> 11 ways to fix America’s fundamentally broken democracy:
1) First things first: Get rid of the filibuster 2) Stop voting rights violations before they happen 3) Eliminate registration as an obstacle to voting 4) Make it as easy as possible to vote 5) Stop running elections on the cheap 6) A tax credit for all voters 7) Fix Senate malapportionment 8) Allow the states to neutralize the Electoral College 9) Stop gerrymandering 10) Public financing for candidates 11) Prevent Trump’s judges from sabotaging voting reforms
@Mitch Phosphine is just a biosignature that's less error-prone. Especially in the amounts detected. If we knew all about the chemistry at Venus and were certain the source could not be chemical the enthusiasm would've been wholly warranted, but I think there's no reason not to assume our knowledge is very lacking in that regard.
Of course, it could also be some miscalibration or other error, which would be a very big bummer.
But investigating it will at the very least give us something we didn't know of before. With all the weirdos at the bottom of the oceans and acidic volcanoes and what else, I dunno what to expect from organisms, how unlikely it'd be for them to be floating in mid-air
> In case of delay in delivery of the Products for more than thirty (30) working days, the Buyer shall be entitled to unilaterally refuse the ordered Products by notifying the Supplier in writing.
Is it okay - to refuse the products? It seems to me that reject the products might be more natura.
@CowperKettle No, refuse is the correct word there. It means to refuse physically to take delivery of the products (in case the supplier tries to send them after the due date).
@M.A.R. But as far as complexity of theories goes, I feel it would be more plausible that there is a non-biotic source of phosphene than there is an analog to the terrestrial animal gut production of it.
But, then again, that would make a boring headline. 'Obscure chemical discovered on Venus'.
I can't complain about them ginning up the headline because science in the new always = cool, and it really doesn't affect us daily (unlike vaccine or treatment hype currently).
But I'm always annoyed by 'life on other planets' idea because it's always couched (or maybe I just hear it that way) in terms of 'life may have come from other planets' and that doesn't explain anything -at all-.
It just kicks the can down the road.
So where did -that- life come from?
@Færd It's hard for me to tell those apart. like they're both some kind of ellipsis, or maybe 'besides' can be a preposition or an adverb. double the frequency isn't so different...I'd think it weird if it was 10 to 1.
Synesthesia or synaesthesia is a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway. People who report a lifelong history of such experiences are known as synesthetes. Awareness of synesthetic perceptions varies from person to person. In one common form of synesthesia, known as grapheme–color synesthesia or color–graphemic synesthesia, letters or numbers are perceived as inherently colored. In spatial-sequence, or number form synesthesia, numbers, months of the year, or days of the week elicit...
> Heralded as a “Swedish project for truly sustainable shipping,” the wPCC is currently being developed by the consortium and is expected to be sailing by the end of 2024.
@CowperKettle well, submarines can already stay in water for decades. I think the reason most ships can't is because refuels were cheaper
@CowperKettle ew, disgusting fetish of the year
@Mitch if life in Venus is still at the anaerobic stage it might not mean much in the temporal sense but it wouldn't give the alien life theory much credence I think.
I've heard the "maybe life is alien" theory before but I never gave too much thought to it. It seemed like wishful thinking at best and pseudoscience at worst. No way would some random chemicals on a few asteroids or meteors which I think form the entire theoretical foundation of the theory suddenly reach that conclusion. Occam's razor is important to follow in these things.
Well, semi random.
And incidentally, I'm aware that Occam's Gillette would predict the phosphine would have a chemical source
@M.A.R. ummm... actually it's a perfectly reasonable theory as far as I know and can tell. We know that certain complex organic chemicals are found (and have been found) on meteorites. Including amino acids.
@terdon and don't the simple models about how amino acids formed in the pre-life Earth adequately explain their formation? AFAIK the biggest mystery is getting to complex RNAs, not whether natural phenomena could reliably produce amino acids and that next step that I forgot
@M.A.R. I'm not sure. As far as I know, they do go a long way towards explaining the emergence of complex chemicals, yes. But the fact that we know for certain that some complex molecules exist on meteorites cannot be ignored either.
So if we've found RNA on asteroids that'd be a really interesting checkpoint, but ATM it sounds like investigating simple biomolecules on asteroids would tell us a few things but very unlikely what we're looking for there
It sounds to me a bit like the faster than light theories that are compatible with the current physics. Good for sci fi writers, but don't mean much for scientists, at least yet
> The delivery shall be made by self-pickup (self-delivery) of the Products from the Supplier's warehouse (the warehouse address is specified in the Invoice/specification).
I think I should edit that to collection by Supplier, meaning the Supplier himself must go and collect the bought products.
The Russian term самовывоз basically means self-outhauling, but it could be replaced with collection.
Will call refers to a method of delivery for purchased goods where the customer picks up the goods at the seller's place of business, primarily in North American commerce. It may also refer to the department within a business where goods are staged for customer pick up.
An equivalent service for goods which are paid for in installments then retrieved once fully paid, which was common before credit cards became available, is called layaway, and is still used among those without access to credit cards.
The word "call" is a shortened form of "call for", which means "to come and get", so "will call...
@Cerberus yeah but I think the article tried to be practical and politically feasible in the short term. Like, it could say "get rid of the Electoral College" but it didn't; rather, it showed the way to its abolition: "Allow the states to neutralize the Electoral College".
@Cerberus I think if the Senate seats weren't so extremely malapportioned and some other checks and balances weren't castrated by undemocratic influences, there would be more effective power-sharing in the US government.
And if the field of political activism isn't only the backyard of party elites and market forces, then cooperation could occur on that level too, even in the presidential and Congress/Senate elections.
There have been noteworthy instances of cooperation within the Senate and the Congress in the past years. They have handed some powers to the president, which should be reclaimed.
Of course a coalition government with majorities in both houses will still force its will upon the rest, but to a lesser degree, and more reasonably: they know they may need to form a coalition with some opposition parties next time.
So cooperation can occur in a first-past-the-post system if democratic forces from below are not debilitated thru things like big business buying officials into office.
Civil society can be understood as the "third sector" of society, distinct from government and business, and including the family and the private sphere. By other authors, civil society is used in the sense of 1) the aggregate of non-governmental organizations and institutions that manifest interests and will of citizens or 2) individuals and organizations in a society which are independent of the government.Sometimes the term civil society is used in the more general sense of "the elements such as freedom of speech, an independent judiciary, etc, that make up a democratic society" (Collins English...
@M.A.R. Wow, look at those minorities in the Democratic representatives. Many more than expected, considering the average level of education and other socio-economic means among minorities.
> The United Arab Emirates (UAE) has granted emergency approval for the use of a coronavirus vaccine, six weeks after human trials in the Gulf state started.
A coalition government is often at least partly manned by politicians from the coalition parties. And the other ministers are normally affiliated with the coalition parties here.
> Wu Guizhen, head of biosafety at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said she expected Chinese vaccines for Covid-19 would soon be available to the public as soon as November or December.
@M.A.R. They might overlook some rare side effects
The big problem with rushing vaccines is that it may undermine the people's trust in vaccination as a whole, if, say, there turns out to be a serious side-effect that affects one in ten thousand. You could have thousands of dead amongst vaccinated but otherwise healthy people. And what if the effect only manifests itself after one year?
@Færd I was expanding on your point: the line between government and coalition majority in parliament is often blurred. Our ministers are almost all affiliated with the coalition parties.
@CowperKettle I've only ever seen the phrase 'Will Call', just those two words, in the lobby of a theater (live not cinema) or orchestra. There's one (or more) ticket counters to get a ticket to the performance, but often there's a single window/teller labeled 'Will Call' where you can pick up tickets that were purchased ahead of time. That's the only place I've ever ever seen those two words by themselves like that.
And it sounds weird... the elision is not usually how you expect English to work. You're left wondering who 'will call' what? Why are they calling because you're just picking up.a ticket? And why 'will' because if a call was made, it was done already in the past. It looks like it is supposed to make sense, but nothing really does.
@Mitch I also don't understand the meaning of Will Call. I thought the word Call meant visit, as in "I, the customer, will visit this location to pick up my ordered ticket/loaf of bread/etc."
> 8 January 1846: Line from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania to Lancaster, Pennsylvania opens. The first telegram from Harrisburg to Lancaster was "Why don't you write, you rascals?"
@CowperKettle OK, that makes some sense, but still, didn't you visit already to place the order and why didn't you pick it up then? Which is to say it needs a lot of backstory to make it sound natural to me. Maybe when the phrase was originally used it made a lot more sense in context with technology then.
@tchrist @Robusto It is a 'clear' day this afternoon in the Boston area, but It's not a very deep shade of blue, very very light pastel blue. maybe it's particulate from fires out west finally reaching here. If I hadn't known about the fires, I probably wouldn't notice. Will check again later towards sunset.
Hm. Well that's a bit anticlimactic. But it is French.
As is anticlimactic, for that matter.
> c. 1400, "natural transient small dent in some soft part of the human body," especially that produced in the cheek of a young person by the act of smiling, perhaps from an Old English as a word meaning "pothole," perhaps ultimately from Proto-Germanic *dumpilaz, which has yielded words in other languages meaning "small pit, little pool" (such as German Tümpel "pool," Middle Low German dümpelen, Dutch dompelen "to plunge").
Yes, and then someone had the balls to say "but not according to science".
And he fucking smiled and said that he was right and science wasn't.
> Where did you take your inspiration from for this piece?
Someone asking me that just now. The fuck is that question. The fuck can you answer.
I sat at my instrument and played the first eight bars.
Then realized it would be better if there were a couple more bars after that.
And then you just go A-B-C-B-A, and add a coda.
But you can't answer that. You have to answer some shit like "I looked out of the window and the leaves were falling". Or "I felt this or that or something".
I need to become Shostakovich real quick. Nobody ever asked him that.
I've successfully avoided everything about her but her name.
So this could be a 100% copy of one of her pieces, and I wouldn't know.
> [someone] posted discussion "My Song" to group "Counterpoint and Fugue" Hello, this is my first Fugue. Please let me know your thoughts, or add some constructive Criticism.
Jesus Christ, I need popcorn.
That's the only group on all of MuseScore where some of the people actually know what they're doing.
And that's this guy's business card he's showing there. Calling a Fugue a Song.
They have like three words in total, and then they just combine them in all kinds of different ways.
Well the finale is unexpected. Are they playing Pong now or what. Or is this Space Invaders.
Anyway. That was a quality 29 minutes 35. But I guess I should start preparing for tomorrow.
We are still playing the Bach double violin concerto, but last week on top of that my teacher said she remembered 44 (!) pieces by Bartok that we must also play. All at once.
And then literally a day later I discovered those 5 pieces by Shostakovich.
And then a couple piano etudes by Lack, which I now also want to play on the violin.
And that piece of mine that someone else arranged for strings.
That will be a busy one hour tomorrow.
Oh, by the way, the other week I ran into a hilarious tempo marking. Also in Bartok, but not in any of those 44 pieces. Was some etude in an old piano book of mine that I had as a kid.
It said "quasi a tempo".
I sat there literally laughing for a good twenty seconds.
Well the editor was helpful with his own interpretation, by providing his M.M.s.
He said go to 146 instead of the 162 that would be tempo primo.
But the thing is, I have no idea if that's what it actually means, plus the passage in question is completely unremarkable. Both technically and musically. He may as well be trolling, for all the sense that it makes.
And you know you can't put it past Bartok that he's just fucking trolling you.
He could write "spaghetti with meatballs" over a random bar somewhere and you'd just have to nod approvingly.
@Robusto and @tchrist Confirmed from the ground...boston area unnaturally hazy well above the horizon, orange-red sun at tree top level, not visible just below.