Daniel Palumbo

Astrophysics PhD, VLBI guy

🏳️‍🌈

[今村孝矢 / Takaya Imamura @ima_1966]

「時のオカリナ」で思い出すのは、その後「ムジュラの仮面」を担当することになった時の大きなプレッシャー。名作の続編だからこそ、同じことを繰り返すわけにはいかない。とにかく「時のオカリナ」にはない異質さや不気味さ、新しさを必死に考えてた。

[we are frighteningly well resourced @poisonjr]

After probably 30 of these, I can tell you that it hasn't ever worked. What works for me is getting up at a consistent time no matter when I sleep, and taking naps if it was too little sleep at night

[jules 🌱🪶 @mvchlv]

get me to gods country

[Will Kinney @WKCosmo]

While it is true that constancy of the speed of light is an axiom in Special Relativity, it is a thorough misunderstanding of how physics works to contend that physicists believe it BECAUSE it is structurally an axiom in the theory. Physicists believe it because it corresponds to the way nature is observed to behave. We don't dismiss alternative theories because they would break all our theoretical structures (although they do that), but because they almost always immediately fall into contradiction with measurements. We have looked really hard for violations of Lorentz invariance, and the experimental bounds are brutal. If it's there, it is extraordinarily tiny.

It is also a misunderstanding to contend that physicists are unwilling to consider alternatives. There are lots of papers on variable speed of light theories, and even some cosmological observations supporting time-dependence of the fine structure constant. I have personally written multiple papers on superluminal aethers that allow FTL signal propagation without violation of relativity. The papers are out there, but knowing that requires actual work, whereas portraying physicists as dogmatic, closed-minded sheeple on social media is free.

[carl 🥦 @NightlifeMingus]

imagine you’re struggling to merge off the 110 to take the 6th street exit while high above, Joyce Carol Oates observes you with the cold, Olympian gaze of a god

[Beau Sourire @Le_BeauSourire]

Hoy es el día de este noble animal tan olvidado y denostado pero que tanto bien ha hecho por la humanidad. Poco agradecimiento se le ha dado. Feliz día del burrito.

[Eric Berger @SciGuySpace]

On Orion’s reentry: “And then there was a point—there’s something that I feel that I am not ready to say to the public yet.”

https://t.co/HGK65yHVNJ

[Sam Haselby @samhaselby]

In the 2008-09 GFC, about 30 million Americans lost their homes. The guy on the left ignored Soros, Krugman, and Stiglitz's more progressive advice and followed Larry Summers's recommendation to just save the bankers and let the mortgage holders drown. That's more or less how.

[barbarism critic @barbarismcrit]

If there was a real opposition party they would entreaty their base to join them in doing whatever it took, bodies on the line, to wrest power away from this fucking maniac before he drops a nuke on Iran or something similar. The MEPs in the 2024 South Korean coup attempt showed this can be done even in bourgeois states but we have zero organized opposition in this country.

[Daniel Palumbo @breadshifted]

@poisonjr This is a critter dense situation gale

[Philippe Lemoine @phl43]

It's really striking that Israel and the US launched their attack a few hours after Oman's foreign minister claimed that Iran had agreed to almost everything the US wanted to ensure that it wouldn't develop nuclear weapons. I hope that journalists will look into this to figure out exactly what the Iranians offered, because if the deal was as good as Albusaidi claimed, it will make this attack even more outrageous.

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This WaPo article is unreal: they unironically mock China for not being imperialist and failing to use force to defend its interests, arguing that they're losing out to the U.S. (in Venezuela, Panama, etc.) which does precisely that.

In essence the article can be summarized as: "You Chinese losers thought you could gain influence by actually building things? The only thing that actually works is bombing people."

I'm not even exaggerating. The author literally writes that "China can spend all the money on infrastructure it wants... But in a crunch, it is only military force that counts."

He argues that China's approach was "a colossal waste of money" because "control of infrastructure can be changed" with a US-led "change of regime" and "ownership of any asset can be overturned."

His article's conclusion? "You can’t buy an empire, nor can you purchase global influence. It is only hard power that counts for anything."

As cynical and brutish as the article is, it's also refreshingly honest. It is factual that China's strategy was to win over the Global South by investing in their infrastructure and development, while the U.S. maintains its influence through regime change, various forms of coercion, and the threat (or use) of force.

The conclusion that it is China that should feel embarrassed by this as opposed to the U.S. is, however, completely insane.

Every sane person on earth should hope that it is China's approach that ultimately prevails, for the sake of our collective future as humanity. China is ultimately trying to prove that one can prevail geopolitically without violence, by building instead of destroying: don't be like this idiot WaPo writer and root for the answer to be "no".

Src for the article: https://t.co/UgxwltA4CK

[Claire Penis @ZeroSuitCamus]

Sergio Leone: The first shot will be a horseman in the distance. [tearing up a little] And he will be shot in the head so beautifully….

Ennio Morricone: Sergio my friend I love this first shot. It is molto sublime. Perhaps one second later a spring should go “boing” 100 times?

[Daniel Palumbo @breadshifted]

@poisonjr My goats!!!

[Chris Wade @saywhatagain]

@willmenaker also a big fan of Kenji's older vids where it's just unedited POV from a head mounted go pro for just getting a sense of moving quickly, confidently & intuitively in the kitchen https://t.co/MmCnj8AxbD

[we are frighteningly well resourced @poisonjr]

Now try again, but this time, don't say “And there's nothing we can do about it.”

[Carey O'Donnell @ecareyo]

No one has ever done drunk acting better. She was supernaturally funny. What a loss!!!!

[Boston @BostonMassUSA]

greatest city in the world

[Grant Tremblay @astrogrant]

like, do 10 seconds of vetting before you post to 830k followers? This is a fake image of Neptune. JWST observations of both planets exist and can be found trivially, here they are: