Physicists fumble together a dark matter model with the explicitly stated purpose of being able to claim it's detectable. Paper gets published, no one even questions the methodology.

news.umich.edu

A new model for dark matter

Dark matter remains one of the greatest mysteries of modern physics. It is clear that it must exist, because without dark matter, for example, the motion of galaxies cannot be explained. But it has...

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Chat GPT is the 2020's version of funny email forwards. #resist

The PLA Hong Kong Garrison unintentionally promoting the BN(O) visa scheme

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Warm Talking

@Warm_Talking

Jan 22

0:40

A brigade of #PLA Hong Kong Garrison puts on a great show to greet the people across China a happy Lunar New Year! Wish everyone a new start in Year of the Rabbit!

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Every time I think I've found the dumbest chart in a NASA document, they find a way to top it. But here is the current frontrunner.

Pinboard

@Pinboard

Jan 18

I'm also curious to know whether this Excel spreadsheet is still used for water balance operations, or if it's been superseded. Source: ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/

Dear space lazyweb, in reading through tech reports on ISS I found a mention once that the space station water system is run by a full-time ground team of 12. For the life of me, I can't seem to dig up this reference again. Can anyone point me to it, or the correct number?

The Cat and the Mice (Children's Print), unknown artist, 1800-1899. Woodcut. collectie.friesmuseum.nl/?diw-id=tresoa

Pinboard

@Pinboard

Jan 16

Why are we going back to the Moon anyway? Did someone leave his keys there?

NASA's long-term plan is to add an entire pointless space station to the Moon landings by 2028. But for now we have to make do with a weird orbit and depending on Elon Musk to finish a project in time.

This plan may have worked fine in the sixties, but it would not make adequate use of the many new centers of excellence NASA has accrued since Apollo

You can tell how NASA has grown over the years by how many steps they've felt compelled to add to the Moon landing

Here's the first installment of my case against landing human beings on Mars. You may think you disagree, but I'm going to talk you around.

idlewords.com

Why Not Mars

It's slow, expensive, the engineering is mostly port-a-potty chemistry, and the best-case outcome is that thirty years from now we’ll get to watch someone remotely operate a soil scoop from Mars...

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Okay, I'm back. What did I miss?

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Pinboard

@Pinboard

Dec 29, 2021

Alright, I'm going to take a year off the twitters and see what else I can do with the time. Follow

@idlewords

for blog post notifications, blog.pinboard.in for actual Pinboard stuff. Great Slate 2022: under no circumstances give any politicians money. See you all in 2023!

Photograph of a leopard curled up in a cardboard box

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Pinboard

@Pinboard

Dec 29, 2021

"It might seem hopeless, but it is only truly hopeless if we stop trying". A moving thread on the grief and resilience that is in Hong Kongers' hearts right now twitter.com/lokmantsui/sta

This Tweet is unavailable.

Pinboard

@Pinboard

Dec 29, 2021

RIP to former Senate majority leader Harry Reid, whose death at age 82 prematurely cuts short a promising future in Democratic politics

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A more accurate portrayal of the CDC in zombie movies

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Breaking: ongoing police raid on #HK ‘s respected and widely followed #Standnews Police have sealed off its 14/f bureau and searching the offices given an “ongoing operation”. This is another major blow to press freedom under the #NSL security crackdown just before year end

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The better decision here would have been a Covid Bowl, with an asymptomatic bracket matched up against athletes who are mildly ill. "WE SMELL VICTORY!" "WE CAN'T BUT IT WILL BE OURS!"

Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego

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New York Post

@nypost

Dec 28, 2021

Pope Francis reveals 3 key words for every successful marriage trib.al/tX9rpGa

I have reported them to the police -- I also don't like the way those Poissons are looking at me

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Pinboard

@Pinboard

Dec 28, 2021

Gaussians applied to exponential growth are a form of violence

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Pinboard

@Pinboard

Dec 28, 2021

There's exoplanets fucking everywhere but our space agency is busy playing Habitrail.

Again, the problem here is not spending money on space exploration, but spending money on lack of space exploration. The opportunity cost to real space science of building another modular space station (the first one would have bought us 15 Webb space telescopes) is outrageous.

The bureaucratic lesson of the space station is that a combination of large enough sunk costs and triply redundant international partners can give a spacecraft sufficient shielding from Congress. NASA is now applying this to the Moon missions, which is why they are so insane

If you love the non-stop exploration action of ISS, you're going to love this new deeper space ISS, which is the same thing but without the view

If you don't speak acronym, what this says is that NASA will launch Gateway (a tiny and unnecessary space station), and then add three modules with living space, life support, fuel, followed by the large habitat that's notionally supposed to go to Mars, for multi-year testing.

An interesting tidbit in NASA's "Strategic Campaign Operations Plan for Exploration" is that they're trying to sneak building a second ISS in lunar orbit under the Congressional radar. The Gateway made no sense on its own, but it is just the seed for another modular space station

The obvious implication is that a 14 day Federal holiday would crush the pandemic. I'm not going to wait for the government to act; I'm doing my part now

Totally normal how in year two and wave four of a pandemic we just don't report case numbers on weekends or holidays

Sure, yesterday was rough, but no one is celebrating how D.C. reported *no* covid cases on five of the last ten days. The capital's innovative approach to reaching Covid Zero could serve as a model for the rest of the nation.

We need to #BendTheCurve by making lines for testing longer

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Mark D. Levine

@MarkLevineNYC

Dec 28, 2021

NEW: A stunning 27,774 newly reported cases in NYC today. Despite record high testing, positivity rate continues to increase, now at 19.6%.

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Just in: Police are at home of Ronson Chan, head of

@HKJA_Official

and deputy editor of @StandNewsHK, with a court warrant for home search over the crime of “publishing seditious publications”. The live stream was too short to know more details, as police warned not to film.

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Gaussians applied to exponential growth are a form of violence

Maybe don't use three significant figures in the percentage estimate if the bounds of your "95% confidence interval" (for an exponential process!) are sixty points apart

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David Lim

@davidalim

Dec 28, 2021

CDC's estimate for the prevalence of Omicron last week dropped significantly from 73.2% w/ a 95% prediction interval of 34-94.9% down to 22.5% w/ a 95% prediction interval of 15.4-31.5%. 12/25 estimate is 58.6% with a 95% prediction interval of 41.5-74%. twitter.com/ozair_naqvi/st…

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Pinboard

@Pinboard

Dec 28, 2021

The PvP is glitchy and the controls remain frustrating, but Twitter is still the best first-person shouter out there

Quote tweeting is one of the worst design changes Twitter made I think. It's like we have "reply" and "pompous reply" as your options.

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Pinboard

@Pinboard

Dec 28, 2021

I like Fauci, but if he wants to set national pandemic policy, he should run for elected office. And the President should step up and do his job.

Imagine if the NTSB routinely changed their findings about why a plane crashed for fear of what it might do to public confidence in air travel, or the economic impact it would have on airport Cinnabons. That's where the CDC is at, filling a leadership vacuum left by the President

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