Lemmy.world is the largest instance, for what it’s worth.

Article link for the curious

my attempt is to balance the perspective of what has become polemic, faith-based scientific dogma completely divorced from fact with some kind of reality-based reasoning and investigation.

I believe this reveals a real lack of understanding of how modern science is done. I’ve heard similar complaints about scientists being blinded by orthodoxy from anti-vaxxers, climate change deniers, and from people promoting their alternate models of physics (e.g. “everything is made of photons”). In every case the complaint is based on their own ideological blindness, misunderstanding of the science, or both.

The idea that scientists are unwilling to interrogate modern theories or entertain alternatives is ridiculous. The most interesting results aren’t those that reaffirm the standard model or expectations, it’s those that are in conflict with our best understanding of reality. These are the observations and theories that reveal new physics. This is the stuff of Nobel prizes.

Searches for physics beyond the standard model are commonplace; physics conferences generally have at least a few sections devoted to them. There are large collaborations doing experiments that search for physics that’s inconsistent with the standard model, for example searches for neutrinoless double beta decay or the neutron electric dipole moment.

Even experiments that ultimately reaffirm the standard model began as attempts to interrogate it and discover things that challenge it. At the LHC, Atlas and CMS both observed the Higgs boson and found its properties were consistent with the standard model. If you talk with any of the physicists involved, they were actually disappointed that no new physics was observed. This was the most boring possible result.

Alright I’ll bite. I don’t think this is AI drivel, I do think this article comes from a place of a serious lack of understanding of the standard model and quantum mechanics.

Yes, prior to the discovery of quantum mechanics some physicists realized that if they made certain assumptions, the math “just worked out”. They did not understand why this was the case, and being good scientists they sought to. They were also clear about their lack of a model to justify this math.

The development of quantum mechanics not only solved all these problems, but also predicted additional physics that has since been verified (solid state mechanics for example is just applied quantum mechanics, and predicted and described the transistor).

The reason quantum mechanics and the standard model of particle physics are treated as the best description of reality we currently have is because they are in fact. Attempts to describe cosmology and observational physics based in alternative models all do a worse job, either failing to account for observations or making unphysical predictions.

A quote from the article:

While MOND successfully predicts many galactic phenomena, often with greater simplicity than dark matter models, it faces its own challenges, particularly in galaxy clusters, and has often been dismissed by the mainstream physics community, sometimes explicitly because it is perceived to “lack mathematical elegance” or deviates too far from the established framework of General Relativity, suggesting theoretical preference can overshadow empirical parsimony.

This is incorrect. MOND is generally dismissed because as the article admits, it fails to account for all observed behavior. If you have to pick a model that describes more observed phenomena, which do you choose: the model that matches nearly all empirical data, or the one that only matches a subset but maybe could do better if someone could come up with the right formalism? If one insists that MOND is the path forward, then it is they who are dogmatically blinded by their choice of model.

Opening a new line of credit is only a temporary hit to your score. Multiple cards in a short time will be a bigger hit, but it’ll eventually pass.

Most if not all of those cards offer a free credit report that could tell you how much of an impact this had on your score and how quickly it improves. If you have another existing card (don’t sign up for another one) you may be able to see the change to your score once these hard credit pulls hit your credit report.

If not, wait a month or so and use one of your free annual credit reports. You get one report per year from each agency for free, with no consequence to your credit score. There’s 3 credit agencies, so in principle you can check your credit every 4 months for no cost.

Alphabetically, of course.

Case in point: Mark Robinson

The deep sea detector in the news uses Cherenkov radiation to detect the neutrino.

A neutrino can interact with the nuclei in water molecules (so hydrogen and oxygen nuclei) and produce a charged particle like an electron or a muon. The outgoing particles carry the energy of the incident neutrino, so they can be emitted at a speed greater than the speed of light in the liquid medium.

Note this is much less than the speed of light in a vacuum, so this isn’t breaking any physics. When charged particles (electrons, muons) pass through a medium at speeds greater than light in that medium, they emit Cherenkov light in a forward cone.

The Cherenkov light is analogous to the shockwave formed when breaking the sound barrier. Since it points in the direction the particle was traveling, you can detect the shape of the light cone with a large array of photon detectors and reconstruct the direction of the neutrino.

Actually we haven’t observed a difference between the speed of neutrinos and light, which sets an upper limit on their mass based on the precision of those measurements. The evidence of mass is much weirder, in the observation of neutrino flavor oscillation.

Neutrinos come in 3 flavors: electron, tau, and muon. We’ve observed that the flavor oscillates as a function of time, or equivalently as a function of distance from the neutrino source. The data is quite precise, and is perfectly explained by there being 3 neutrino mass states that are distinct from the flavor state. So a neutrino with a well defined flavor will have a superposition of the 3 mass states, with each flavor corresponding to a different admixture of mass states.

The flavor oscillations allow us to measure the difference in the mass values, but not the absolute masses. Technically it’s possible that the “lightest” neutrino is massless, and the other 2 mass states are nonzero. Without an absolute value for the masses we can’t rule this out.

“Almost massless”. Neutrino masses are so small that they haven’t been measured (yet).

Solar (photovoltaics), wind turbines, and hydroelectric are a few non-steam energy sources in use.

As for theoretical sources, some of the pulsed-power fusion concepts use the electromagnetic pulse from fusion to directly induce electrical power. But none of these have been demonstrated yet.

This is what I do - make a big pot of chili or soup for the week. But I recognize that this might not work for everyone. At my work there’s a conveniently located fridge and microwave, and I can eat in my office with the door shut for a quiet meal. If any of those things weren’t there it might not be worth it.

I also enjoy cooking, and don’t mind spending time making my meal for the week. If the prep work was a real chore then it’d be much more tempting to buy something premade every day.

Relevant XKCD

Vampires hate this one weird trick

It doesn’t get more American than solving healthcare with gun violence.

Closing vim is like landing a plane: anytime you can walk away unscathed it’s a success.

My employer has a “buy American” policy that kicks in for purchases over a certain dollar amount. To get an exemption, you need to identify 2 domestic options and state why they aren’t sufficient.

Recently I needed to replace a module in an existing system that happens to be made by a non-US company. There is literally no valid alternative - only this one company makes the modules that are compatible with each other.

So I had to identify 2 American made products that were vaguely similar and state why they didn’t meet our specifications. Though “Vaguely similar” is a stretch - it was equivalent to explaining to someone why you can’t buy AA batteries to replace a car battery.

There’s a follow up meta study from 2020.:

In conclusion, based on the totality of currently available scientific evidence, the present review does not support the presumption that fluoride should be assessed as a human developmental neurotoxicant at the current exposure levels in Europe.

Same here, which is why my Bluesky feed is much better. Everyone wants to be where everyone else is (that isn’t X), and it seems like that’s Bluesky.

I’m gonna echo what others have said here. The mastodon signup process is too complex, and searching for instructions just leads to “what is the fediverse and/or activitypub” explainers.

I created a mastodon account a few years ago and it was my first introduction to the fediverse. It was frustrating and I only persevered because I REALLY wanted to replace twitter.

Once I got it set up, I realized that no one who I followed on twitter was there. My feed is currently like 2 people, plus a bunch of dead accounts from people who dipped their toe in but didn’t stay.

Joining Bluesky was simple, and there were already a bunch of accounts I wanted to follow. The recent influx has increased that, and it feels a lot like old school twitter without the nazis.

People originally joined twitter (and stuck with it for so long) because that’s where everyone else is. Mastadon is too clunky join and use, so people aren’t.