit of our charitable giving over to a) local orgs and b) GiveWell.
RevRick
@Baud: Brian Cox, the British astrophysicist, says that the silence we hear from the universe, or at minimum our galaxy, indicates that our pretty, round Earth may be the only island of meaning. We are, in effect, how the universe understands itself.
SW
What a contrast to her vapid horn dog ex.
dmsilev
@2liberal:
If he actually means “build” rather than “contract with TSMC or whoever to do the fab for us”, he’s even more delusional than usual. Fabbing state of the art chips is an enormously expensive and difficult business to be in, and if you wanted to start from scratch it’d take twenty or thirty years and hundreds of billions of dollars in capital investments and R&D to be anywhere close to competitive. Aren’t too many companies that you could just buy as a shortcut either.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker:
That’s a shot over the bow! I like Dan Goldman, and he’s very good a questioning in House hearings. But I am glad to see this. The outcome of that race will tell us a lot.
Baud
@Scout211:
I’d imagine Crockett relied on internal polls or at least more established polls in making her decision.
Fair Economist
@Suzanne: I doubt there’s any large city in America which has a too simple system for building permits. There are some which have an excessively *corrupt* system, but not too simple.
SW
@RevRick: Pretty freaking grandiose in my view.
kalakal
@dmsilev:
He’s a fan of the video game series?*
More likely it’s because his ‘sense of humour’ is stuck at the 10 year old boy’s sounds “a bit rude level”
* I am
Baud
@RevRick:
Maybe the aliens are smart and have decided to keep their distance.
Scout211
Mediaite
. . .
This is what I’m talking about. Describe the behavior and make the judgements based on the behavior, style of communication and personality flaws and weaknesses.
Trump’s rant on his social from yesterday (that AI was analyzing) is posted at the link.
Belafon
@RevRick: There’s a cartoon called Monkey Wrench set in the far future that posits sapiens as the oldest intelligent species in the galaxy.
Betty Cracker
@tobie: I admire the way Goldman performs in the House too, and I thought Landers was all class in the mayoral race, and I admired the way he stood up to ICE. Don’t know enough about his ambitions to join the upcoming Mamdami admin to conclude he was snubbed, but maybe?
@Geminid: I thought the FL Lt. Gov. was already in? Saw some notably crappy ads featuring him when I was streaming football games recently.
Regarding the Goldman – Landers House race and U.S. – Israel policy, I suspect that’s going to play out in other Democratic primaries. It’s my impression there was a gulf between elected Dems and Dem voters on that issue, but pols are starting to move to where the people already are.
Belafon
@Baud: Other species would have had to realize the implications of using electromagnetic waves for communication before they started for that to work.
Jeffro
hoo boy
there are not too many sure things in life, but Ron’s non-viability as a presidential candidate is one of them
Even Ted Cruz is like, “DeSantis? blech”
JD Vance on DeSantis: “eww”
RevRick
@Kosh III: They are hoping they can bulldoze their reactionary program through, cementing them in power. They are betting the house that by the time elections roll around, they will have consolidated all the levels of power.
Salty Sam
Hey Rev, can you point to any of Cox’s writings on this? It’s something that has intrigued me since I was a very young man.
RevRick
@Baud: Technological civilizations can’t hide themselves. One way or another they literally broadcast their existence. And if Darwin is right, they would basically look, think and act like us.
RevRick
@Salty Sam: I have seen YouTube segments where he outlines this.
Elizabelle
In its brilliance, the Trump admin is floating an idea to require 5 years of social media data, along with one’s family’s names, addresses and contact info, for visitors to the US. Visitors. From many nations now on the visa waiver list, including our allies in France, Germany, Australia, South Korea …. and this with the World Cup and Summer Olympics coming up quickly.
They are already doing this for immigrant and nonimmigrant visas (since 2019), and now for student visas and very soon, for H-1B nonimmigrant visas.
They also want to force visa applicants to use the CPB mobile app.
I love to travel, but would never comply with something like this from a country I planned to visit. And I sure am not serving up my family’s contact information, either.
My guess is they want to use AI to build an enormous database of foreign citizens, including those remaining in their home countries.
WaPost, not a gift link:
U.S. plans to ask visitors to disclose 5 years of social media history
The proposal would affect travelers from countries on the visa waiver program, including Australia, Britain, France, Germany, Israel, Japan and South Korea.
RevRick
@Belafon: If Cox is right, we have something like a moral obligation to preserve ourselves and our world.
Capri
@Hoodie: My theory is that humans are genetically adapted to defer to authority, as are all mammals that exist in herds, troops, or family units. A group needs some type of leader if it’s to be a group very long.
It explains why so many blindly follow alpha-type idiots and also why institutions reflexively protect abusers in positions of authority.
Betty Cracker
@Jeffro: God, I hope you’re right because DeSantis is every bit as cruel and corrupt as Trump and far more competent at co-opting and corrupting institutions. What he lacks are people skills, and thank dog for that because I could see someone like him pulling off an embedded Orbán-style autocracy that would be extremely hard to dislodge. He’s already done it in the country’s 3rd-largest state, but he needed an assist from the Manchurian Cantaloup. Good thing DeSantis is such an off-putting prick!
Jackie
@Betty Cracker:
I do, too. I guess we non NYers will have to sit back and see who they like best. I just hope it’s not an ugly primary.
geg6
@Librettist:
Maybe I’m wrong but I read that she (Harris) only won it by one or two points.
tobie
@Betty Cracker: I guess my question would be what makes one think that Dan Goldman does not have a differentiated view on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? What makes one think he’s a lackey of AIPAC? It seems Lander is the one with a one-sided view. There are three Democratic races I’ll be watching carefully to see if I still identify with Democrats: Goldman/Lander, Mills/Platner, and Abughazaleh/Biss. If my preferred candidates lose in all three, then it’s clear to me that my views are out of sync with the Democratic base and I should change my registration to no-party-affiliate.
Jeffro
@Elizabelle: I’m trying to figure out how even their little lizard brains would think this makes us safer.
More pro-trump, sure: just deny entry to anyone with any anti-trump comments on social media, ever (or at least in the past five years, right?)
But safer? More prosperous and free? LOLOLOL
Fair Economist
@Hoodie: What’s going on with TSLA, and a number of other stocks, is actually very frightening. Recently there’s been a big flood of stock investing influencers pushing “covered calls”, and that’s creating this bizarre, and scary situation where stocks are being driven far above any reasonable price.
A covered call is when an investor owns a stock, but also sells somebody else a “call”, which is the right to buy it at a price somewhat higher than the current price within a certain amount of time. If the stock declines or stays about the same, the investor makes money from selling the call and still owns the stock. If the stock goes over the “strike price”, the price at which the call was written, the investor has lost the gains over that price, although they still made money overall. In effect, it’s a way to own a stock with somewhat reduced risk – you lose less when it goes does, but make less when it goes up a lot.
But this influencer frenzy – I am convinced it’s a paid for disinfo operation – has convinced a lot of investors to put all their money into covered calls, and specifically where the calls have a higher price. And that’s in highly volatile speculative stocks – most especially obviously overpriced ones, because normally the biggest demand for calls is coming from stock shorters who want to protect themselves against big jumps in price.
And here’s the clincher – because it’s *covered* calls, to sell the call they have to own the stock. And whenever it’s “called away” because the price went up, they go out and buy it again, so the price keeps going up.
It’s very seductive because the investor gets a lot of money for selling the call, every time they do it (normally every week). What they lose – because the wildly speculative stock went down, or because the stock was called away and then they lost money *buying it back at a higher price* – is not so obvious. My brother, who manages my mother’s investments, has gotten into this, and is convinced he has made hundreds of thousands over the past few months. I created spreadsheet to analyze the literally thousands of transactions this has all generated, and found he’d actually made only $19,000 total – and there were some months where he’d been calling me to brag about how much he’d made, but he’d actually been *losing* from selling the calls (if he hadn’t sold them, he’d have made more).
So this influence op has convinced hordes of investors to buy and hold the most insanely speculative stocks, including ones like Tesla and Carvana where it’s simply impossible for them to ever be worth their current prices. And that’s pushing up the price and worsening the speculative frenzy. It will end eventually, but I can’t say when, and as we have seen with bubble after bubble these bubbles can inflate to unbelievable heights. When it does pop it’s going to be horrific.
Jackie
@WaterGirl: I just did; his heart shaped nose is adorable! He’s a handsome fella :-)
tobie
@Jackie: How can it not be an ugly primary? A fairly new and effective Rep is being challenged on dubious grounds by someone who clearly fashions himself to meet the mood of the moment. I hope Lander leaves this primary so damaged that he can never run for public office again.
I’ll add: from Moulton to Platner, the Qataris have sure gotten their money’s worth. They’ve invested billions in American politics and managed to convince the left and right that AIPAC controls everything. It’s nauseating.
jonas
@dmsilev: Yeah, file this alongside the “100% Made in USA” Trump cell phone.
Baud
@tobie:
I can’t speak to “lackey,” but whether candidates receive funding from any lobbying group is still public information, I believe.
Jeffro
@Betty Cracker:
@Jackie:
“I like them both…I just hope it’s not an ugly primary”
110%
Gonna be a lot of that on the D side going forward.
As long as we all keep our powder relatively dry for the real enemy, I’m happy to have the voting public see our best and brightest (especially how they conduct themselves) over extended periods of pre-primary time.
Let the crabs in the GOP’s bucket go at it and rip each other to shreds. We’re disadvantaged enough as it is; we need positive agendas and party unity 5 seconds after primary polls close.
(and while I’m at it, yes, yes I would like a pony =)
RevRick
@Scout211: Adam Schiff did this in California and Claire Macaskill had done it back in 2012. Setting up the candidate you think is weaker is a longstanding tactic.
kalakal
@RevRick: Does Cox believe Things Can Only Get Better?
Eunicecycle
Our local Habitat for Humanity received a large grant from Scott a few years ago. It was quite a shock; the Executive Director thought they were being pranked when she got the phone call. They never found out how our particular Habitat came to her attention.
Bupalos
@Scout211: It’s not impossible, but to the extent that it might be true and meaningful, it also reminds me of Democratic efforts to boost Donald Trump early in the 16 primary cycle. Might want to be careful what you wish for.
Elizabelle
@Jeffro: Maybe it’s a cover your ass for CBP, and would greatly reduce the workload, too, if one reduced the appeal of traveling to our fine country.
Mostly, it reminds me of the Nazis and Gestapo using their Hollerith (forerunner of IBM) punchcard technology to keep a record of residents, especially Jews. And eventually to organize the transports.
You cannot look at what the Trump-Stephen Miller admin is doing and not see that a lot of people studied the Nazis very closely for procedure, and to get it right this time.
M31
@Fair Economist:
even for regular shareholders of Tesla it’s a trap — if they hadn’t approved the crazy trillion dollar payday for Musk (which I don’t think he’ll never get, there were benchmarks to be met that were unrealistic), Elon would quit in a huff and the stock would have tanked — stock that they already owned, so they were stuck and ‘had’ to approve it
I remember when it was valued at $200 and declining and thinking about betting it could go below 100 (knowing that even then it was actually worth $30 or less), but deciding the risk was too great
lol good thing, it’s over $400 now and still worth $30 or less, really one of the biggest wtf’s of recent years, at least Nvidia is building and selling things right now, Tesla has its valuation based on stuff that will never happen like robots in every home in 2 years and Tesla cars being fully autonomous so you could rent them out, yeah right
tobie
@Baud: Yes, but the real money lies in “dark money” not public contributions. So, who’s to say that Moulton, Lander and Platner are not in fact receiving funds from interest groups abroad?
Politico had a piece about this recently:
politico.com/news/2025/10/11/qatar-lobbying-israel-influence-00603060
Fair Economist
@RevRick:
With the caveat that a technological civilization using energy at a rate similar to us is not very visible. We couldn’t currently see ourselves more than a few hundred light years away even if we were looking in the right spot. Right now my preferred explanation for the Fermi Paradox is that nuclear fusion power is not practical (which makes interstellar travel impossible) and that something like a Dyson sphere isn’t possible either (so no major alterations to a star’s energy output). Then every civilization is limited to a planet or two, and none are visible at substantial distances. There could be hundreds of such technological civilizations in the Milky Way and we wouldn’t know.
Jackie
@geg6:
I saw a blurb of Faux and Friends re Higgins absolute trouncing win; they were absolutely freaking out! Made my day start with a big smile! :-)
Baud
@tobie:
I’m not going to speculate about any Dem. I was trying to answer your question about whether we could know if Goldman is connected to AIPAC. Whatever one things of them, they’re a US based lobbying group and their donations are subject to disclosure, to the best of my knowledge.
Fair Economist
@M31: As I said, at *this* point I don’t think Tesla’s stock price has much to do with even Musk’s insane fan club. It’s this covered call frenzy. My brother has a large position in TSLA, and he’s no Musk fanboy – he just thinks (incorrectly) that he’s making a fortune selling covered calls on it. He’s not alone.
Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)
@Baud:
How the hell would using one font over another be “wasteful”? It’s pixels on a screen. That’s literally insane. Just pure spite against the disabled
Baud
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Well, in the Baud! administration, agencies would be required to use Old English font, which is really hard to read but super classy looking.
Some naysayers might call that inefficient.
Betty Cracker
@tobie: I don’t know enough about Goldman’s views on I/P to have an opinion. Don’t know that much about the other races you mention either.
As I’ve said before in response to insinuations made in other threads (not by you), I don’t think it’s inherently antisemitic for candidates to reject AIPAC funding or criticize others for taking it since that organization is currently closely aligned with a far-right government. But there are folks who conflate all that.
It’s definitely a fine line because actual antisemites glom onto the appalling activities of the Israeli far-right to smear Jews in general, and that’s wrong. Netanyahu and Likud don’t have the support of millions of Jews in Israel, let alone in the U.S. But IMO it’s also wrong to smear anyone who opposes AIPAC as an antisemite or the credulous dupe of antisemites.
piratedan
@Fair Economist: In a way, I like the Universe building concepts that Sagan introduced in Contact. I’ve also seen versions with other authors, namely that scientific progression looks like magic to those that do not understand it. There may be additional ways to apply energy with sources that we had not considered that may not even rely on the destruction/combustion cycles that we saw with the industrial revolution. We’re still exploring ecosystems outside of what is human-centric and positing life-forms that are not carbon cycle dependent.
Considering our current sentience is wasted on shows like The Bachelor, I would think that we still have some growing up to do as a species and am not even sure that we’ve managed puberty yet as far as growth and understanding on just “how things work” in this here universe. It could be perceived as quiet simply because we haven’t understood what to listen to as of yet.
piratedan
@Baud: New Century Gothic Copperplate or go the fuck home…..
Kirklin
@Baud: According to the lobby group Citizens against AIPAC Corruption, over his congressional career Dan Goldman has received $479,236 in donations and independent expenditures. This is his second term.
Suzanne
@Betty Cracker:
Agree 100%.
Also, there are accusations of antisemitism directed toward Americans who voice objections to Israel’s actions in Gaza, but perhaps haven’t said anything about, for example, the humanitarian crisis in Sudan, as if this is hypocritical. This is a whole heaping pile of bullshit, IMO. Americans get to criticize their government, which is currently providing something like $3B a year in military aid to Israel, which is currently controlled by a right-wing government.
Baud
@Kirklin:
Thanks for looking it up.
Omnes Omnibus
@Baud:
Army Majors have been complaining about Calibri in Power Point slides for long enough that it has become an army meme.
Miss Bianca
Wait, what?
Geminid
@Betty Cracker: Ro Khanna told Politico a couple months ago that he thought the Israeli/Palestinian issue would be a central one in midterm primaries.
Personally, I think Khanna is at best a middling pundit when it comes to Democratic politics, but he is a good weathervane and this told me that his crowd at least hopes this will be so.
I am not so sure. For one thing, Democrats are out of power now and so are not directly responsible for US policy in that conflict. For another, the ceasefire that began October 28 still holds by and large. It’s frozen for now but that should change in the New Year.
So I think this issue will not have the salience Khanna predicted, except in a few races like Goldman’s and fellow New Yorker Ritchie Torres’s. Also, the contest to replace retiring Rep. Nydia Velasquez. The issue will certainly be raised in the many other open-seat races, but I am sceptical it will be determinative outside New York City and it may not be there.
But that’s what primaries are for, and this is one of several issues I will be monitoring next Spring and Summer.
I’ve noticed the Israeli/Palestinian issue is also being raised in a number of Republican primary races. The big one is Rep. Thomas Massie’s in Kentucky, but I see it raised in a number of others including Florida’s governor primary, where James Fishback is emphasizing Miriam Adelson’s opposition to him. I see more and more Republicans argue that “America First” means ending Israel’s influence in this country.
This question also figures in the bitter controversies that have erupted over Charlie Kirk’s assassination. So far, the only casualties have been the watermelons people keep shooting to prove Tyler Hamilton did not kill Kirk, but there are divisions now among Kirk’s followers that look permanent and many revolve around Israel.
I think this phenomenon is inevitable, and to some extent neccesary. I consider myself a supporter of Israel, but the uncritical support that nation has received over the past few decades has not been good for people in the region including Israelis. It has not been good for the Democratic party either.
So I think the pendulum was bound to swing back; we’ll just have to see how far.
Bupalos
An article on BJ on the ongoing Trump fuckery in higher ed that seems likely in (unintended?) consequence to further tilt the gender mix at more competitive institutions in the female direction reminds me….
I’ve been curious what folks here think about ‘the crisis of men.’ There are some obviously terrible angles on it (looking at you, Jordan Peterson) but I wonder if folks have engaged with presentations like Scott Galloway’s and what they think of a take like that.
Kind of thought the topic would come up formally here sooner.
Steve in the ATL
@Baud: and Olde English 800 would be the official malt liquor of the administration? Also super classy!
CCL
@Baud: hummm — looks sans serif to me. According to Learn.Microsoft.com/Typography:
Also:
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Omnes Omnibus: Comic Sans, anyone? Personally, my favorite is Lucida Sans Typewriter but then I read a lot of code.
Or for a display, Albertus. Great nostalgia value. Needs a better “e”. 😁
Fonts Hanging Out
RevRick
@kalakal: I don’t think he’s said anything like that.
Karen Gail
Marcio has to do something, he can’t do like Duffy and talk about pull-ups or proper clothing to wear. I swear somewhere, someone or something has prepared a list of the most incompetent for any job and gave it to Trump. Every person he has picked for an office couldn’t be trusted with a lemonade stand yet they are supposed to be overseeing departments with thousands of people and millions of dollars in budgets.
Anyone who believes that they are capable of doing much more than feeding themselves is dreaming; not only are these people no able to run a lemonade stand they have taken cruelty to new heights. If you want to know what EVIL looks like? Trump and crew are prime examples. If you want to know what corruption looks like they are willingly putting it on display.
Soprano2
@Elizabelle: They don’t want anyone from other countries to come here, full stop. This is more evidence of that, who would do this to take a two week vacation?
Omnes Omnibus
@kalakal: No, that’s Howard Jones.
RevRick
@Fair Economist: His explanation is just look at how far scientific knowledge has advanced in the past 500 years, and now imagine a civilization with a 100,000 year head start on us. The odds favor that. But nothing.
Baud
@CCL:
Yes, you’re correct. It’s only a couple of letters than have a slightly more pronounced flourish.
Suzanne
While we’re on the subject of fonts….. I am a typography classisist, and thus IMO, the best sans-serif typeface is Helvetica.
Though Gotham, which is a new kid on the block…. I would argue is better for headline text and logotype. I use it for my resume and portfolio.
Fair Economist
@RevRick: It doesn’t matter how advanced a civilization is, if what you’re talking about is impossible. Without usable fusion power, interstellar distances are not traversable – at speeds otherwise achievable, you can’t keep the lights on in a starship for thousands of years. It’s not so clear that space structures on a large enough scale to significantly alter the energy output of a star are impossible, but they may be, and in that case it won’t matter how advanced a civilization is, it’s just impossible for a civilization to be all that visible.
Belafon
@tobie: Landers is on the city council, where he could support Mamdani’s reforms. Why would Mamdani want to move him out of that position?
Betty Cracker
@Geminid: You could be right about that. I do think there’s a (closing) gap between how elected Dems and rank and file voters talk and feel about Israel, but I don’t think it’s anything like a top 5 issue outside of a few specific regions.
Funny how most of those same Repubs don’t have a problem with hard-right oligarchies like Russia and the Gulf states bribing our shitty president and his corrupt crew to do their bidding. I worry more about that than Israel, tbh.
Kirklin
@Miss Bianca: My impression from Mahmadi and Landers mutual support actions during the election is that they agreed the winner would support the loser in some way, and Landers has chosen the possible Congress seat over the guaranteed city official position.
If I’m right, we should expect the NYC Mayor to come out in strong support of Landers sometime after the new year.
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Excellent point.
Baud
I wonder what font aliens prefer.
Belafon
@Bupalos: You can’t separate the terrible angles from the men who believe them. It’s a single circle. And that’s the crux of it. The problem is that too many (looking at you, white women) keep giving them power.
Belafon
@CCL: It is, but as I pointed out above, it makes small changes for readability, including adding a small serif tail to the lower case L so that it can be distinguished from the upper case i.
Steve in the ATL
@CCL: are font connoisseurs like wine enthusiasts? “Aptos is bold and fresh, with chewy tannins and hints of India ink!”
p.a.
Filtered through their “minds”, I interpret this as an attack on America’s Jews (((liberalLiberalLIBERAL!!!))), not on Israel- as long as Israel’s government continues its present arc. The fly in the ointment for Republicn support of Israel: Mideast oil money, and the Saudi Royal family’s concerns countering Shiism and Iran with Isreali action vs at least a show of supporting fellow Muslims subject to Israel’s abuses.
Jeffro
when do we get to talk about trump’s epically long and comic Truth Social rant from last night, about his amazing health and MANY cognitive tests?
kalakal
@Omnes Omnibus: Nice try
D:Reamprof cox before the day job
Geminid
@Jeffro: I’ve seen some early polls for the 2028 Republican presidential race, and DeSantis is one of the candidates polled. I also noticed Georgia Governor Brian was not included in the last poll I saw, but I expect Kemp doesn’t mind one bit. Better for him not to be a target until he makes his play, which I think he will.
Belafon
@Fair Economist: And while I agree with you at one level, the definition of impossible has changed quite a bit over the last 200 years.
Note that we haven’t finished uniting all of physics, and if we do manage to reconcile gravity and quantum mechanics, our definition of what is possible could change.
kalakal
@RevRick:
It’s a joking reference. Cox was the keyboard player for the band D:Ream before he became an academic. Things can only get better was a number one hit for them in 1994
Omnes Omnibus
@kalakal: Dear god.
prostratedragon
@Mr. Bemused Senior: You’re right about that “e,” the poor thing. I use/d Lucida Sans or Console on my screens, Renaissance type stuff on print, Utopia when needed to not stand out much.
Dr. Royer-Collard, Quills (2000)
Bupalos
@Suzanne: It took me 30-odd years (many spent in graphic design) to evolve from an immature Palatino clueless conservative to a fully actualized Whitney liberal humanist.
NotMax
@Suzanne
This geezer likes the look and readability of Verdana when browsing with Firefox.
kalakal
@Omnes Omnibus: Should have warned you. Now you know why he became an academic.
That song went to number 1 – Blair used as Labour’s campaign music in 1997 when he handed the Tories their worst defeat since 1906
Just look at that parking lot
I don’t know anything about fonts, but I do know Marco Rubio is an asshole.
Suzanne
@Bupalos: I was in graphic design (advertising) for a few years before it fully dawned on me that I hated it. I loved my degree program and hated the industry. But I love typography and still spend far too much time with it.
My resume and portfolio are fire, though.
Geminid
@tobie: Rep. Goldman would be a strong supporter of Israel even if AIPAC did not give him any donations at all. And I have no problem with that.
I kind of wish this was the case, that AIPAC was not raising campaign money but was just an advocacy and endorsement group. That’s what they were coming into this decade, and they had plenty of influence that way. Building clout through campaign donations can become an end itself, and I think that is what has happened with AIPAC.
Jeffro
@Geminid: I’ll be very interested to hear what Kemp and Vance have to say about each other. I cannot picture that ‘unity ticket’ down the road, but historically speaking there have been quite a few odd marriages of convenience when it comes to prez/VP
Are there any semi-sane GOP governors out there besides Kemp that we need to worry about?
WaterGirl
@Jackie: I have a bit of a crush.
stinger
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
Depends on if it’s “make this change going forward” or “go back and change the past”. Even if it’s just “change the look of our website”, that’s a lot of coding time changing style sheets and so on. Either way, it’s stupid.
I’ve lived through multiple corporate rebrandings, and you have to be very specific about what gets changed and what doesn’t.
WaterGirl
@Suzanne: I’ll see your 100% and raise you. 110% agree! :-)
Once again I am in awe of the way Betty perfectly expresses something I believe and have been unable to succinctly put words to.
WaterGirl
@Jeffro: I missed that. Do you happen to have a screen cap? Or a source that you can link to, that is not his stupid social media site?
catclub
@Kosh III:
I hope never. when they listen they hear the wrong things. I would rather have Democratic voters listen up and vote.
Geminid
@p.a.: I see two factors behind a lessening of Republican support for Israel. One is that pro-Israel conservative Evangelicals– Mike Huckabee’s generation– are aging out. The other is that Americans have gotten past the “Global War on Terror” that made many people identify Israel’s security with our own. There is a generational divide in both cases.
But whatever the reasons, Israeli journalists who follow American politics have remarked on this trend.
Deputinize America
@Jeffro:
I honestly decided that life was too short to read it as people put it on BlueSky, it looked so long winded and stupid.
Glidwrith
@dmsilev: He’s obsessed with a particular font-type of X which in ASCII code is 88. Ass has been signaling he’s a Nazi forever.
there go two miscreants
Mackenzie Scott is the (improved!) John Beresford Tipton of our time.
scav
@RevRick: Another big assumption there is that the rate of change can be and will be maintained. What’s the estimated height of a man if you base your prediction on what happens during the growth spurt years?
Melancholy Jaques
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
I’d bet it isn’t even that. It’s more like the Cracker Barrel logo change. Anything new is woke, bad, a leftist plot. Must go back, always back, to whatever things were in our memory of our grandfathers’ days.
catclub
When I was at the historical museum in the death camp at Dachau, decided that the Germans went crazy reading that high gothic font in their newspapers.
Baud
@Geminid:
This is true. The intifada happened the year or two after 9/11.
Plus Bush’s win brought a lot of Huckabee types into power, going to your first point.
rikyrah
About the Miami election,
I had been wondering how the Republican CUBAN Mayor could defend the Orange Menace and the reversal of many immigration related policies that had favored Cubans for Decades.
Suzanne
@Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):
It actually has to do with the volume of printed material. Over a large body of text, and many copies, a small change in a typeface can result in many more pages printed, and more ink used. There was a story some years back about some organization switching to printing in Garamond, which ended up saving a bunch of money for them, since Garamond runs small and has a narrow stroke width.
Made more of a difference when everything was printed on a printing press, like newspapers. In that case, everything has to be the same. But now we have technology to print multiple versions of things at smaller quantities, or distribute documents digitally.
prostratedragon
They funny:
Geminid
@Jeffro: I think Brian Kemp is a much more capable politician than JD Vance. Kemp is definitely the more experienced, and he also has the advantage of working 600 miles from Washington most of the last decade.
But Vance has one potential advantage: he may be the incumbent president going into 2028.
Scout211
@Jeffro: @WaterGirl:
I posted a link to it above. You can copy it from the article at Mediaite
Scout211
@Scout211: Or read it upstairs at BC’s new post. ;-)
Sure Lurkalot
Moved to new thread.
rikyrah
Catholic Sat
@CatholicSat
Pope Leo XIV says he thinks Donald Trump is trying to break apart the alliance between the United States and Europe:
“The remarks that were made about Europe also in interviews recently, I think, are trying to break apart what I think needs to be a very important alliance today and in the future.”
x.com/CatholicSat/status/1998507555035992196?s=20
Mr. Bemused Senior
@Scout211:
Well, I didn’t know ChatGPT had a sense of humor. Better tell Carlo.
Ramona
@Fair Economist: Thanks for explaining this. TSLA’s nutty stock price makes more sense to me now.
Jeffro
@Scout211: many thanks! moving to the next thread =)
Ramona
@Fair Economist: Thanks for explaining this. TSLA’s nutty stock price makes more sense to me now.
Eyeroller
@RevRick: I don’t understand that, does he mean it because we haven’t heard from aliens yet? Assuming they’d even broadcast using radio waves, those travel at lightspeed (since they are light) so somthing coming from the other side of the galaxy would take a hundred thousand or so years to get here, and intensity goes down roughly as 1/r-cubed so the signal would be incredibly weak here. It’s hard to see even individual stars at great distances except for the unusually bright ones.
It would take about 2.5 million years for a signal from Andromeda to get here.
There are arguments to be made that there may be only say one or two “intelligent” lifeforms per galaxy, but lack of communication isn’t one of the better ones.
Sister Golden Bear
@Suzanne: There’s a big difference in typeface readability between print and on-screen—where sans serif fonts generally perform better (due to the lower resolution of screens vs. printing). Cultural factors are also at play. Traditionally serifed fonts tested better in the U.S. while sans serifs did better in European studies—most likely due to the higher prevalence of use there. I.e. people find it easier to read whichever style they’re more used to reading.
Switching to Times New Roman is one of the worst choices for accessibility, due to various technical factors with its design. It was originally designed for newspapers to cram as many characters into a given space, so it’s relatively small for it’s size, with a characters that are closely spaced and have smaller interior spaces (think the inside of “e”s, “g”s, etc.)
Calibri, while not specifically designed for accessibility, was specifically designed for on-screen usage. So it’s got taller relative letterforms (x-height), spaced looser, etc. which helps make it more accessible. (Although fonts like Comic Sans are better for dyslexics between the letterforms are more distinct—e.g. “p” and “q”, and “b” and “d”, have more visual differences among them.)
Why yes, I’m a former graphic designer and typophile, why do you ask?
WaterGirl
@Geminid:
I think it could just as well be a disadvantage, because then Vance would be even more closely tied to all the Trump destruction.
Kosh III
What about Pica and Elite????
Eyeroller
@RevRick: Evolution doesn’t require that at all. It depends on what problems they have to solve in their environments, which would presumably have to be fairly similar but not identical on other planets.
Evolution doesn’t even predict that all species will be carbon-based, but chemistry tends to make that most likely.
Princess
The flip side to the fact Republicans look beatable in 2026 is they we’ll see more competitive primaries in which there is more than one candidate with many strengths. The only thing that bugs me about this one is that, when I fretted that Mamdani is too inexperienced to run NYC, I was assured that Lander would be beside him helping, and I guess not.
Geminid
@WaterGirl: Yes, Kemp could turn that to his advantage in the primaries. Vance’s possible incumbency could make make that contest more divisive though, in which case Democrats would stand to benefit.
Suzanne
@Sister Golden Bear: Agree with everything you said. I personally loathe Times New Roman. I find it much harder to read than Garamond or Centaur.
Calibri isn’t a good choice, either, tho. Fonts like Meta have the same taller X-height and looser kerning but have some additional features like the sloped tops on the lowercase L that make it easier.
We’re still kind of stuck with Calibri and Times New Roman for the simple reason that these fonts are included with most PC operating systems. There are far better choices out there, but they don’t ship free!
artem1s
@Suzanne: that exactly backwards. San-serif fonts are easier to read and are more uniform in spacing and size. The standard for NIH grants is Arial 11 for a reason.
That study is flawed…
But I do agree, NTR should be jettisoned into the sun. Even for a serif font it’s particularly visually awful.
Melancholy Jaques
@Omnes Omnibus:
There are few better representatives of the mid 1980s than that song & that video.
Matt McIrvin
@Glidwrith: The simple capital X is 88 ASCII, yeah. Whether that’s anything, well, we shouldn’t really give Elon Musk the benefit of the doubt, should we?
That 𝕏 logo, though, is just a standard Unicode font representation of MATHEMATICAL DOUBLE STRUCK CAPITAL X (what mathematicians who use these characters call “blackboard bold”), which is U+1D54F or F0 9D 95 8F in UTF-8. It’s not used very often–the biggies are ℝ and ℚ and ℂ and ℤ (which represent different classes of “numbers”), maybe a few others.
Professor Bigfoot
@Jackie: It’s that fuzzy li’l beard! Absolutely adorable big fella!
StringOnAStick
@M31: Yeah, meme stocks are a great place for ordinary stock owners (i.e., marks) to get fleeced. There’s no way you can unwind your position fast enough when it hits the fan, you simply do not have the access that the big players have.
Matt McIrvin
That actual font change is less disturbing than the rationale given–that any kind of accommodation for the disabled is a “wasteful DEI change” (and keeping it once it’s done is somehow more wasteful than making the change to undo it).
Arguing that the font change wouldn’t actually have the claimed benefit would be one thing, and a debate we can have, but that’s not what they did. Including disability accommodation under the “DEI” they hate and want to reverse is flat-out eugenics, the kind of thing that let to Aktion T4 in Nazi Germany. I know there are a lot of disabled people, and people with disabled family members, who vote Republican. I sometimes wonder if they know they’re in the crosshairs.
Suzanne
@artem1s: There is a ton of research indicating that serif fonts are more readable at body text size and over long length, but there is also competing evidence. As Sister Golden Bear noted, though, there’s evidence that that is cultural and not intrinsic to the design itself. And there’s competing evidence that certain sans fonts are more readable than some serif fonts, but that depends on other things. And, as noted, there’s not one disability. Vision impairment and dyslexia have really different needs.
Geminid
@tobie: I would not extrapolate too much from results in the Goldman/Lander and Mills/Platner races. They are only two of many races.
And I will be astonished if Daniel Biss does not beat Kat Abughazaleh. Biss is well-known in IL-09 and has a good reputation.there; plus, he has endorsements from the Congressional Progressive Caucus and the Illinois SEIU Council among many others.
Abughazaleh only moved to Illinois a year ago. She’s been endorsed by the astroturfed Sunrise Movement; also Ro Khanna, who represents a district 1700 miles away. But “Kat” has an ardent national fan base, and they are setting themselves up for disappointment.
mrmoshpotato
@Gin & Tonic: Ha! You had me going there.
schrodingers_cat
@tobie: You and me both.
Steve in the ATL
@Melancholy Jaques: that sounds like a challenge!
Steve Paradis
@Baud:
He will do anything if he thinks it will make him President.
He will never be President.
Steve Paradis
@jonas:
Meanwhile her ex is spending similar amounts on big boats and enough work on the Lovely Lauren to get her into the next Bond movie which at this rate won’t start filming until she’s in her 60’s.
Maybe she can play 007’s mum.
CCL
@Belafon: true.
@Steve in the ATL: yes.
Bill Arnold
@RevRick:
Maybe.
On the other hand, sufficiently advanced communication is indistinguishable from blackbody radiation:
The physical limits of communication or Why any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from noise (PDF, 2004, Michael Lachmann, M. E. J. Newman, Cristopher Moore)
Eduardo
@Baud: oh that was the “diversity” thing lil Marco was referring to?
what a fucking asshole
randal sexton
@Fair Economist: Slight comment on your description of a covered call — The strike price can be either above or below the actual price of the stock, — ‘In the money’ or ‘Out of the money’, for an ‘In the money’ (strike price below the stock value ) the value of the call is the difference between stock and strike price PLUS some time decaying premium. I have used options for years, as a way of reducing risk.
Matt McIrvin
@Suzanne: There are really odd-looking dyslexia-targeted fonts that are designed to mitigate some dyslexic letter confusions. The most noticeable characteristic is that the strokes get thicker toward the bottom of the character. I know some people swear by them. However, my impression is that the actual research on their effectiveness is inconclusive.
Matt McIrvin
@RevRick: The signals that most organized SETI efforts have looked for have been intentional attempts to signal, and our civilization’s own attempts at that have been quite modest, fleeting and symbolic. The assumption there is usually that the sending civilization is much richer than we are and willing to spend resources on fairly extravagant signaling (and that they WANT to be detected–they haven’t chosen to hide themselves for security or some other reason, etc.)
That’s a big assumption.
I think the artificial transmissions of ours that could be detected at the longest distance are actually military radars, but they’re not attempting to transmit any information. Incidental broadcast leakage actually becomes hard to distinguish from background noise at fairly close interstellar distances, if I recall correctly.
Professor Bigfoot
@Matt McIrvin: ASCII 88 is upper case “X.”
What a remarkable coincidence.
Odie Hugh Manatee
I understand why Bezos divorced her, she’s a kind and compassionate person who cares about others and Bezos is an asshole who cares about is purchasing politicians, having a yacht for his yacht and how he can screw the public out of more money.
She’s lucky to be away from the prick and although she doesn’t need it, I wish her the best because she’s one of the best people out there.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, the return of the TANG kerning…
The stupid criminals can always be caught by sensible people with sensible tools given enough time, funding, and effort. That’s why the monsters and the crooks and the wannabe MotUs are wanting to destroy all those sensible things.
We cannot let them.
Grr…
Forward!!
Best wishes,
Scott.
Ruckus
@Baud:
It’s not perfectly round….
It has bumps and dips and a lot of moving water. Called mountains, valleys, oceans and large lakes.
Now I’d imagine that from quite a ways away it looks round, the same as other planets. Of course they don’t always look round but then the light doesn’t always hit them the same. Like the moon.
Kayla Rudbek
@Baud:lunar eclipses, Earth casts a round shadow on the moon
Kayla Rudbek
@dmsilev: I will be buying a lot of popcorn as I watch this play out, and I note that this is being done by an IP attorney
Chris T.
@Fair Economist:
Mine is that once an intelligent species gets smart enough, they discover something about physics that we have no clue about yet, that says “for communication and travel, use this alternative system that has nothing to do with EM radiation”. Basically: “What, you monkeys are trying to use light waves for that? Bwahahaha!”
Paul in KY
@Betty Cracker: I sure hope the Florida GQPers are freaking out! Especially Ersatz Jackie O.
Paul in KY
@Baud: You’d have what…25 cents :-)
Paul in KY
@Belafon: Stephen Miller reminds me of Martin Bormann.
Paul in KY
@RevRick: Once a civilization gets to a certain level, all communication is thru lasers and such, IMO. They stop doing radio. Also radio waves (as used for standard communication, etc) are so weak once they propagate out into space, that you need super sensitive equipment to suss them out.
IMO, the only way we would pick up a radio signal from another extra-solar entity would be for it to be beamed straight at our planet and using a tremendous amount of power. Now who would want to do that?
Paul in KY
@RevRick: If they are 600 light years away, you’ll never get their radio transmissions (assuming they used radio like we did/do).
Paul in KY
@Fair Economist: Agree with your comments there. The distances are just so vast.
Paul in KY
@Steve in the ATL: Baud has the power!
Paul in KY
@Karen Gail: Maybe Miller likes it that way? So he’s the competent one making the decisions and doing stuff that the bozos can’t get done.
Paul in KY
@RevRick: Nothing that we rubes can discern.
Paul in KY
@Belafon: If we can achieve what those aliens in 3 Body Problem could do, then we can at least send complicated nano-probes to other planets at close to speed of light.
Paul in KY
@Matt McIrvin: Agree on wanting to be hid. Chris Rowley had some good books that revolved around Earth doing some modest space exploration and essentially wanting to be found. At some point we run into the Laowon. A nasty race that is much older and more technologically advanced than our own. Rowley writes that it was like Columbus crossed the Atlantic and found a 21st Century America. Bad things then happen to us for awhile.
Paul in KY
@Professor Bigfoot: Just remarkable…