idlewords

6 ms·

1.
by idlewords 5d ago
It's demoralizing that we live in 2026 and a modest level of traffic is still enough to take down half the web.
2.
by idlewords 9d ago
Probably not with any technology; it's unlikely that fetal development and growth can happen properly in gravity much lower than 1 g.
3.
by idlewords 9d ago
Human colonies are not sustainable anywhere offworld.
4.
by idlewords 9d ago
Amazing discussion thread; thank you to all who shined a great white edifying light on the topic here.
5.
by idlewords 9d ago
Both were known to be Kuiper Belt objects, so it was expected there would at least be a family resemblance. I don't think anyone expected Pluto to be more active than Triton; that was certainly a surprise. If there are planetologists r
6.
by idlewords 9d ago
No shade on New Horizons intended, but I was talking about the early 2000's revolution in understanding of ice moons/ocean worlds, and that preceded the Pluto flyby by a lot. It was a valuable piece of corroborating evidence, but
7.
by idlewords 10d ago
Not true at all, the daily dose on Ganymede (which has a magnetic field of its own) is ~70 mSv/day, and Callisto is 0.1 mSv/day. Io, meanwhile, is 35 Sv/day. Location really matters among the four Galilean moons.
8.
by idlewords 1mo ago
Right. I said mountain to stress the importance of topography in the NM accident. The parent commenter may pat himself on the back for never flying into terrain during GPS outages in Florida, but there are factors in play in addition to his
9.
by idlewords 1mo ago
The highest mountain summit in Florida is 105 meters above sea level.
10.
by idlewords 1mo ago
Location: New Mexico Remote: Yes Willing to relocate: to NYC only Technologies: Yes, but you'd probably want to hire me as a writer/analyst. Résumé/CV: https://idlewords.com/cv.htm Email: see CV Looking for p
11.
by idlewords 2mo ago
Thank you! I realize people have subscription fatigue, and that on this site in particular there's a culture of expecting to read the full text of everything for free. So I try to make the previews substantive enough for people to part
12.
by idlewords 2mo ago
I am trying to be friendly with the paywall.
13.
by idlewords 2mo ago
A lot of the work was done to a design point of 0.25 seconds, and Dyson's book says the issue there wasn't the blast clearing, but just being able to move the machinery fast enough. I kind of share your puzzlement; I can see the b
14.
by idlewords 2mo ago
> Kicks in just after it starts to get interesting. What a funny coincidence!
15.
by idlewords 3mo ago
Hi everyone, The domain should be back up within the next few hours. I had the domain set on auto-renew but unfortunately something went wrong, and I didn't get an email from the registrar about it (or it got misrouted to spam). I&#x27
16.
by idlewords 3mo ago
It's fine to dump sewage overboard if you're far enough from shore. Cruise ships treat it to some extent, but ultimately it all becomes fish food.
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by idlewords 3mo ago
There's a nice paper on this, ICES-2018-123 "Dimethylsilanediol (DMSD) Source Assessment and Mitigation on ISS: Estimated Contributions from Personal Hygiene Products Containing Volatile Methyl Siloxanes (VMS)". The upshot is
18.
L'Affaire Siloxane(mceglowski.substack.com)
299 points by idlewords 3mo ago|55 comments
19.
How should we think about Starship?(mceglowski.substack.com)
5 points by idlewords 4mo ago|1 comments
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Microbial Dark Matter and the Search for Life on Earth(mceglowski.substack.com)
1 points by idlewords 4mo ago|1 comments
21.
by idlewords 5mo ago
The atmosphere has a perfectly reasonable 110 hour day/night cycle.
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by idlewords 5mo ago
I thought so too, but the phosphine signal turns out to be small but real. What everyone involved in the back and forth debate over it agrees on is the need to send better sensors.
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by idlewords 5mo ago
Landis has a ton of good papers around Venus for those who want to nerd out deeper.
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by idlewords 5mo ago
Give it a few hours!
25.
by idlewords 5mo ago
Thanks so much! I'm delighted you enjoyed the piece.
26.
by idlewords 5mo ago
It's not an absurd question. The threshold value is the one that breaks surface tension and effectively pulls waste away from the body. It will be more than a few hundredths g but less than 1g. Unfortunately we have basically no data o
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by idlewords 5mo ago
You can try it with small capsules and tethers, but it's still a pain.
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by idlewords 5mo ago
The hose is the same but there are different funnel attachments (the part looks kind of like the cup from a jock strap, and is longer and narrower for women)
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by idlewords 6mo ago
It's all flat files on the server
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by idlewords 6mo ago
Thank you! Like NASA, I hope to up my operational tempo.

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