ck2

good thing it's completely illegal for the federal government to interfere with state voting proceedure

> For instance, the Postal Service has what the whistleblower claims is a "zero percent failure rate."

> Mail workers would scan a sample of a batch of mail ballots — about 400 out of a batch of 10,000 or more — to verify it matches what is in the federal mail ballot portal.

> Under the policy, if even one barcode on a single ballot in the batch doesn't scan properly or the information does not match, the entire batch would be rejected and returned to state election officials so the problem ballot could be addressed, and then the verification process would have to be started again.

ha, now imagine some hacker changing all the Flock firmware nationwide to do bird identification too

would have been a great Mr. Robot episode

in this case there are actual photos of cars and residential neighborhoods with walls pieced by thousands of pieces of shrapnel

are we arguing over "oh it might have JUST been a DOZEN innocent civilians" vs 21?

US still hasn't admitted to dropping a tomahawk on an active elementary school killing hundreds using decade-old data after eliminating the part of the pentagon that reviews targets to make sure the are legit and up to date

I'm not taking Iran's side, I'm imagining sitting in my apartment or school while some other regime decides to drone or bomb innocent civilians here because they don't like who is running the country hundreds or thousands of miles away

we are still killing hundreds of fishermen off the coast of Venezuela without trial that are in outboard-motor boats incapable of making it to US

we need to stop killing people just because we can, why does it even need to said?

we decimated Iraq and Afghanistan killing thousands, why? What did we change? Girls can't even go to school past 6th grade there

$40 Trillion national debt and half of that is from war that changes nothing

end the regime? what? how?

we caused the replacement of an 80 year old dictator with a 50 year old dictator who is even more hardline

the US is not saving a single life in Iran, it is literally accelerating the death of thousands as "collaborators" (which is of course ridiculous) as well as directly causing the death of innocent civilians via thousands of bombs and missiles costing billions every single day for 180+ days

the only right move was to go back to what was in place six months ago

and the only way that happens is the end of our own regime in 2029

when do we end the regime in North Korea starving their people to death daily?

not that there is anything ethical firing missiles into a civilian population

but is this even "legal" in war? it's like an industrial level pipebomb filled with sharpened BBs?

> The PrSM is designed to explode midair and propel tens of thousands of dense metal pellets at high speed in all directions

> The blasts killed at least 21 civilians, including seven children

a great book or documentary idea would be a different angle on Einstein regarding all his amazing partnerships

I found his partnership with Satyendra Nath Bose one of the most fascinating, when Bose couldn't get his paper published Einstein took it upon himself personally to translate it and get it published for him

(Bose was BRILLIANT, he discovered the Boson particles by mathematical statistics!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satyendra_Nath_Bose#Bose%E2%80... )

already talking about it here but yeah it's a big deal

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49490870

* https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/6983/

we went full authoritarian empire in less than a year

imagine two more years by 2028 what this nightmare is going to look like

even if the Dems get the Senate somehow it will barely slow them down

Bush admin was horrible with Iraq War and economy crashing but this is a whole new level of corruption

and I am starting to believe USPS is most definitely going to destroy voting by mail handing them the midterms anyway while supreme court slow-walks sorting it out if not making it 100x worse

yeah but we don't recover from this one like the 70s

the illegal Iran War costs over $120 BILLION, has used over 1000 Tomahawks at $4 Million each (and 1250 patriot missiles)

a BILLION was stolen from nuclear missile maintenance fund for QatarForceOne

another BILLION was stolen for all the DC renovations so far that no-one asked for

billion diverted to his fake "peace board"

so there is money for war and drapes and gold statues but not science that benefits the world

hell he spends $2 MILLION EVERY WEEKEND for GOLF, first term and this term, half billion before he is gone

we could have had people on Mars for all that (not even a project I support but still would be worthy science)

my brain is not what it used to be due to long-covid so it's very possible I made a mistake

but 500 megabits per second to me is 500mbps?

ie. my cablemodem is 100mbps which is 100 megabits per second?

and that would [make Roman] 5.4 Terrabytes aka 5.4TB per day

but the transmitter is not at full speed full power 24/7

so it is 1.5TB per day in documentation that I do not have handy but vaguely remember

to repeat the more amazing part is that is from a MILLION MILES away, wow

(JWST "only" does 23mbps, 23 megabits per second)

I'm still holding my breath on this one, will be most amazing telescope in my lifetime

parked in L2 a million miles away with 500mbps data transfer rate (1.5TB per DAY)

we've made it past DOGE destroying it

we've made it past him renaming it after himself and putting his mugshot on it

but Musk still needs to send it out of orbit without explosions, so here's hoping

(Falcon Heavy, don't tell me the odds)

* https://nextspaceflight.com/launches/details/6983/

* JWST vs Roman comparison https://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/14942/

* https://www.wired.com/story/nasas-nancy-grace-roman-space-te...

* https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nasas-roman-space...

* https://www.npr.org/2026/08/28/nx-s1-5905370/nasa-nancy-grac...

did not know and it's horrific Roman started as a billion dollar spy satellite sitting in a warehouse unused, but okay we got the crumbs from $20 Trillion in military spending I guess

oh and while the smallest planet Roman can image will be Jupiter-sized, Roman's successor would be able to image earth-like planets

except The Habitale Worlds Observatory Space Telescope HWO was scheduled for 2040 and now will not happen in my lifetime because DOGE got that one, Congress awarded it $150 Million and DOGE changed it to $5 Million

* https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics/programs/habitable-wor...

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitable_Worlds_Observatory

reminds me vaguely of "Sailing Stones"

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailing_stones

good old buffer packet size

anyone old enough from dialup modems and RS232 to remember the trick of replacing the 16450 UART with 16550 if you were lucky enough to have it on a socket instead of soldered?

that took it from a 1-byte buffer to 16-bytes, instant speed boost

same idea going from X-modem to Y-modem for transfers, 128bytes vs 1024bytes before checksum

surprised ethernet by now doesn't constantly try to negotiate larger buffer windows

right on cue for my meme of the three boxes this administration reaches into daily

   [chaos]  [corruption]  [cruelty]

fine then, make mar-a-lardo and the ballroom into datacenters

November and the "AI" collapse cannot come soon enough

but if the Dems don't get the Senate nothing will change even in the slightest

$2500 per pair btw TWO-THOUSAND DOLLARS

like guns, tasers, pepper-spray I am sure they will only be used as last resort without initiating or escalating against unarmed people not resisting

ha no opposite of that, they don't leave a mark and have no record they were used

there is just one problem

like everything else with the current US administration

they deregulated nuclear safety

* https://www.npr.org/2026/01/28/nx-s1-5677187/nuclear-safety-...

* https://www.npr.org/2026/08/27/nx-s1-5920368/nrc-nuclear-rad...

any other administration even Republican I'd be willing to listen to why

this administration will happily kill thousands or give them cancer if it means another million dollars in their pockets

there is only one kind of nuclear reactor that should be built anymore

and that is Thorium reactors, they "fail safe" (or at least safer)

* https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElulEJruhRQ

Putin must be laughing his *ss off

um, they went from 100 ships per day through the strait

to 3-8 per day

for SIX MONTHS

that most definitely causes shortages, not in US but rest of world

the market is being manipulated downward until it pops

click on YTD on this chart to see what I mean for proof, it is FLATLINED

* https://en.macromicro.me/charts/94482/imf-strait-of-hormuz-n...

* snapshot: https://i.imgur.com/zvBakus.png

everything this administration does daily is from one of three boxes

     [CHAOS]  [CORRUPTION]  [CRUELTY]

this is a little from the first box and the last box

imagine what's tomorrow or next week

meanwhile let's all enjoy the billion spent on making statues gold plated in DC and the ballroom and the arch and his drapes and his reflecting pool and 100 foot banners of his face on federal building and his face on gold coins, passports, park passes and the $250 bill

it's surreal

how's that supreme court working out for you?

how's all those cabinet members working out for you?

that's 100% Senate, regardless what you think of its representation

we can argue the details later if we somehow survive this decade

btw all the nuclear treaties like weapons in space have been allowed to expire

and he's looking at invading Cuba and Greenland if only for the chaos

without full control over Congress the next two years are going to make the first two pale in comparison

imagine the level of stupid that's going down if the Dems do not also get get the Senate

this administration has three boxes it reaches into to sprinkle around daily

[CHAOS] [CORRUPTION] [CRUELTY]

hope everyone is enjoying the billion spent on golden statues in DC while you can't afford to put gas in your car

but don't worry, he still gets to fly around in his billion dollar QatarForceOne while taking $2 Million golf outings each weekend

Potbelly Hill in Turkey dates back to 10,000BCE and it is an amazing story

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%B6bekli_Tepe#/media/File:...

the modern people who first looked at it thought it was just a graveyard with stone markers on the graves

then someone dug down much further and those stone markers were several meters high

There will be a next time and it will be even worse.

I mean we just let over 2,000,000 people die from covid in this country and most people wouldn't even mask to spare anyone or themselves

All we did was make vaccines taboo or difficult to access

Then we put the worse possible people in charge, again

There is zero care for health or safety anymore

There will most definitely be a next time

paypal should have never ever given back Musk the x domain

and ICANN should have nuked it long ago

but all that aside, wtf is anyone still on it

Musk is a mass murderer

apparently the nazis would still be in power today if they just had a web service people were too freaking lazy and addicted to ever quit

and Tesla "FSD" is still trying to murder passengers a decade later but that's also definitely a choice

the radiation from a magnetar exceeds any other star, overcoming that would seem implausible

still trying to wrap my mind around kilonovas (colliding neutron stars)

ie. they can pop out earth-sized chunks of gold, in theory, and since they aren't black holes that would be VISIBLE, albeit also "in theory" lol

* https://www.nasa.gov/image-article/unfolding-story-of-kilono...

maybe Roman can spot one someday, that would be something

bet marathoners and ultra runners will start using this to improve performance

(don't have a problem with that, but it's predictable)

too bad it's not "wearable" like a watch but that might be coming eventually too since Garmin has a patent on it

* https://the5krunner.com/2026/02/06/garmin-non-invasive-blood...

(btw Fenix 9 launched today but it's same hardware as Fenix 8 and no glucose feature)

Just build datacenters right ontop of fracking oil fields like North Dakota

I am not kidding

They have endless cheap or even free power from the months/years of offgassing burning off methane, it can be seen from space

* https://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich/2013/01/16/169511949/a...

And the water (and air) is already so toxically polluted from the fracking that no-one can live near or drink that water or they will get sick

It's a perfect match, again not kidding

Datacenters only need a few people to run it and they can live in highly filtered rooms like hospitals or cleanrooms, heck with bots+ai they won't even need people to run them eventually

what's really going to blow your mind is

while you probably assumed or knew spinning black holes move space around them

spinning black holes also move TIME around them

* https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.ady9068

so in theory a spinning black hole that's been around for billions of years has a time drag around it in a path that is billions of years old

(no we can't navigate it because yes that would be time travel to the past and violates causality)

black holes are just so weird with every new detail even more weird

oddly more interesting to me to try to grasp neutron stars (densest objects before black holes and are still visible, our entire solar system in a neutron star would be only 10km 6.2miles across)

ah but no camera means you won't get beaten up by a crowd of angry people

ala "pervert glasses"

not sure people will bother to grasp the difference tho

these look actually useful, imagine projecting your Garmin display onto them

sub-$500

33 grams

monochrome green MicroLED via 0.6mm waveguide

97% optical transparency up to 1,300 nits

240mAh battery rated up to 48 hours of use