Tuesday Twitter roundup

Submitted by scharrison on

No matter how miserable our own situations are in this pandemic, we can't forget about these families, who are being punished harshly simply for existing.

Yeah, I got one a few weeks ago that was legit. My understanding is, when they first started sending them out they were pre-populated with certain information that was supposed to be filled out by voters themselves. The newer ones don't have that, so you can use them.

Oh dear god in heaven. First it was Solarbees, then repopulating streams with mollusks (that had been killed off by pollution) to improve water pollution, and now it's Elon Musk's Space Junk. Just run the frickin' real (on the ground) infrastructure for broadband. It ain''t rocket surgery.

You really are a f**king idiot, you know that? College students are major vectors of this pandemic, they go to the same grocery stores we do. And the less "severe" their condition, the more they get around. Dog save us from stupid people...

No, it doesn't "suggest" that, Nick, you're suggesting it. Just like when you (literally) chase somebody down in a parking lot to get a quote. Just because somebody avoids you, it doesn't necessarily follow they have something to hide. They might just be avoiding you.

This dude is a sexual predator:

Here’s what McDaniel remembers: The friend’s house was a 15-minute drive away, but Cawthorn pulled onto the Blue Ridge Parkway and took what seemed to be a longer route. She asked, “Where are we going?” Cawthorn said he wanted to go stargazing. During the drive, he asked why she seemed not to like him. McDaniel responded, “I don’t like you because I think you’re a huge player.” He asked other personal questions: whether she was a virgin and why she was with her current boyfriend.

Here’s what else McDaniel remembers: he talked about his genitalia and said he could still have fun. Cawthorn pulled off the road and into the first overlook on the parkway. He leaned toward her seat, reached for her face with both hands, pulled her in, and kissed her. McDaniel resisted: “No, I have a boyfriend.” Cawthorn persisted. He told her nobody had to know. He kissed her again. She pushed him away with two hands to his chest. She turned and tried to grab the passenger door handle. At that moment the lock snapped shut, but at the same time he assured her that they would head to the party.

McDaniel remembers him then leaning in for another kiss, putting one hand around her head and his other on her left thigh: “I felt, like, pressured to give in to it because he started being aggressive, and he is a strong guy. He had buff arms and worked out his upper body a lot.”

People like that don't change, at least not for several years. Dude is only 25, and he could be grabbing asses in Congress for decades. Just, no.

I can't help but laugh when I remember Pat McEnergy running from protesters in DC and ducking inside some random door. That look on his face was pure shit-your-pants terror. I know, I'm a bad man.

New York has cut it's COVID 19 cases by about 90% since April, while NC is still about 1,000 cases (per day) higher than it was in April. If this is the kind of logic Dan Forest supporters exercise, I'm surprised y'all don't constantly fall into abandoned wells hoping for Lassie to show up.

Of course in-person instruction is better, but you don't send kids to school when there's a killer on the loose in your neighborhood. And make no mistake, Coronairus is a killer. 263 have died in Mecklenburg, 182 in Wake, and 158 in Guilford. Also, since when did climate change deniers start believing in "consensus"? Did I miss something, something that begins with "h" and ends with "ypocrisy"? Thought so.

If you haven't watched this video clip yet, take the time to do so right now. Josh Stein is not coasting through his job, he's mastering it.

I support Moms 100%. We can't get through a single day without some child being shot by a gun some idiot left lying around, and those "thoughts and prayers" are about to get on my last nerve.

I really do like this, but please (please) proofread your added commentary before posting. Those are Russian bounties, not Iranian.

On that disciplinary note, here's your Onion:

That is a valid theory.

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Starlink irreparably harming ground-based astronomy

Submitted by teddyrooseveltp... on

From Forbes:

"On November 18, 2019, a series of 19 of these Starlink satellites passed over the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory's site in Chile, lasting for more than 5 minutes and heavily affecting the wide-field DECam instrument, which images a field containing 3 square degrees at an outstanding 0.263 arcsecond-per-pixel resolution.

Even though this only represents 0.3% of the total number of proposed Starlink satellites that SpaceX wants to launch, the consequences are clear: wide-field astronomy designed to look for faint objects — prime goals of observatories like Pan-STARRS, LSST, and any observing program geared towards finding potentially Earth-hazardous objects — is going to be significantly hindered."

But...but...the Free Market!

Submitted by scharrison on

There is so much space junk up there the ISS has to (try to) dodge it frequently:

There are more than 20,000 pieces of debris larger than a softball orbiting the Earth. They travel at speeds up to 17,500 mph, fast enough for a relatively small piece of orbital debris to damage a satellite or a spacecraft. There are 500,000 pieces of debris the size of a marble or larger. There are many millions of pieces of debris that are so small they can’t be tracked.

These guidelines essentially draw an imaginary box, known as the “pizza box" because of its flat, rectangular shape, around the space vehicle. This box is about a mile deep by 30 miles across by 30 miles long (1.5 x 50 x 50 kilometers), with the vehicle in the center. When predictions indicate that the debris will pass close enough for concern and the quality of the tracking data is deemed sufficiently accurate, Mission Control centers in Houston and Moscow work together to develop a prudent course of action.

Sometimes these encounters are known well in advance and there is time to move the station slightly, known as a “debris avoidance maneuver” to keep the debris outside of the box. Other times, the tracking data isn’t precise enough to warrant such a maneuver or the close pass isn’t identified in time to make the maneuver. In those cases, the control centers may agree that the best course of action is to move the crew into the Soyuz spacecraft that are used to transport humans to and from the station. This allows enough time to isolate those spaceships from the station by closing hatches in the event of a damaging collision. The crew would be able to leave the station if the collision caused a loss of pressure in the life-supporting module or damaged critical components. The Soyuz act as lifeboats for crew members in the event of an emergency.

Mission Control also has the option of taking additional precautions, such as closing hatches between some of the station’s modules, if the likelihood of a collision is great enough.

Cleanup on aisle 9...