tunetardis
@tunetardis@lemmy.ca
- Comment on 1 day ago:
Yeah seriously don’t tell my wife this. She still counts on them and it’s going to go badly…
- Comment on am i stupid or are solar panel's efficiency independent on latitude 2 weeks ago:
I see what you’re getting at here. The solar constant is the solar constant. If you’ve got a perfect angle to the sun, you should be getting the same amount of power regardless of latitude. I mean I suppose it’s possible there might be a slight attenuation with the sun at a lower angle due to there being more atmosphere to traverse? Otoh solar panels don’t function as efficiently at high temperatures, so it’s possible they may be more efficient in some cases.
But you have to consider that averaged out, you’re looking at shorter daylight hours overall at high latitudes, even if there are periods in mid-summer when days can be super long, so that’s a consideration. So yes, the panels should pull in similar amounts of power while the sun is up, but it’s not up as much.
- Comment on What if Apple / other brands sold desktop chips? 4 weeks ago:
I suppose if some sort of critical mass is reached, it could push the world from x86-64 to arm? Every modern OS supports it at this point and emulators have come a long way for older software that needs them.
- Comment on Why aren't there mass protests in the USA? 5 weeks ago:
They had that protest in every state did they not? But when I couldn’t find much on it in the Canadian media, I went searching CNN and other American sites and found very little also, which was surprising to me. Here on lemmy, there were all sorts photos being posted from various cities, and it looked like a pretty big deal?
- Comment on Like Trump says that the cartels have invaded Canada wouldn't they have to pass through the US, avoid checkpoint, border control on both sides and many other things? So Canada can only blame the US? 1 month ago:
This highlights the folly of trying to lock down the Canada-US land border. If you really wanted to cut down drugs and human trafficking, you’d focus on ports of entry to the continent. The border is just way too long. Only an idiot would try to police its full length. If you think it’s only the 4000 miles from Maine to Washington State, you’re forgetting that extra 1500 miles with Alaska.
- Comment on Jupiter’s Moon Callisto Is Very Likely an Ocean World - Eos 2 months ago:
I’m so looking forward to what JUICE uncovers! Europa has been centre stage and is getting its own dedicated mission, but the more we find out about those outer moons, the more fascinating they get. Ganymede is the largest in the solar system and has its own magnetic field. And Callisto being an ocean world? It wouldn’t surprise me if Ganymede is also.
- Comment on [deleted] 2 months ago:
I had a chat with my American relatives at one point which began with me asking why it seems medical malpractice suits have such soaring high settlements compared to where I am in Canada? They explained it to me like this. Say a botched procedure leaves you requiring constant medical treatments for the rest of your life. You have to sue for any treatments you would otherwise have to pay out of pocket. Where you have a public healthcare system, the state would cover that. You may still sue for loss of employment if you are no longer able to work, say, but settlements tend to be orders of magnitude higher because of those additional costs. Unfortunately, this leads to a proliferation of bottom-feeding personal injury lawyers who try to get you to litigate and overstate your injuries to get bigger settlements.
- Comment on MIT builds swarms of tiny robotic insect drones that can fly 100 times longer than previous designs 2 months ago:
How’s this for an obscure reference? This reminded me of an episode of Max Headroom in which the wunderkind Bryce invented a robotic fly with a spycam that could be used to literally bug a room. They send it on a mission to uncover an evil plot and everyone is excitedly crowded around the screen and heaping praise on it. Then it manages to sneak into the evil lair where it promptly gets swatted, leaving Bryce shocked and devastated.
- Comment on Has Fast Food Gotten Worse, or Am I Just Getting Old? 5 months ago:
That’s a beautiful story. Thanks for sharing. My mom was an avid gardener also. I miss her so much!
- Comment on Has Fast Food Gotten Worse, or Am I Just Getting Old? 5 months ago:
Oh man, you sound like my mother! She was actually Japanese and grew her own tomatoes. She was always forcing them on me, saying Ne, umai-deshou! (See? They’re full of umami!)
I actually like cooked tomatoes in all forms, but there is something in the flavour profile of a raw tomato that turns me off.
- Comment on Has Fast Food Gotten Worse, or Am I Just Getting Old? 5 months ago:
That is fascinating! You should do an AMA.
I would love to see fewer monocultures at the supermarket. I have noticed lately that a number of new apple varieties have been popping up, at least where I am in Canada. I keep hoping for some kind of craft beer-like renaissance in produce where there is a lot more to explore and rabid fandom over particular varieties.
- Comment on Has Fast Food Gotten Worse, or Am I Just Getting Old? 5 months ago:
Ah that would certainly explain it.
My working theory had been that maybe they were being selected for size à la strawberries, which have grown almost comically huge in recent years. But it’s as though nature can only provide a set amount of flavour per fruit, and by growing it larger, it only gets diluted over a greater volume? But I haven’t been able to determine whether fast food tomatoes are behemoths since they are already cut up.
- Comment on Has Fast Food Gotten Worse, or Am I Just Getting Old? 5 months ago:
The other day I ordered a burger and they put tomatoes on it even though I asked them not to. I was about to complain, but decided to take a bite anyway and…huh. The tomato had no flavour whatsoever. I used to not like the taste of tomatoes but how could I object to this?
So what does this mean? Are my taste buds not functioning like they used to? But I spent lunch looking it up and apparently, there is a fair consensus that tomatoes, along with a host of other fruits and vegetables, really are blander today than when I was a kid. For something I never liked, this kind of works out but…
- Comment on We should have elections with no candidates. 5 months ago:
I tried one of those surveys before the last election, and it concluded that I was most closely aligned with the Green Party. Alas, they don’t have a chance in Hell where I am. They are so far off the radar I wasn’t even aware they were fielding a candidate in my district. But it does make me wonder though. If such surveys actually informed how people vote, would the balance of power shift? I think it would help if our voting system (I’m in Canada) changed to something other than first-past-the-post?
- Comment on Lemmy should have a community called lemmy_guess 5 months ago:
Oh wow thank you so much!
I got super busy today and only just got back on now to see the idea seems to have some traction. I will try to post/comment there to get ball rolling.
I was thinking actually, you could have posts that, like I suggested, describe a strange situation and invite people to speculate on how it came about. But you could also give some sort of narrative that describes the circumstances instead and leads up to a point where you go “…and you’ll never guess what happened next!” or something to that effect.
- Submitted 5 months ago to showerthoughts@lemmy.world | 30 comments
- Comment on [deleted] 6 months ago:
I find as I get older and my vision is not what it once was, I need bigger screens with good contrast but don’t care so much about resolution. I think it was on the show Corner Gas where they were talking about how big a screen you should get and concluded the size in inches should match your age. That made me laugh but I have to confess now there may be some truth in that…
- Comment on Why is space 2 dimensional? 6 months ago:
It’s been a long time since I got my astronomy degree, but your version is what I recall also. Whatever small rotational perturbation in the initial gas becomes more pronounced as it coalesces in on itself and defines the plane of the star system. Planets form within this plane after it is defined, and they all travel in the same direction around the star.
Regarding galaxies, the most common spiral ones like our own Milky Way follow the same principle at a larger scale. But there are also elliptical galaxies, not to mention irregular ones. In an elliptical galaxy, there is a more random movement of stars in a cloud around its core. So they look more 3D I guess, to go back to what the OP was asking about. I seem to recall the most accepted explanation for how these form is from the aftermath of a collision between 2 spirals? So presumably, when our galaxy collides with Andromeda in several billion years time, the resulting combined galaxy may emerge as an elliptical?