mkwt
@mkwt@lemmy.world
- Comment on Could a minority in US Senate essentially disolve the federal state? 1 day ago:
Just for context, almost every federal court is a branch of a state court.
This is not true at all.
Federal courts are part of the judicial branch, not the executive branch. So they don’t shut down when the executive branch “shuts down”, because the shutdown laws don’t apply to them. As a practical matter federal courts can keep running for a while using saved up court fee revenue. They will eventually run out of that money and gave some tough choices about what to do.
- Comment on Open journal question regarding Cosmology paper 1 day ago:
A prestigious college downloads the paper. What are the possible reasons?
Same reasons anyone else would want to read the paper? Abstract looks germane to someone’s research topic there?
- Comment on IT'S A TRAP 4 days ago:
It’s pretty well settled mathematics that infinities are “the same size” if you can draw any kind of 1-to-1 mapping function between the two sets. If it’s 1-to-1, then every member of set A is paired off with a member of B, and there are no elements left over on either side.
In the example with even integers y versus all integers x, you can define the relation x <–> y = 2*x. So the two sets “have the same size”.
But the real numbers are provably larger than any of the integer sets. Meaning every possible mapping function leaves some reals leftover.
- Comment on FlatEarthers will work around it 5 days ago:
There’s a rule that the flight has to be within so many minutes of a diversion airport at all times, and this is hard to do in Antarctica.
Nowadays, 180 minutes is fairly common, and there are some planes and airlines that can go to 240 or even as high as 370.
- Comment on Data Shows That AI Use Is Now Declining at Large Companies 1 week ago:
they were going on about how AI would route all the trucks and decide which order the deliveries would be done.
Yeah, NP hard problems don’t get easier just because the AI is doing the “thinking.”
- Comment on US presidents are getting younger over time 1 week ago:
That’s about the same time as the Know-Nothing party was pushing nativism and anti-immigrant sentiment.
- Comment on be gay, do crimes (in space) 2 weeks ago:
It’s probably fully recorded. Everything in and out.
That way if there’s a mishap it’s possible to go back and reconstruct the entire sequence or to replay high fidelity simulations of the network traffic at the equipment to reproduce problems.
- Comment on Nightmare blunt rotation... or killer rotation? 3 weeks ago:
The deal with Utah is it’s actually only 40% Mormon. And when you have a bunch a kids growing up in the Mormon church, a decently large number of them will crash out. And when they crash out, they tend to crash out pretty hard.
So Utah has large communities for various countercultures and alternative lifestyles. You can visit a random business, and often find both types working together side by side. And it is usually quite obvious which is which from external signs.
- Comment on would you visit an authoritarian country if you had the chance to live there up to 4 weeks for free even if you believe multiparty democracy to be something non negotiable? 4 weeks ago:
You don’t wanna risk getting detained re-entering the US and this racist ass administration denying your citizenship.
Since OP stated they are a natural-born US citizen, this scenario would be a significant escalation towards authoritarianism if it does happen.
Even doing this to a naturalized citizen would be an escalation.
Right now, most “border surprise” cases involve green card holders, not citizens, who have old criminal charges that rendered them deportable a long time ago. Just no previous federal government has cared enough to go find them and put them into removal proceedings.
- Comment on 4th dimension doesn't exist because even 1D or 2D themselves are not real. 4 weeks ago:
I gave you the downvote because I once attended a public lecture by Stephen Hawking, near the very end of his lifetime. It had to be one of the few, very last, public lectures that Dr. Hawking had in him. And the topic of that lecture was the nature of time, and how all of the equations of motion are fully reversible, etc, etc etc.
Out of all of the topics Dr. Hawking could have discussed, that one is the one he chose. And to me, that means that the nature of time was interesting enough to him to spread around to the public. That there are live issues that are not well settled. And so on.
Since that time, I’ve not seen any major developments in theoretical physics or philosophy to shift the status quo to an appreciable degree.
This leads me to the final judgement on your comment: You are wrong. There are live issues to discuss here, and OP deserves to further explain, defend, and debate their philosophy.
- Comment on 4th dimension doesn't exist because even 1D or 2D themselves are not real. 4 weeks ago:
I need to get you to sit down for a philosophical discourse with the Time Cube guy.
- Comment on 2hot2handle 5 weeks ago:
To condemn NASA a little bit further: NASA engineering also insisted that Sally Ride absolutely had to have a flight makeup kit. They went to the trouble to design one and make sure everything would work in zero-g. It went up and came back down completely unopened.
- Comment on How would one exit a black hole? 1 month ago:
If I recall correctly, the photon sphere orbit is unstable, so there may not be a ton of photons there. “Unstable” in this sense means that photons in adjacent orbits tend to diverge away from the photon sphere orbit rather than toward it.
For Schwarzchild holes, the lowest circular orbit for massive objects is at 3 event horizons, which is above the photon sphere. There are unstable circular orbits down to 2 horizons. Black home rotation reduces this altitude for prograde orbits asymptotically down to 1 horizon.
- Comment on I'm glad I got a glass dinner table: otherwise I'd never know how much gunk my young child smears in the underside of the table 1 month ago:
My aunt did not like eating peas. And she hid them behind the refrigerator for more than a year.
Moral of the story: be glad it’s the underside of the table and not behind the refrigerator.
- Comment on Byeeeeeee 1 month ago:
Even if you went to some asteroids that have low escape velocities, a spacecraft still has all of the mass of a spacecraft–probably a few 1000 kg. So you probably can’t get it going fast enough, even if you can escape yourself by jumping.
- Comment on North Korea and South Korea isn't working. Let's try West Korea and East Korea instead. 2 months ago:
NCD is leaking again.
- Comment on Feds in Catalonia, Spain think everyone using a Google Pixel must be a drug dealer 2 months ago:
Doesn’t a Google Pixel device come with its own OS image by default, independent of Graphene OS? Is there some kind of step that we’re missing here?
- Comment on YSK that apart from not having a car, the single greatest thing you can do for the climate is simply eating less red meat 2 months ago:
Pork is famously ‘the other white meat’ according to an old advertising campaign.
- Comment on Trump’s Defiance of TikTok Ban Prompted Immunity Promises to 10 Tech Companies 2 months ago:
Several years ago at this point, Congress passed a bill, and that bill was signed into law by the President. What that law says, is that TikTok cannot continue under Chinese ownership. Byte Dance either have to sell the American video app business so that it is controlled by Americans, or they have to shutdown Tiktok.
Byte Dance did not sell the business, so under the law TikTok has to shutdown. This law was lawyered all the way to the supreme court, and the court said it’s a valid law, and must be followed.
Despite all of these facts, the law is not actually being followed. And Tiktok is still operating in the United States. There is no legally valid reason for it to do so. President Trump has issued extension after extension, even though he has no legal authority to do so.
The latest here is the top law enforcement officer in the US telling the app stores, “yes we know it’s illegal to keep Tiktok in your app store, but I am pinky promising we won’t go after you.”
- Comment on Stung by customer losses, Comcast says all its new plans have unlimited data 3 months ago:
That is letter edh, or eth. It’s a consonant in Old English, Old Norse and modern Icelandic that makes the th sound in “the.” There’s another letter thorn that makes the th sound in “thin.” Notice the difference between the two sounds.
- Comment on The "We Tried" Award 3 months ago:
I have a relative that was in Nam and wears that hat, but he claims he was POG. I have another relative who lied about his age to get into Nam, who definitely was in the shit, and he doesn’t wear the hat.
- Comment on US warship reported heading toward Mideast as Iran, Israel fight 3 months ago:
I think it’s absolutely crazy that the United States did not already have a carrier group in position before this kicked off. Seems like a real caught with pants down moment.
Whatever else Biden did, he at least had carriers in position.
- Comment on The city is so lively 4 months ago:
You can ride the Paris Metro in Paris, TX:
- Comment on Trump’s ‘Golden Dome’ plan has a major obstacle: Physics 4 months ago:
I think there are some recycled concepts from Star Wars. Some other parts are specific upgrade projects that DoD has been wanting to do anyway, that are probably worthwhile. I think the remaining chunk will be shoveling money to grifters for pie in the sky Real Genius projects that never work.
I haven’t seen anyone seriously talking about actually using Iron Dome components for North American air defense. That’s a good thing. The geography and threat profile is completely different.
- Comment on i get most of my news something like that 5 months ago:
It’s more like the Pope clung on to life just for the opportunity to insult JD Vance. Once that was accomplished, there was no additional reason to stick around.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 months ago:
I’m pretty sure nobody registers their personal smartphone and laptop every time they leave the US for a vacation.
I agree with you on this, but CBP is certainly within their legal rights to interrogate you on the origins of your personal electronics, and they can make a determination that your stuff is subject to duty if it’s over the limit and they don’t believe you are reimporting.
- Comment on [deleted] 5 months ago:
For residents of the United States the duty free limit when returning is 800 dollars worth of stuff. I believe that’s every thirty days. You usually have to answer whether you exceed this limit in the declaration.
So you just go to Canada, buy the thing, unpack it from the packaging, and pretend like its just personal items. Just like a smartphone.
If tariffs become a big thing, this will definitely happen more, but it will also get a lot more scrutiny from customs and well.
AFIAK, border agents usually don’t ask if you bought your phone in the US or from outside, they shouldn’t ask about other personal electronics, right?
Stuff that you exported and reimported for personal or business use, but not for resale, is exempt from duty with no dollar limits. If you want documented proof that you are reimporting, you can register the stuff at a customs office in the United States before you leave.
- Comment on History never repeats itself but it rhymes 5 months ago:
In the 1830s they were doing that shit in the southeast: Georgia, Carolinas, Alabama, and so on. They didn’t really get going clearing the “west” until after the war and into the twentieth century. Geronimo surrendered for the last time in the 1880s, and he died in 1909 as a POW at Ft. Sill. Oklahoma had gained statehood only two years before, in 1907.
- Comment on Trump-backed bill to stop 'rogue' judges passes House 5 months ago:
Will this new law also apply in Western District of Texas, Amarillo Division?
- Comment on Couldn't be worse than what we have now... 5 months ago:
Unfortunately, it seems that way unless we can find another rock headed this way.
