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Cake day: March 3rd, 2024

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  • The flaw of the question is assuming there is a clear dividing line between species. Evolutionary change is a continuous process. We only have dividing lines where we see differences in long dead ones in the fossil record, or we see enough differences in living ones. The question has no answer, only a long explanation of how that isn’t how any of this works.



  • Correct, the differences make the analogy good enough to visualize the concept. It does however suffer from the same problem as the balloon one, in which someone can get the impression the expansion has a center. The wiki for the expansion of the universe goes through the various analogies and where they break down.

    I would suggest Dr Becky’s Youtube channel for a number of excellent videos on the expansion as well as the current problem of getting an accurate measurement of the correct Hubble expansion rate. The James Webb telescope was hoped to solve that dilemma, but we still aren’t sure.


  • I was going to say, it does depend on the drug and person. My son had that experience where the insurance flip-flopped to cover generic instead of Adderall, but it did not work at all for him so we had to fight to get it changed back. Since then every year or so insurance plays their game and we have to go through the ritual explaining why it can’t be generic when that becomes the one covered. It shouldn’t be this hard, right?


  • At the cluster level it will depend on the velocities and distances. For example, using very rough numbers the current expansion rate means that space between us and the Andromeda galaxy is expanding at 55 km/s. Seems fast until you realize the distance needed to see the effect build to this level. For perspective I found someone’s calculation to reduce it to solar system level to end up with ~10 meters/AU/year. But of course at this distance gravity dominates so we can’t measure that directly and it may not even be large enough to consider.

    A larger and slower moving galactic cluster would be more affected than a tighter one. I don’t know what our Local Group would be considered to be, but there are a hundred or so galaxies around us that appear blue shifted, so they are moving towards us even with the expansion.



  • Rhaedas@fedia.iotoScience Memes@mander.xyzRaisins!!
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    1 day ago

    Good visualization but inaccurate. Space between galaxies in a cluster and even the stars in a galaxy is also growing. The difference is in scale. There’s so much distance between galactic clusters and the largest structures of the universe that added up that expansion amount is so much bigger. The balloon analogy with galaxies as dots on the surface is closer since the dots also do grow some, but the balloon would have to be huge to capture a good scale comparison.


  • Even a hypothetically true artificial general intelligence would still not be a moral agent

    That’s a deep rabbit hole that can’t be stated as a known fact. It’s absolutely true right now with LLMs, but at some point the line could be crossed. If and when, how, and by what definition has been a long debate nowhere near resolved.

    It’s highly possible that AGI/ASI could come about and be both super intelligent and self conscious and still have no sense of morality. But how can we at human levels even comprehend what’s possible? There’s the real danger, we have no idea what we could be heading towards.




  • It had its issues, but for the time it was good. Probably depended on the machine and what you were running. That was back in the days when making things work meant the right drivers, and the Win98SE CD usually made it work.

    ME was so bad that MS forgot about it themselves. I bought a new laptop with ME installed that ran terribly, replaced it with 98 and it ran great.






  • I agree that trapping a potentially violent person in, basically cornering them and escalating the situation, was a bad decision. I also agree with the court that it doesn’t fall into that category. It looks like lesser charges will still be pursued, probably more in line with negligence. It’s good that in response it’s now illegal to lock doors like that while customers are inside. I would have thought the general rule of keeping doors unlocked during business hours (as a fire code mostly) would have covered that already.



  • Keep in mind that being immunized protects you from developing worse conditions, not from getting it at all. Which also means you can absolutely be a carrier to others, you just won’t have it at a bad level for as long to be contagious. And the new strain is apparently more contagious (but possibly less of the rest) this time. Just wanted to add that in, because some people read the “immun” part and assume they can’t get anything. Avoiding infection is always the best way, with vaccination as protection if/when you do get it anyway.