Fox "News" rots your brain, folks.

 

 

 

On 2/25/2021 at 12:36 AM, Dave Moss said:

Who do you think won the argument?

 

I'm rooting for the virus.

4 hours ago, jsdarkstar said:

Fox "News" rots your brain, folks.

Brought to you by all 52 genders.

On 3/5/2021 at 12:26 AM, lynched1 said:

Brought to you by all 52 genders.

Yep, that's what the GOP is concerned about, the sex of Mr. Potato head and not Covid Relief for the American People. Funny how they all voted against it. 

44 minutes ago, jsdarkstar said:

Yep, that's what the GOP is concerned about, the sex of Mr. Potato head and not Covid Relief for the American People. Funny how they all voted against it. 

Was it really "COVID relief"?  You cannot honestly believe this.

29 minutes ago, sameaglesfan said:

Was it really "COVID relief"?  You cannot honestly believe this.

what exactly is in the bill that you find distasteful? other than that it was passed with democratic support?

it gets relief money to individuals and families in a way that is aggressively means tested. the minimum wage increase was tossed. the unemployment benefits the house passed were cut. there's relief specifically for rural hospitals (but none broadly for healthcare providers elsewhere).

so tell me, what are the right wing talking points here?

1 hour ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

what exactly is in the bill that you find distasteful? other than that it was passed with democratic support?

it gets relief money to individuals and families in a way that is aggressively means tested. the minimum wage increase was tossed. the unemployment benefits the house passed were cut. there's relief specifically for rural hospitals (but none broadly for healthcare providers elsewhere).

so tell me, what are the right wing talking points here?

Relief money to individuals is indeed a good thing.  Other stuff maybe - not as much.

This is from Forbes (as a for instance)...

Since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s leadership team essentially wrote the bill, our auditors at OpenTheBooks.com found what House Democrats consider coronavirus-recovery "essential” spending:
•    $1.5 million earmarked for the Seaway International Bridge, which connects New York to Canada. Senate Leader Chuck Schumer hails from New York.
•    $50 million for "family planning” – going to non-profits, i.e. Planned Parenthood, or public entities, including for "services for adolescents[.]”
•    $852 million for AmeriCorps, AmeriCorps Vista, and the National Senior Service Corps – the Corporation for National and Community Service – civic volunteer agencies. This includes $9 million for the AmeriCorp inspector general to conduct oversight and audits of the largess. AmeriCorps received a $1.1 billion FY2020 appropriation.

People of goodwill can debate each of these goals, but is it truly emergency spending or funding related to Covid-19?
 

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamandrzejewski/2021/02/22/is-there-waste-or-bloated-spending-in-the-19-trillion-coronavirus-stimulus-bill/?sh=599231ac39db

2 hours ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

what exactly is in the bill that you find distasteful? other than that it was passed with democratic support?

it gets relief money to individuals and families in a way that is aggressively means tested. the minimum wage increase was tossed. the unemployment benefits the house passed were cut. there's relief specifically for rural hospitals (but none broadly for healthcare providers elsewhere).

so tell me, what are the right wing talking points here?

There should be no debate over the money going to individuals who have been negatively affected by the pandemic.  However, based on the recent report that came out form the Congressional Budget Office (projecting national debt to be 202% of GDP by 2051) and the rising bond yield which points to an economy that is already in a strong recovery, I think its fair to suggest that we pare this bill down to its bare bones.  Also, the pandemic is rapidly dissipating and much of the money from the previous Covid relief bills has yet to be spent.  

The big debate here is the over the almost $600 billion going to states that largely have not managed their finances well.  To many, this feels like a bailout for poor fiscal management and only serves as an incentive to prolong this overspending.  To be sure, SOME of that money will go to Coivd relief measures, but much of the rest of the federal bill is targeted at Covid mitigation activities nationwide...leaving many to speculate that this $600B is just a handout. 

Further aggravating people is that 15% of the bill goes to projects completely unrelated to the pandemic.  Specifically, the $480 million dollars earmarked for native American language preservation and $100 million for underground rail in silicon valley and $50 million for environmental justice grants.  These are just three that have jumped off the page as classic pork projects that have no business in this in a Covid relief bill. 

Maybe if we'd actually gotten an infrastructure bill out of the last president we wouldn't need to have infrastructure spending rolled into this.

I've never been a huge fan of giving cash to states, and I hope this cash comes with stipulations. But state budgets have absolutely suffered mightily as their sources of revenue have been in many cases more disproportionately impacted than federal. States don't run the fed, and don't have the same ability to overcome deficit spending through the sale of bonds - this puts states in a much more precarious situation as they face major shortfalls due to Covid.

If the economic recovery happens more sharply than anticipated, fewer dollars will be needed by PUA, so the bill cost will come in lower.

And finally, after the last four years I find handwringing over the projected debt pretty hilarious. I'm absolutely concerned about the deficit and debt, but I don't buy for a minute that the handwringing isn't politically tainted. Deficit spending during a pandemic is much more tolerable to me than increasing deficit spending for an unnecessary tax cut that cut spending nada.

45 minutes ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

Maybe if we'd actually gotten an infrastructure bill out of the last president we wouldn't need to have infrastructure spending rolled into this.

I've never been a huge fan of giving cash to states, and I hope this cash comes with stipulations. But state budgets have absolutely suffered mightily as their sources of revenue have been in many cases more disproportionately impacted than federal. States don't run the fed, and don't have the same ability to overcome deficit spending through the sale of bonds - this puts states in a much more precarious situation as they face major shortfalls due to Covid.

If the economic recovery happens more sharply than anticipated, fewer dollars will be needed by PUA, so the bill cost will come in lower.

And finally, after the last four years I find handwringing over the projected debt pretty hilarious. I'm absolutely concerned about the deficit and debt, but I don't buy for a minute that the handwringing isn't politically tainted. Deficit spending during a pandemic is much more tolerable to me than increasing deficit spending for an unnecessary tax cut that cut spending nada.

Sneaking hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into a Covid relief package for non-pandemic related projects has nothing to do with Trump.  If the congress wants an infrastructure bill then they can put one forward, title it as such and vote on it.

Also, if you feel the need to blame a president for our national debt situation blame LBJ and FDR.

 

10 hours ago, jsdarkstar said:

Yep, that's what the GOP is concerned about, the sex of Mr. Potato head and not Covid Relief for the American People. Funny how they all voted against it. 

Covid relief? You bought into that BS? Read the bill before you start talking about ****. 😂😂😂

9 hours ago, The Norseman said:

There should be no debate over the money going to individuals who have been negatively affected by the pandemic.  However, based on the recent report that came out form the Congressional Budget Office (projecting national debt to be 202% of GDP by 2051) and the rising bond yield which points to an economy that is already in a strong recovery, I think its fair to suggest that we pare this bill down to its bare bones.  Also, the pandemic is rapidly dissipating and much of the money from the previous Covid relief bills has yet to be spent.  

The big debate here is the over the almost $600 billion going to states that largely have not managed their finances well.  To many, this feels like a bailout for poor fiscal management and only serves as an incentive to prolong this overspending.  To be sure, SOME of that money will go to Coivd relief measures, but much of the rest of the federal bill is targeted at Covid mitigation activities nationwide...leaving many to speculate that this $600B is just a handout. 

Further aggravating people is that 15% of the bill goes to projects completely unrelated to the pandemic.  Specifically, the $480 million dollars earmarked for native American language preservation and $100 million for underground rail in silicon valley and $50 million for environmental justice grants.  These are just three that have jumped off the page as classic pork projects that have no business in this in a Covid relief bill. 

Oh the irony. So if individuals don't manage their finances well, there's no debate over giving them a hand out, but if a state does the same, then it's an incentive to prolonging overspending?

No, the average American is just as financially irresponsible as a state, if not more. Everyone should have money stashed away in case they fall on hard times, but far too many live paycheck to paycheck, then complain about not getting a big enough stimulus check from the government when the rainy days actually come. So if you think it's best to help everyone out by cutting checks then fine, but it's myopic to turn around and act like it's a handout for the states you don't like, but not up for debate for individuals.

9 hours ago, JohnSnowsHair said:

Maybe if we'd actually gotten an infrastructure bill out of the last president we wouldn't need to have infrastructure spending rolled into this.

I've never been a huge fan of giving cash to states, and I hope this cash comes with stipulations. But state budgets have absolutely suffered mightily as their sources of revenue have been in many cases more disproportionately impacted than federal. States don't run the fed, and don't have the same ability to overcome deficit spending through the sale of bonds - this puts states in a much more precarious situation as they face major shortfalls due to Covid.

If the economic recovery happens more sharply than anticipated, fewer dollars will be needed by PUA, so the bill cost will come in lower.

And finally, after the last four years I find handwringing over the projected debt pretty hilarious. I'm absolutely concerned about the deficit and debt, but I don't buy for a minute that the handwringing isn't politically tainted. Deficit spending during a pandemic is much more tolerable to me than increasing deficit spending for an unnecessary tax cut that cut spending nada.

Of course it is. Norse was awfully silent as Trump ran up the debt year after year, but now that he lost, suddenly fiscal conservatism matters again. It's almost like we predicted this would happen exactly as it's playing out.

8 hours ago, The Norseman said:

Sneaking hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into a Covid relief package for non-pandemic related projects has nothing to do with Trump.  If the congress wants an infrastructure bill then they can put one forward, title it as such and vote on it.

Also, if you feel the need to blame a president for our national debt situation blame LBJ and FDR.

 

Yea, we know dude, anyone but the infallible Trump.

8 hours ago, we_gotta_believe said:

Of course it is. Norse was awfully silent as Trump ran up the debt year after year, but now that he lost, suddenly fiscal conservatism matters again. It's almost like we predicted this would happen exactly as it's playing out.

I'm more tolerant of deficit spending during a crisis. 

What was intolerable to me was running up the deficit while the economy was strong pre-covid.

26 minutes ago, Toty said:

plus every single president since

and every member of congress

oh, and voters

Clinton took care of the debt. Just need another Clinton. 

15 hours ago, we_gotta_believe said:

Of course it is. Norse was awfully silent as Trump ran up the debt year after year, but now that he lost, suddenly fiscal conservatism matters again. It's almost like we predicted this would happen exactly as it's playing out.

I was critical of Trump's spending as well.  Obama spent more than Bush, Trump spent more Obama and Biden will spend more than Trump and so on and so forth.  My point is that the interest on the debt for the big three social programs (mandatory spending) will continue to rise and dwarf whatever social program and military spending moves that any administration can make.  Blaming a president you don't like for the national debt is like blaming a drop of water for the flood that ruined your house.  

My point in this bill is less about the debt and more about the controls.  There is an enormous amount of taxpayer money in this bill that disguised as Covid relief when in fact it is not.  

NASA now is targeting Oct. 31, 2021, for the launch of the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope from French Guiana.

This telescope is going to make a huge impact on Space Science.

 

HOW SCIENTISTS SCRAMBLED TO STOP DONALD TRUMP’S EPA FROM WIPING OUT CLIMATE DATA

After hearing the news that then President-elect Donald Trump had appointed a notorious climate change denier to lead the Environmental Protection Agency transition team in 2016, Nicholas Shapiro, an environmental anthropologist, penned an urgent email to a dozen or so fellow scientists.

He was worried that the EPA was about to be torn apart from the inside under Trump’s leadership. Others on the email thread were concerned that vital environmental data would be taken down from federal websites and destroyed. They’d just seen brutal attacks on science in Canada — irreplaceable scientific records were dumped in the trash under conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper — and they feared that something similar could happen in the US. So Shapiro took a cue from his sister, an organizer for the Women’s March, and tried to bring researchers together to mount an offensive.

https://www.theverge.com/22313763/scientists-climate-change-data-rescue-donald-trump

Hackers access security cameras inside Cloudflare, jails, and hospitals

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/03/hackers-access-security-cameras-inside-cloudflare-jails-and-hospitals/

 

Maybe a smart home is stupid.

https://joshworth.com/dev/pixelspace/pixelspace_solarsystem.html

This is pretty neat

 

The Red Color Of Mars Is Only Millimeters Thick

When we look out at our planet Earth from space, we see a myriad of diverse colors. The sky itself is blue, as the atmosphere preferentially scatters shorter-wavelength blue light in all directions, giving our atmosphere it’s characteristic color. The oceans themselves are blue, as water molecules are better at absorbing longer-wavelength red light than they are blue light. Meanwhile, the continents appear brown or green, dependent on the vegetation (or lack thereof) growing there, while the icecaps and clouds always appear white.

But on Mars, one color dominates: red. The ground is red: red everywhere. The lowlands are red; the highlands are red; the dried-up riverbeds are red; the sand dunes are red; it’s all red. The atmosphere itself is also red in every location we can measure it. The lone exception appears to be the icecaps and clouds, which are white, albeit with a reddish hue as observed from Earth. Yet quite surprisingly, the "redness” of Mars is incredibly shallow; if you dug just the tiniest bit beneath the surface, the redness vanishes. Here’s the scientific story behind just what makes the red planet so red.

From space, there’s no denying the red appearance of Mars. For all of recorded history in a wide variety of languages, the redness of Mars has been its most prominent feature. Mangala, the Sanskrit word for Mars, is red. Har decher, its ancient name in Egyptian, literally means "red one.” And as we’ve progressed into the space age, photos that distinguish the surface from the atmosphere clearly show that the air above Mars itself has an intrinsically red color.

In Earth’s atmosphere, Rayleigh scattering dominates, casting blue light in all directions while the red light travels relatively undisturbed. However, the atmosphere of Mars is only 0.7% as thick as Earth’s, rendering Rayleigh scattering from the gas molecules in Mars’s atmosphere a negligible effect. Instead, dust particles in the Martian atmosphere dominate in (likely) two ways:

• greater absorption at short optical wavelengths (400-600 nm) than at longer (600+ nm) wavelengths,
• and that larger dust particles (~3 microns and larger) scatter longer-wavelength light more efficiently than atmospheric gas particles scatter shorter-wavelength light from Rayleigh scattering.
• 

If you look at the suspended atmospheric dust in detail on Mars, and ask, "what is it like,” the answer is incredibly informative. Just from looking at its spectral properties — or "how it affects the light” — we can see that the dust is very similar to the regions on Mars that:

 

• are high in reflectivity,
• represent bright soil deposits,
• and are rich in iron: i.e., containing large amounts of ferric oxides.

 

When we look at the dust in detail, particularly with the OMEGA instrument on ESA’s Mars Express mission, we find that the most common type of dust comes from nanocrystalline red hematite, which has the chemical formula α-Fe₂O₃. The particles that make up this hematite are small: between about 3 and 45 microns in diameter. That’s the right size and composition so that the rapid Martian winds, which typically blow at speeds close to ~100 km/hr, continuously sweep large amounts of dust up into the atmosphere, where it remains fairly well-mixed, even when there are no dust storms.

When we look at the Martian surface itself, however, the story gets far more interesting. Ever since we began examining the Martian surface in detail — first from orbiting missions and, later, landers and rovers — we noticed that surface features would change over time. In particular, we’d notice that there were darker areas and brighter areas, and that the dark areas would evolve in a particular pattern:

 

• they’d begin dark,
• they would get covered in dust that we suspect was from the brighter areas,
• and then they would go back to being dark once again.

 

For a long time, we didn’t know why, until we started noticing that the dark areas that change all had a few things in common, particularly when compared to the dark areas that didn’t change. In particular, the dark areas that changed over time had relatively lower elevations and smaller slopes, and were surrounded by brighter areas. By contrast, the higher-elevation, steeper-sloped, and very large dark areas didn’t change in this way over time.

 

 

It was a duo of scientists — one of whom was Carl Sagan — who puzzled out the solution: Mars is covered with a layer of this thin, sandy dust that’s driven by winds all across the Martian surface. This sand gets blown from area to area, but it’s easiest for that dust to:

 

• travel short distances,
• travel either from higher to lower elevations or to comparable elevations, rather than up to much higher elevations,
• and to get blown off of areas with steeper slopes, as opposed to areas with shallower slopes.

 

In other words, the red dust that dominates the color palette of Mars is only skin deep. That’s not even a poetic turn of phrase in this case: most of Mars is covered by a layer of dust that’s only a few millimeters thick! Even in the region where the dust is thickest — the large plateau known as the Tharsis region, consisting of three very large volcanoes just offset from Olympus Mons (which appears to the plateau’s northwest) — it’s estimated to be a meager 2 meters (~7 feet) thick.

You might look at these facts, then, and wonder the following: do we have a topographic map of Mars and a map of the ferric oxides on Mars, and do these maps correlate with one another in any way?

It’s a smart thought, and one that we’ll take a look at in just a second, but "ferric oxide” doesn’t necessarily mean "red Mars dust” the way you might think. First off, ferric oxides are present everywhere on the planet:

 

• within the crust,
• found in lava outflows,
• and in the Martian dust that’s been oxidized by reactions with the atmosphere.

 

Given that the atmosphere, even today, contains significant quantities of both carbon dioxide and water, there’s a readily available source of oxygen to oxidize any iron-rich material that makes it to the surface: where it contacts the atmosphere.

As a result, when we look at a ferric oxide map of Mars — again, made by the fabulous OMEGA instrument aboard ESA’s Mars Express — we find that yes, the ferric oxides are everywhere, but the abundances are highest across the northern and mid-latitudes, and lowest across the southern latitudes.

On the other hand, the topography of Mars shows that the elevation of the red planet varies in an interesting way across its surface, and in a way that’s only partially correlated with the abundance of ferric oxides. The southern hemisphere, predominantly, is at a much higher elevation than the lowlands in the north. The greatest elevations occur in the ferric oxide-rich Tharsis region, but in the lowlands to the east of it, the abundances of ferric oxides plummets.

What you have to realize is that the red hematite form of ferric oxide, which is possibly the culprit for the "redness” of Mars, isn’t the only form of ferric oxide. There is also magnetite: Fe₃O₄, which is black in color instead of red. Although the global topography of Mars appears to play a role in the abundances of ferric oxide, it clearly isn’t the only factor at play, and might not even be the primary factor in determining Mars’s color.

What we think is occurring — and this has been a consistent picture for many years — is that there is a bright, globally distributed, globally homogeneous set of dust that gets swept up into the atmosphere and remains there. That dust is basically suspended in the thin Martian atmosphere, and although events like dust storms can increase the concentration, it never drops to a negligibly low value. Mars’s atmosphere is always rich with this dust; that dust provides the atmosphere’s color; but the color features of Mars’s surface aren’t uniform at all.

The "settling of atmospheric dust” is only one factor in determining the surface color of various regions of Mars. This is something we’ve learned very well from our landers and rovers: Mars isn’t a uniform red color at all. In fact, the surface itself is more of an orangey shade of butterscotch overall, and that various rocky objects and deposits on the surface appear to have a variety of colors: brown, golden, tan, and even greenish or yellow, depending on what minerals make up those deposits.

One question that’s still under investigation is the exact mechanism by which these red hematite particles form. Although there are many ideas that involve molecular oxygen, it’s only found in tiny, trace amounts from the photodissociation of water. Reactions involving water or high temperatures are possible, but those are thermodynamically disfavored.

My two favorite possibilities are reactions involving hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂), which occurs naturally on Mars in low abundances, but is a very strong oxidant. The fact that we see large amounts of α-Fe₂O₃ but no hydrated ferric iron minerals could be an indication of this pathway.

Alternatively, we might get hematite simply from a purely physical process: erosion. If you mix together magnetite powder, quartz sand, and quartz dust together and tumble it in a flask, some of the magnetite converts to hematite. In particular, a "black” mixture (dominated by magnetite) will appear red, as the quartz gets fractured, exposing oxygen atoms, which attach to the broken magnetite bonds, forming hematite. Perhaps the notion of "water is responsible for ferric oxides” is a literal red herring after all.

So, all in all, Mars is red because of hematite, which is a red form of ferric oxide. Although ferric oxides are found in many places, only the hematite is largely responsible for the red color, and the small dust particles that are suspended in the atmosphere and that coat the top few millimeters-to-meters of Mars’s surface are wholly responsible for the red color we see.

If we could somehow calm the atmosphere for long periods of time and let the Martian dust settle out, you might expect that Rayleigh scattering would dominate like it does on Earth, turning the skies blue. This is only partly correct, though; because the Martian atmosphere is so thin and tenuous, the sky would appear very dark: almost completely black, with a slight bluish tint to it. If you could successfully block out the brightness coming from the planet’s surface, you would likely be able to see some stars and up to six planets — Mercury, Venus, Earth, Jupiter, Saturn, and sometimes Uranus — even during the daytime.

Mars might be the red planet, but only a tiny, minuscule amount of it is actually red. Fortunately for us, that red part is the outermost layer of its surface, pervasive in the Martian atmosphere, and that accounts for the color we actually perceive.

^^^^^

Those pictures are photoshopped from the Nevada desert........

.......and the earth is flat.