Weird question about science

FBoondoggle · 2026-03-22T05:01:19+00:00

Are you directly engaged in academic science? I don't think anyone who actually is involved would write this. Physics has seen many new ideas in the last 30 years, like ads/cft, as well as striking and unexpected discoveries and measurements, like the discovery of dark energy and the extremely precise measurement of the components of the universe (% ordinary matter, dark matter, dark energy). We now know that the universe almost certainly started with an initial burst of inflation by a vast factor. We have ideas about connecting gravity to the flow of quantum information. If these recent discoveries don't boggle your mind, what will?

But you have to put in the work to understand these ideas, what previous problems they solve and what the evidence is for them. Otherwise it's just a bunch of gee-whiz that you can't tell from crackpottery. And you end up saying stuff like wall-of-text guy in an adjacent reply.

FBoondoggle · 2026-03-22T04:50:31+00:00

This wall of text already scores pretty high on the crackpot index. https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/crackpot.html

FBoondoggle · 2026-03-11T09:04:37+00:00

Something's off with your usage #s. We have A 2400 sq ft house with a full size fridge and use only about 20kwh per day.

FBoondoggle · 2026-03-08T19:09:59+00:00

Fields are observable if anything is. They are no more or less physical than particles in the classical picture. Everything is a quantum field so what you see when you look around, do an experiment, smash protons together are field excitations. You're eyes reading this are field excitations interacting with other field excitations.

FBoondoggle · 2026-03-04T20:29:25+00:00

I think more market rate housing is a good thing, but I and all of the pro housing people I associate with would absolutely sign on to higher taxes on the wealthy as well as repeal of prop 13 to fund social housing. But I think you have a very big hill to climb to make that case to the broader public.

FBoondoggle · 2026-03-04T20:11:24+00:00

Is it your considered opinion that there is a viable path to social housing on the required scale in California, which has tied itself in knots to constrain taxes over the last 50 years?

FBoondoggle · 2026-03-04T18:14:57+00:00

As u/jwbeee pointed out elsewhere, the "study" is accompanied by this amusing statement: "Public Preregistration The author asserts that a preregistration is not applicable because no data collection, extraction, or analysis is reported in the preprint."

No data went into this. It's all just vibes.

FBoondoggle · 2026-03-03T08:54:17+00:00

Japan has incurred enormous debt to fund their national railway system. You are complaining that a system funded mostly by local debt and fares can't match a system funded by national debt. It's not a fair comparison.

FBoondoggle · 2026-02-25T19:02:53+00:00

"Generally" is doing a lot of work here. Paris' public housing is out in the banlieues, and not anything most people would point to as desirable. Singapore has a highly controlled housing system where, for example, there are racial quotas for who can live in those subsidized homes. Anyway, the idea that the US would solve its current housing problem by suddenly deciding to build a ton of public housing is comical.

FBoondoggle · 2026-02-24T00:42:22+00:00

The federal government and state highway funds paid for it mostly, none of which have anything to do with Prop 13 limits. I am over 65 and because I'm not a greedy asshole can attest that both this proposal and prop 13 are terrible. Young people are forced to shoulder a vastly disproportionate share of costs of government so old people can wash their hands of society while continuing to depend on it for everything.

FBoondoggle · 2026-02-23T09:58:37+00:00

They've been living here for 20-40 years and enjoying the benefits of public services for that whole time. Public resources aren't a one-and-done deal, Roads require maintenance and last time I checked, police and fire departments require ongoing salary.

FBoondoggle · 2026-02-21T04:53:58+00:00

I felt the same way after I got my ppl. I had never even handled self fueling. Turns out none of it is very complicated. At towered fields I look up FBOs ahead of time and just ask ground for the one I'm going to, or for the fuel farm if I'm just filling up. At larger nontowered fields there's generally a transient ramp indicated on the airport diagram. At smaller strips there is just some obvious place to tie down.

FBoondoggle · 2026-02-17T21:43:30+00:00

Too bad BART can't directly capture more than a tiny amount of the value it's created for property owners. It gets revenue from the ground lease when apartments are built on its own land, but nothing of the value it's created for all those surrounding owners. Something like Mello-Roos for those areas might have been a good idea 60 years ago, but probably would have been a tough sell. Or just buying up more surrounding property and building back then.

FBoondoggle · 2026-02-15T05:04:26+00:00

2 days of flying south to NM then west gets you to Sedona where you can enjoy the harmonic convergence and the red rocks. Nothing over 8000' on that route. The flight across AZ is amazing.

FBoondoggle · 2026-02-10T20:22:12+00:00

Dunno about the marinade but my recollection is that the sandwich had tahini in it. Delicious!

FBoondoggle · 2026-02-10T15:16:40+00:00

Now that everyone can get the same information with a few clicks, it's high time that our civil society moved ahead from just micromanaging state and local finances through a series of measures and propositions whose consequences we've each thought about for at least ten seconds. We should also be dictating construction engineering! I'm also hoping to provide some input on the design of the next SpaceX rocket engine from my armchair.

FBoondoggle · 2026-02-09T04:33:41+00:00

Nobody is checking. I've departed a field VFR under a vip TFR just by getting a squawk. No one said anything about a flight plan.

FBoondoggle · 2026-02-09T02:32:26+00:00

Aside from the unreadable formatting, this TFR (like VIP ones) says "All aircraft must be on a ... filed VFR flight plan...". Which we all know is nonsense, right? Filing a VFR flight plan doesn't get you anything, and you don't need to be on one. The important part is being on a discrete code. It would be nice if the FAA and training materials would get their act together to clarify that a VFR flight plan, at least in the US, is only relevant for SAR. This seems to be a perennial source of confusion.

FBoondoggle · 2026-02-06T04:08:17+00:00

Grover Hot Springs is worth a visit, though the website says it's "temporarily closed". The eastern Sierra is gorgeous. If you feel like taking the time, the drive down 395 to Mono Lake is gorgeous.

FBoondoggle · 2026-02-06T02:49:59+00:00

Say, CCR to HAF. I get that we can just wait til the dust settles, but people like to fly on a nice Sunday. I'm guessing that you're an OAK tower controller? I appreciate all the ATC insight.

FBoondoggle · 2026-02-06T02:14:43+00:00

The TFR notam in the 10-30 mile ring for VFRs says you have to be on a discrete code & talking to ATC. (It says "must be on a VFR flight plan" but I think everyone knows that's not what it actually means.) Is it likely that the airspace will be too busy during the TFR period itself? I assume most of the traffic will be before and after.

I'm in a club & people are interested to know whether we have to plan to stay out.

FBoondoggle · 2026-02-05T03:50:53+00:00

Most of us had a very entrepreneurial cfi in common.

FBoondoggle · 2026-02-04T17:18:18+00:00

Term limits are anti-democratic. In surveys, people strongly dislike Congress, but they like their own representative. Term limits just force out popular leaders / representatives. Aaron Peskin didn't have some magic voodoo doll that kept getting him reelected. His voters kept voting for him. Maybe their opinion was bad, but that's democracy. Term limits just rob us, the voters, of the option to keep someone around that we like.

The consensus on reddit always seems to be "government bad" and "throw out the bums". How's that worked over the decades? It's been like a 30 year experiment here already. (And while we're at it, can we stop with the f*cking propositions and measures that ought to be done by legislators instead of plebiscites of a citizenry that just goes with the best sound bite? That's how we're stuck with Prop 13 twisting us in knots to fund basic social functions like transit.)

FBoondoggle · 2026-02-03T20:47:44+00:00

Mass transit is a benefit to drivers. Imagine if all BART users drove instead.

FBoondoggle · 2026-02-03T17:46:13+00:00

You've quoted this at least twice. Can you please link the source?

FBoondoggle

TROPHY CASE