James Garcia Alver

Harvard and GW Space Policy Alumnus. Tampa native living in LA. Gold Star of Excellence: Founded Aug 18, 2009

[James Garcia Alver @JayAlver]

Today’s Gold Star of Excellence goes to Julia V. Seidel et al., for using wind speed anomalies in the atmospheres of 7 “Hot Jupiter” exoplanets to deduce the presence of magnetic fields around them, deepening our understanding of planetary magnetospheres.

[James Garcia Alver @JayAlver]

@IncredPapist_ @WillsBlackwolf Logic exists *because* of His will and intellect. What is and is not illogical would be different if the world operated differently, so logic can’t technically be said to be operating external to God.

[James Garcia Alver @JayAlver]

@jwsherrod @Civilisedwookie I think it’s an alt-history comic where the Rebels lose the Battle of Yavin but are not completely destroyed.

[Rolo Tony @PoorOldRoloTony]

A24 should stop with the endless merchandise and useless experiments like candy and invest in something everyone wants: a crossover fighting game.

[James Garcia Alver @JayAlver]

@czajnikon @ruallsion De facto but not de jure. Vader *could in principle* overrule officers who outranked him de jure but they were not required to get his approval.

[James Garcia Alver @JayAlver]

@valcolyte Thumb Wars already did it.

[James Garcia Alver @JayAlver]

Today’s Gold Star of Excellence goes to R&B singer-songwriter Peabo Bryson, known for his duets on the pop arrangements of Disney hit songs “Beauty and the Beast” and “A Whole New World”, who died at 75.

[James Garcia Alver @JayAlver]

@raptor_chatter Everything they’re doing with avian cloning and artificial eggs for the dodo is extensible here! The basic tech is way behind mammalian cloning, once it matures this is a layup. Revive and Restore is also working on the passenger pigeon and their work could be relevant as well.

[Kevin Zagorski @KevZag]

The fact that these two exhibits are about a block away from each other is going to make brainwashing my daughter into becoming a huge nerd so much easier.

[James Garcia Alver @JayAlver]

@evilvillain1231 @LegoRacers2 The only way we survive long enough for this to matter is if we disperse enough (light years) to make allopatric speciation a possibility. Even if we do engineer our way around that, we could still become a chrono-species with genetic drift and mutations over time.

[James Garcia Alver @JayAlver]

@soncharm Killing Leia before the Senate was dissolved would have made the rebellion stronger instead of weaker. The empire was unwilling to play that card until the Death Star was fully operational, at which point they escalated to blowing up her planet and keeping her as a hostage.

[James Garcia Alver @JayAlver]

Today’s Gold Star of Excellence goes to Sara Jobson et al., for discovering that tissues from the sea cucumber Psolus fabricii continue to live and grow independently indefinitely in natural seawater after separation from the organism, a feature not seen in any other animal.

[James Garcia Alver @JayAlver]

@Tendiemonger If “Jaws” very clearly featured a Manta Ray as its central character it would be criticized for calling it a shark even if the movie itself was still just as good. If you want a dinosaur movie, there need to be dinosaurs in it. If you want a movie with kaiju or aliens do that.

[James Garcia Alver @JayAlver]

@OVTweetmarck Even if every member of the winning team individually met this criteria somehow, you’d still win the bet.

[James Garcia Alver @JayAlver]

@LegoKoon @Morgue_XiiV That not every independent North and South American state that formed after 1776 chose to join is not the fault of the people that named the Union! It is and was always legally possible for them to do so.

[James Garcia Alver @JayAlver]

@DoorDashThomist @CafeteriaPapist Is the idea here the reference in Chapter 6 to the three ways of receiving the Eucharist? That those who eat and drink and have eternal life are those who receive both spiritually and sacramentally while those who receive only in one way are not necessarily, resolving the logic?

[James Garcia Alver @JayAlver]

@BillTheKid1603 I just find the grammatical choice grating aesthetically.

[James Garcia Alver @JayAlver]

@ArthurBoreman So when people look at US diversity they’re underwhelmed despite having 28 languages with larger numbers than speak a minority European language like Frisian globally.

[James Garcia Alver @JayAlver]

@ArthurBoreman Most academic “language diversity” measurements I’ve seen are a statistical proxy for the likelihood that any two people in a country have the same first language. So a country with two 50-50 languages scores better than a country with dozens of languages but one supermajority.

[James Garcia Alver @JayAlver]

@FinnStel @beyondthevales @FlagOnThePlayX @d0pam1n3___ @PanopticonBot Maybe some role, but I really don’t think it can explain the full scale of it.