RadioLab covered the dawning of the (serendipitous) discovery a few years ago called: “bringing back gamma”.

Doesn’t say if it works when the phone powers itself down due to almost no battery juice remaining.

Would be nice if it used the precious little remaining juice to ping, say, once every 12 hours.

Here is the actual article (no paywall).

Now do Aphex Twin. No need to convert his music into numerical data either - am sure he would supply it if asked nicely.

At which point (if any) does someone deserve writing off as an asshole?

Yeah it is an eternal mystery. And assholes will exploit compassion even though some people deserve compassion because of their circumstances (which may lead to crime). Conservatives tend to think only suckers have compassion for those that don’t “pick themselves up by the bootstraps”.

Even in a marriage there is tension because one does not know if their partner is exploiting good will. Relationships are hard and not a science, despite what the latest self-help book preaches.

and that moment where you choose to trust, how can you see that as anything but free will?

We don’t really know why one person chooses and the other one doesn’t. It could be genetic, history, chance. If free will exists and includes any of those then it isn’t 100% free will.

Only 16% of… scientists and 29% of the general public rank U.S. STEM education for grades K-12 as above average… in the world.

The scientific method is what should count, not the soundbyte.

I often ask them to tell me what they think “the scientific method” is.

They tend to waffle about big pharma and Hiroshima so I give them a four minute ELI5 animation from YouTube to watch. They never do watch it though.

Thank you thank you thank you. I have asked this many times and you are the only person to answer it. Now I can pretend to be an astrophysicist at parties ;)

I would call it an annulus or ring rather than a disc. Regardless, would we even see the black hole if it was oriented side on?

Nobody says it is a star. I mentioned a star by saying that surely there would have been at least one star between it and Earth. Or am I (as a non astronomer) underestimating how much space there is in space?

Why does an actual photo show the hole visible?

What about the image shown which is a common depiction? It looks like a donut which we happen to be looking at from an aesthetically pleasing angle.

And why do we not see any stars between us and the darkness of the black hole? I mean there must be plenty of objects too far to be sucked in and yet in the path of our view.

And if it really is donut shaped then if it rotates 90⁰ we would see no hole just a thick line of the stuff circling it and yet we never see images like that.

The way it is usually verbally described however I would have thought a black hole is in the center of a sphere so that the image should just look like a circle (no hole) and yet I don’t ever recall seeing an image like that.

Soon they will be wanting dick pics.

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Sorry, i forgot it was jam.

That much sugar makes anything taste good though. May as well blend lawn clippings.

“When you have experienced something so extraordinary, it really imbues life with a certain level of enchantment and mystery and profundity.”

I can see a downside. Every second person I meet telling me all about their dream.

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