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Perhaps you're right. I just think that the humor of this joke is apolitical:

All valid statements, but there is an element of causation when a specific party begins to generate propaganda against science and vaccination. I agree that education levels play a role, but I am witnessing one party which is pitching these anti science messages to those most easily fooled. And these partisan messages have caused a great increase in opposition to vaxxing, renewable energy, EVs, climate change preparation, etc.

You know as well as I do that correlation does not imply causation. E.g. Far more religious people than atheists reject vaccinations. Far more religious people than atheists are on the Right. Or. Uneducated vs. educated. Etc.

Seems like now it has become more political, in that the Far Right MAGA faithful have embraced science denial, conspiracy theories and anti-vaxx. I think recent surveys show far more people on the Right are rejecting vaccinations.

Even though I live nearly half a world away from the insanity that is the Trump administration, I have been taking a very keen interest in what is happening in the US. It seems clear to me that Trump is now shoehorning everything into "foreign relations" because that is where he claims to have presidential power beyond the reach of anyone, including the Supreme Court. It seems inevitable that he will claim "foreign interference" as a pretext to taking control of the midterm elections. And this may even become true if he enlists some of his mates at the "Board of Peace" to create "foreign interference". What do you think? And what can be done about it?

Before 2022, Europe bought the oil from Russia, and China from Saudi Arabia. After 2022 this reversed - Europe is buying the oil from SA, China from Russia. If Gemany bought less oil from SA, SA would sell its oil to China, so the China would stop buying the oil from Putin and this would stop the Putin's war. Ukraine is fighting for freedom (maybe even for all humanity), and supporting the Putin's war is really a crime. And if the goverment of Germany conscieously ignores the will of Germans, this is evidently not the freedom.

Me too.

The 'joke' that tickled me really was the double entendre. Usually, when someone asks for 'a second opinion to a doctor, they mean they want another doctor's opinion.

Being an idiot is not political. There are plenty of anti-vaxxers on both sides. And were there before Covid, too.

Such an application takes a photo, puts it in the buffer, takes another photo after a certain amount of time, and compares it with the previous version. It is simply subtracting R, G, B, of each pixel between the two versions of the photos. Then it calculates some threshold, above which it will be physically saved. You can write this yourself. You have a timelapse and you have a thousand photos from the whole day. Make yourself a script (or have ChatGPT do it). If the threshold is set too low, it will detect natural changes in the time of day (sunset), which requires trial and error. Several frames in a row should also be tested to increase reliability.

MAGA has morphed into MAHA under RFKennedyJr and now the “vaccines are the enemy” mindset which became common during Covid more so on the right is even more amplified.

Not quite the same thing, Ken. Granted, much of the physical hardware is the same, but syncons are specifically designed for power factor correction, and therefore have excitation circuitry designed for the production of reactive power, either lead or lag, as an alternative to (typically) thyristor switched static VAR compensators (SVCs). What they don't do is generate torque to any large degree and are thus unable (in standard form) to replace active power generation shortfalls beyond a few cycles. The flywheel version provides the necessary large energy storage capacity to fulfill that role. It's interesting to consider whether these various functionalities could be combined in a single machine, though I suspect that idea would run into significant degrees of freedom issues.

If the mods think this is not a political issue, they can move it.

You asked a question and I answered it. Yes, I read what was written. My answer stands.

But how is this humor political?

I've never heard of a phone having a motion detector. They (some) have proximity sensors. Google AI: "Phone proximity sensors, located near the front camera, typically detect objects within a very short range of 10mm to 100mm (about 1 to 4 inches) to turn off the screen during calls. These infrared-based sensors generally use a "near" or "far" state, often with a 5cm maximum threshold to prevent accidental touches." It depends on the model that was decommissioned.. ;) What you need is called timelapse. This is taking photos after a specified number of seconds or minutes in a loop. The problem is that old phones have very weak batteries. And the phone cannot “go to sleep” because that would prevent it from taking pictures. 1,000 charging/discharging cycles of the phone = dead or dying battery. 1,000 daily charges = 3 years of phone life. There is something called Termux, which is a Linux terminal with packages that you can download, or write a script yourself. Termux requires Android v6+. Don't download Termux from Google Play, download it from F-Droid instead: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.termux/ (2nd direct link to apk, you don't need F-Droid store app) You also need Termux.API, which has a command for taking photos: https://f-droid.org/packages/com.termux.api/ After installation, you need to grant them permissions. The script for taking photos will look something like this: #!/bin/bash I=0 while true; do FILENAME=image_$I.jpg termux-camera-photo $FILENAME ((I++)) done ps. Add sleep 60 to get a one-minute delay between photos. ps2. If you connect your phone to a power bank that is powered by a solar panel, it should work. ps3. Start by writing down what model of phone it is.

@KJW What is that have to do with ? I meant Normal = Calculated and Observed=Abnormal (has the definition below it says)

I've only just read this. Would it be a silly idea to run a couple of vast flywheels, just to add "ballast" to the system? One could even simply retain a couple of these big turbo-alternator sets, unpowered, and spun up and maintained to 50Hz off the grid. That sounds like a long established technology called Synchronous Condensers and Australia is currently adding them to cover the withdrawal of thermal (spinning) power plants. SynCons are expensive with a long lead time for manufacture and unlike batteries have limited ways to make revenue other than as system inertia and frequency control so there is incentive to perfect inverter controlled virtual inertia - which appears to primarily involve updated inverter software or possibly upgrading the inverters. Trust in virtual inertia is not all the way there; it is being used but it seems to still be on trial, to see how well they perform in the real world. We did discuss virtual inertia on another thread. It is also possible to retrofit gas power plants (any thermal generator? Seimens do them I think) with clutches, to allow the generator to disconnect from the 'engine' (gas turbines usually) and remain online, providing spinning inertia like when in full operation, as the equivalent of a SynCon.

I’ve got a space weather app that alerts me to flares and CMEs and whenever Kp hits a certain threshold. Seen a couple of aurorae because of the alerts.

I monitor this stuff on NOAA's SWPC page fairly regularly - some of my partner's work has some vulnerabilities, so she usually does more of a HD backup if I give a heads-up. It's not great to have a mini Carrington Event catch you with your pants down. There's a lot of infrastructure that's not well shielded for a direct CME hit. SWPC isn't showing anything problematic, so far, but there could be some auroral displays tonight if anyone lives in Scandinavia or N Canada/Alaska.

The number of moles is inversely proportional to the molar mass.

Today I learned that I didn't learn anything new today.

1960s special effects were pretty primitive.

How is it flipped in 2nd step ?