Case in point: Mark Robinson

$8.99 - a Safeway in the bay area

Also:

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LNNL)

FFS it’s LLNL. Someone didn’t bother to do any proofreading.

Actually we haven’t observed a difference between the speed of neutrinos and light, which sets an upper limit on their mass based on the precision of those measurements. The evidence of mass is much weirder, in the observation of neutrino flavor oscillation.

Neutrinos come in 3 flavors: electron, tau, and muon. We’ve observed that the flavor oscillates as a function of time, or equivalently as a function of distance from the neutrino source. The data is quite precise, and is perfectly explained by there being 3 neutrino mass states that are distinct from the flavor state. So a neutrino with a well defined flavor will have a superposition of the 3 mass states, with each flavor corresponding to a different admixture of mass states.

The flavor oscillations allow us to measure the difference in the mass values, but not the absolute masses. Technically it’s possible that the “lightest” neutrino is massless, and the other 2 mass states are nonzero. Without an absolute value for the masses we can’t rule this out.

“Almost massless”. Neutrino masses are so small that they haven’t been measured (yet).

This is what I do - make a big pot of chili or soup for the week. But I recognize that this might not work for everyone. At my work there’s a conveniently located fridge and microwave, and I can eat in my office with the door shut for a quiet meal. If any of those things weren’t there it might not be worth it.

I also enjoy cooking, and don’t mind spending time making my meal for the week. If the prep work was a real chore then it’d be much more tempting to buy something premade every day.

Vampires hate this one weird trick

Cryptocurrencies aren’t used for anything other than financial speculation

Typical anti-blockchain crypto bashing.

Cryptocurrencies have plenty of uses besides speculation. For example, buying drugs and a plethora of scams.

You need a particular kind of nuclear reactor to create the enriched uranium

*plutonium. Enriched uranium comes from taking natural uranium and enriching the content of a specific isotope (235U), typically with centrifuges, gaseous diffusion and/or magnetic separation in a synchrotron. The enriched uranium can be used in a weapon, or it can be used as fuel for a nuclear reactor to make 239Pu from 238U.

I believe apple has the led hardwire in MacBooks webcams.

Closing vim is like landing a plane: anytime you can walk away unscathed it’s a success.

My employer has a “buy American” policy that kicks in for purchases over a certain dollar amount. To get an exemption, you need to identify 2 domestic options and state why they aren’t sufficient.

Recently I needed to replace a module in an existing system that happens to be made by a non-US company. There is literally no valid alternative - only this one company makes the modules that are compatible with each other.

So I had to identify 2 American made products that were vaguely similar and state why they didn’t meet our specifications. Though “Vaguely similar” is a stretch - it was equivalent to explaining to someone why you can’t buy AA batteries to replace a car battery.

There’s a follow up meta study from 2020.:

In conclusion, based on the totality of currently available scientific evidence, the present review does not support the presumption that fluoride should be assessed as a human developmental neurotoxicant at the current exposure levels in Europe.

The article is real, btw

She also had a knack for capturing their speaking pattern in her transcribed replies.

Same here, which is why my Bluesky feed is much better. Everyone wants to be where everyone else is (that isn’t X), and it seems like that’s Bluesky.

I’m gonna echo what others have said here. The mastodon signup process is too complex, and searching for instructions just leads to “what is the fediverse and/or activitypub” explainers.

I created a mastodon account a few years ago and it was my first introduction to the fediverse. It was frustrating and I only persevered because I REALLY wanted to replace twitter.

Once I got it set up, I realized that no one who I followed on twitter was there. My feed is currently like 2 people, plus a bunch of dead accounts from people who dipped their toe in but didn’t stay.

Joining Bluesky was simple, and there were already a bunch of accounts I wanted to follow. The recent influx has increased that, and it feels a lot like old school twitter without the nazis.

People originally joined twitter (and stuck with it for so long) because that’s where everyone else is. Mastadon is too clunky join and use, so people aren’t.

Heartbreaking: The Worst Person You Know Just Made A Great Point

I fear I’m gonna get a lot of mileage out of that headline over the next 4 years.

That’s a shame. If I might ask, have you ever had a properly cooked pork chop?

I only ask because pork used to need to reach 165 degrees Fahrenheit to be safe, which makes for tough, dry pork. Fortunately the parasite that required this heat was eliminated from the US, and about 15 years ago the USDA lowered the safe temp to 145. The result is so much better.

She seemed cool on Hot Ones - she skipped the wings and just took spoonfuls of the sauces.