KelsonV @KelsonV@wandering.shop

Welcome to March 365, 2020

So, since the SI adopted bytes, kilo, mega, giga, etc as proper metric units, I had the deeply cursed thought of imperial data units.

A friend suggested the name "babbage" which put me on to reading that apparently the word size of the analytical engine was apparently 40 decimal digits.

The best part about this is that a hypothetical babbage does not divide evenly into bits

The Aurora Tree

Image Credit & Copyright: Alyn Wallace

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210228.html #APoD

"What have I told you about this?"

The princess wagged her finger at the dragon, who sadly removed her comical bowler hat and spinning bow-tie.

"No," the princess growled, "You know I'm fully supportive of your comedy career! I meant them!"
She gestured at the fearful serfs crammed into a hanging cage, "This is not what captive audience means."

"But nobody comes to my shows!" the dragon whined.

"Because you keep doing things like this!"

#TootFic #MicroFiction #Writing #TerylsTales #Fantasy

minecraft is so funny because it's like "here's a literal hell dimension where the laws of space and time are broken" and the players go "oh, how practical!"

Once I gave a presentation on Mars Robots to 6 years and heavily anthropomorphized the robots. Then one of them asked when the robots would come home.

As the shock and horror spread across their faces, I realized that I had not adequately prepared for this lesson.

Elevator pitch: Longest running elevator experiment in history

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/02/pfizer-vaccine-rollout-might-get-a-lot-easier-ultra-cold-storage-not-required/

Pfizer and BioNTech have done more studies and found their vaccine does NOT need to be stored nearly as cold as they initially thought: It can survive for up to TWO WEEKS at -25°C to -15°C (-13°F to 5°F) (aka standard freezer temperature), and FIVE DAYS at 2⁰C to 8⁰C (Standard fridge temperature).

They initially thought it needed -80°C and -60°C (-112°F to ‑76°F) but could take fridge temperatures for five days, and put a LOT of time and money into buying up dry ice and freezers. This will make distributing that vaccine a LOT easier and will also make the supply chains for it and the other vaccines more similar, which again, makes things easier.

“Why do we have a space program when X is going on?”
Listen, the NASA budget is not a problem, DoD paid Lockheed Martin over $400 BILLION for the F-35, a fighter jet so bad they have to rig the field tests in its favor. That program started in 2001, so roughly $25 billion per year of existence. NASAs budget for 2020 was $22 Billion, and its average budget per year over its 63 years of existence was $19 billion. The ENTIRE APOLLO PROJECT cost, adjusted for inflation, $156 billion. Yeah, going to the moon cost us less than a shitty airplane. Amazon could buy multiple Apollo projects per year.

We have military contractors committing literal theft of our tax dollars, and you’re worried about NASA? What’s your next worry, the less than half a billion that goes to public television?

theory: the respective front desks of heaven and hell are staffed by whichever human has the current high score in terms of being directly responsible for most lives saved/ended. so by my estimation, heaven is currently being manned by Stanislav Petrov and hell has Thomas Midgley Jr.

1974, Joni Mitchell stops in the middle of performing "Both Sides Now" to talk about Star Trek:

"Did you ever used to watch that show called Star Trek? (cheers from crowd) Oh... I just had a flash of this show, that I saw while I was singing this tune. It was the only show where Dr. Spock ever got any emotion, right? You remember that one? It was really great because... " (https://jonimitchell.com/music/song.cfm?id=83, she goes on to talk about Spock and clouds, just amazing)

Swiss Alps, Martian Sky

Image Credit & Copyright: Jens Bydal

https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap210218.html #APoD

Gave a neural net some examples from @mondomascots and it responded with some deeply weird mascots.

The Brando, a guesthouse in Tokyo, is represented by Garapon-kun, a shy yet terrifying Jack-in-the-box that likes to play with balloons.

Makuo, a sea anemone from Kagoshima, can see the future. His antennae are mittens, but he has eight toes on each hand.
https://janellecshane.substack.com/p/the-mascot-of-ai-weirdness-is-a-cyborg?r=1lic4&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&utm_source=twitter