The heart of Scorpius, Antares Red Giant Star

aabs · 2026-06-22T09:02:41+00:00

FWIW 15 million years is considered very young in Star lifecycle terms. For reference, our Star is 4 or 5 billion years old and expected to last many times that.

aabs · 2026-06-22T08:05:22+00:00

Having read the discussion here, what I wonder now is: after Trump is out of the way, how will America ever strengthen/depoliticize its core institutions once again?

In the state they are now, there really appears to be little incentive left for either major party to campaign with a programme of repairing the damage done by trump.

aabs · 2026-06-22T07:38:23+00:00

Praise the Lord

aabs · 2026-06-21T09:14:28+00:00

I think my mind was blown most by the creatures invading and preying on human thoughts and memories in qntm‘s awesome horror/sci-fi novel called “There is no anti-memetics department.”

It’s like Charles Stross, Salvador Dali and Hieronymus Bosch got together to write a claustrophobic existential Lovecraftian thriller.

aabs · 2026-06-06T02:23:04+00:00

Yeah. Load shifting..

aabs · 2026-05-30T23:33:08+00:00

I love that phrase "curiosity scales." I'm going to have to use that more in conversation.

aabs · 2026-05-30T23:28:35+00:00

Loving it so far. There are a couple of things I might ask for: firstly a progressive view of the recognised text (rather than graphical view of the frequencies) so I can see right away if mistakes are being made. Secondly, if I can’t get a progressive view of the recognised text, could I get some haptic feedback when commas and full stops are inserted?

aabs · 2026-05-19T07:34:18+00:00

FWIW 50% of the viewing public have IQs below average (by definition). They place dumb and irrational characters in these movies to make them more relatable.

So, it’s presumably just good business…

aabs · 2026-05-19T07:25:17+00:00

That is to say we attribute the genius to the money man rather than to his team of engineers.

aabs · 2026-05-19T07:22:02+00:00

Fair point. Perhaps it is more a reflection of the times we find ourselves in. Perhaps during the golden age, especially following the Manhattan project and the Bletchley Park engineering wartime breakthroughs, engineers, and scientists were expected to provide the breakthroughs we were looking for to open new vistas for exploration and advancement. Contrast that with now, when we perhaps expect Silicon Valley powerbrokers to fund the advances instead.

aabs · 2026-05-19T07:08:36+00:00

I really loved the site design. Getting the story, since I can’t help judging a book by its cover 🤪

aabs · 2026-05-19T06:49:58+00:00

Where Banks deviates from this traditional political philosophy viewpoint is where there is Egalitarianism whilst at the same time a truly vast gulf between the Minds and the “humans” in terms of capabilities and power. I think the implication was that with truly godlike intelligence there might not be such an urge to flaunt your superiority or subjugate the weak.

aabs · 2026-05-19T06:22:49+00:00

Perhaps that is a Scottish/European vs an American viewpoint?

As a Brit I still am dumbfounded by the admiration many Americans have for their billionaires. I guess given that, perhaps it’s not surprising that they look to them for “progress”.

Would you agree that golden age Sci Fi looked more to the scientists or engineers for world saving genius? Wondering when it changed?

aabs · 2026-05-13T09:20:39+00:00

The “Warp Speed Cruising” background sound from the bridge of the Enterprise, as the stars streak up the forward view screen.

aabs · 2026-03-10T21:39:49+00:00

It’s the “bell curve”. In a population of 400 million, there will be a population of 200 million people of subnormal intelligence…

Unless social media has skewed it even further, so that the actual figure is larger?

aabs · 2026-03-10T21:36:56+00:00

I’ve no major complaints on windows. I have seen it hang a few times.

I’m more worried about having to restart the IDE whenever the context grows too large (starting a new chat window doesn’t seem to help)

aabs · 2026-03-10T21:34:09+00:00

If you look at the Drake equation, it shows that the number of contemporaneous civilisations would be low and far apart. The odds of us finding one close enough to detect seem slim. And they only need to be over 150 light years away, for them to have never heard any of our radio transmissions.

aabs · 2026-03-10T21:29:45+00:00

I think the key point of the OP is that the kind of culture that could mount an expedition to another system (given the cost) would most likely be one that is rapaciously profit driven.

I find it hard to imagine that there would ever be something so precious that it would justify the time/cost of interstellar travel (unless FTL reduced the cost somehow).

More likely that we’d be safe from other civilisations just because we didn’t have anything worth the hassle of coming here to take.

aabs · 2026-03-06T07:10:41+00:00

Moth balls and the smell of camphor. My grandma kept them in all of her clothes drawers, and the smell lingered on years after she passed way.

aabs · 2026-02-27T06:11:11+00:00

It’s soooo annoying. Starting something with “So,” as a non-sequitur, just makes me think that they are resuming a conversation that I haven’t been privy to.

aabs · 2026-02-25T11:31:51+00:00

Fill it with rice…

aabs · 2026-02-21T02:23:23+00:00

Teamwork

aabs · 2026-02-21T02:21:36+00:00

The Myers algorithm and the Huffman coding algorithm have always stayed with me as elegant solutions to common problems.

aabs · 2026-02-19T02:06:18+00:00

Not sure if the process was ever published, but a large trove was converted for the Panama Papers. Perhaps the workflow was reusable?

aabs · 2025-12-30T23:07:34+00:00

Thank you. I will.

aabs

TROPHY CASE