Martin Vermeer FCD

🇳🇱🇫🇮🇩🇰 🇪🇺 Retired geodesist. 'Elämäntapafinlandssvensk'. Born 315 ppmv. Star sign: Ursa.

Helsinki/Bromarv, Finland

#geodesy #geoid #SeaLevel #GPS #climate #democracy #EU #Antifa #linux #latex

Website: https://users.aalto.fi/~mvermeer/

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[email protected]

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Last Notes

2026-04-28 08:44:22 UTC

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Olisiko mahdollista näyttä ne napit vain 'on mouseover', jos hiiren kursori on kuvan päällä?

2026-04-03 22:14:27 UTC

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The CDC is already gone, money or no money

2026-03-28 11:57:18 UTC

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Latin?

2026-02-25 16:55:57 UTC

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Remembering that from the PDP 11/10, which only had 16 address switches, accessing a 64 kB address space. BTW note the three-bit blocks for making life easier with octal numbers.
We ran serious software in that. Yes it looks gorgeous, but perhaps the aesthetics wears off a bit after many times manually entering the boot loader through those switches.
We did have Unix on our machine and it wasn't multitasking. But a beautiful CPU architecture, much like the Motorola 6809 that was my next one. Running the Microware OS-9 mini-Unix OS, my entry point to Unix.

2026-02-04 11:59:12 UTC

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Especially the 'illegal' immigrants, who pay taxes but are not entitled to many benefits.

2026-01-21 19:56:55 UTC

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Minulla oli semmonen. Elää yhä
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/115/934/893/209/189/165/original/22345a3fcda79f87.jpg

2026-01-18 17:37:04 UTC

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"See, BS"

2026-01-17 12:05:25 UTC

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https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/115/910/320/263/932/098/original/c54e6c0acf651204.jpg

2026-01-17 09:17:12 UTC

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Why reverse engineering and hacking firmware should be legal, and even constitutionally protected. It's a crazy tech panopticon we live in, and legislation is blind as a bat to it.

2026-01-16 22:50:23 UTC

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The picture from the astronomy book of my father, and of my childhood.
https://fediscience.org/@martinvermeer/113726854976237287
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/115/907/205/620/968/256/original/db7cf52cabec9936.png

2026-01-16 14:21:25 UTC

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Venus is such a rewarding object, even in a small telescope, or even in binoculars, provided they are on a tripod. Around 'brightest shine', close to eastern or western elongation, she shows as a Moon-like crescent, just like Galileo described her - a spherical world orbiting the Sun, dark but illuminated by the Sun. It never gets old.

2026-01-16 14:10:14 UTC

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In the general neighbourhood of the Sun, i.e., morning or evening twilight, that is likely. Especially if the sky is so bright that you cannot see any fixed stars.
In this case (I checked) Venus was in her orbit almost behind the Sun and not very bright. In a telescope she would look almost full but small, because of the distance.
In the weeks following this, she vanished behind the Sun and then re-appeared as the 'evening star'.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/115/905/167/273/779/102/original/4eb83b03b9779327.png

2026-01-16 13:49:34 UTC

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Morning 7 o'clock of that day, in Stellarium. Location Tenala. Yes, Venus
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/115/905/084/892/401/712/original/183dbf4b51225549.png

2026-01-16 13:35:58 UTC

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Wow, you captured the Earthshine eli maatamoa!
The planet is probably Venus. Not sure without the precise date.

2026-01-07 13:34:55 UTC

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> And I believe this principle is built into the fabric of Lagrangian mechanics, though I haven't yet made this precise.
Possibly. However, Newton's Third Law seems to be the same as conservation of momentum. And for a system described by a Lagrangian, according to Noether this corresponds to translational invariance in space. Is it possible to have a Lagrangian description of a system that does not abide by conservation of momentum?

2026-01-01 11:03:41 UTC

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Now that the subject is weaponized amnesia, there's more where that came from
https://mastodon.social/@randahl/115815083081346577
#note12n9…v44y

2025-12-31 20:24:52 UTC

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> and that the only criteria I was looking for in a new stylist would be that they shared my values.
About that...
https://fediscience.org/@martinvermeer/113458076970051203
#note1926…uvp8

2025-12-29 18:20:14 UTC

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Theft of radioactive materials for a dirty bomb? Haven't we learned yet that evil imagination tends to beat ours?
And BTW Israel stole yellowcake for their first bombs. Pakistan stole ultracentrifuge IP from the Netherlands. Proliferation is a thing - and I fear it will get worse. And the difficulty of countermeasures is proportional to the number of sites to consider.

2025-12-29 18:06:11 UTC

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Also from terrorist attacks? And the fuel stream from proliferation-related theft?
BTW one way in which SMRs may be safer is if they are installed completely underground - which is hard to do with big reactors. Also SMRs for low-temperature heating are stable: they generate only as much as the coolant circuit takes out, because of the negative temperature coefficient. Like (but look at the time line!)
https://www.world-nuclear-news.org/articles/third-finnish-city-considers-smrs-for-district-heating

2025-12-29 17:47:31 UTC

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Yes, the article is muddled on the economies-of-scale issue, and yes, for manufacturing, serial production of many identical, small units should produce economies of scale - as wind turbines, solar arrays and batteries are showing as we speak.
But, that's manufacture. Operating is a different story. Nuclear, a bit like offshore and space but worse, is dominated by safety considerations. Unlike renewables, nuclear is not inherently safe but is engineered to be safe - and that is hard. And the decentralization of many identical units in different places multiplies the attack surface, both for accidents and bad actors. A single humongous reactor is easier to keep safe. The article actually talks about that.
Related:
https://fediscience.org/@martinvermeer/113964399874652197
#note1tf8…p2wu

2025-12-28 21:54:43 UTC

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And getting even cheaper all the time. Longer term, fossil fuels are only getting more expensive.

2025-12-28 20:35:31 UTC

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How many are accessible with an ordinary bank or credit card?

2025-12-24 23:19:06 UTC

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It seems that the Streisand effect really works 💚

2025-12-23 18:15:46 UTC

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Remembering with endearment 'small dick energy'
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/115/770/239/328/024/963/original/e635e9c0f2f02d8b.png

2025-12-23 07:54:12 UTC

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But it still didn't reach any wide readership, as these are technically pirate copies... has any larger outlet picked up on it?

2025-12-15 13:36:43 UTC

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Precisely. That was in my mind when I started to write the post, but it fell by the wayside.
Now to be fair, a great many sufferers of autism or ADHD can fully function in society and be valuable members of it with minimal but appropriate support or medication - or even completely without, solely on the strength of a correct diagnosis and the self-understanding that comes with it. But denial is just irredeemably dumb.

2025-12-15 13:31:54 UTC

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Also note, as mentioned in the article, that one belief behind the 'overdiagnosis' debate is, that people are 'gaming the system' in order to get advantages other than appropriate treatment. It remains implicit that this is all about mental and neurological conditions, which are widely and counterfactually assumed to be easy to fake - and as an extension to this, assumed to be often / usually / nearly always fake. Someone ought to put this bang in the middle of the table.

2025-12-15 13:18:04 UTC

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I would say that is precisely-right diagnosis. If you need treatment or medication in order to feel or get better, you have the condition.
And yes, prescription charges (which we also have here in Finland) are a uniformly Bad Idea, even if only a modest sum. Medicines are not hamburgers, where the customer can realistically estimate their subjective need in the context of their financial situation, finding the market optimum. This is not a market; it requires medical judgment. Too easy to not get treatment for a serious condition that doesn't feel serious, and then becomes chronic or leads to disability or death - orders of magnitude more expensive than any 'savings' on the medicine.

2025-12-10 20:12:37 UTC

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Destroy tourism to the US
Destroy US soft power everywhere
Destroy protection of future US POWs

2025-12-10 10:48:15 UTC

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There is no immigration 'crisis'. There is a racism and tolerance crisis. And in the UK an oligarch media control crisis.

2025-12-09 20:59:33 UTC

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This is only about rejoining the Customs Union, a much more limited undertaking - and it would mostly consist of removing red tape. And from what I hear, the 2.2% payoff would be within a year.

2025-12-09 20:03:01 UTC

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Precisely. Estimates are Brexit cost 4-8% of GDP, benefit of joining Customs Union, 2.2% of GDP. Nothing to spit at, and I believe that Starmer's cabinet is seriously talking about it. No other way now to deliver their other manifesto promises, while also delivering on defence and Ukraine.

2025-11-27 09:11:52 UTC

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It illustrates the importance of good recruiting practices for any police force, like testing for authoritarian personality traits, to keep out those applying for the wrong reasons. Still very much so today.

2025-11-25 06:25:42 UTC

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I care in the sense of a threat to keep an eye on

2025-11-19 10:17:39 UTC

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Batong (riikinr. pamppu, suom. r. patonki)

2025-11-19 10:13:24 UTC

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Butik

2025-11-14 22:42:46 UTC

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Yes, search with 'from:<at>alissaazar<at>kolektiva.social word'. Tested and works for me.

2025-10-30 15:09:53 UTC

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I didn't have to take many steps into the thicket before three ungulates scurried out from under me. And on the fourth, a fox.
(DeepL)

2025-10-27 06:44:34 UTC

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Is this the Bamber et al. (2019) 3.3 m? Wasn't that already committed?

2025-10-25 19:57:45 UTC

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And JA21 booming... some folks never learn. It's like Asimov explained, when it's raining and you stand under a tree and get wet, you just change to another tree 🙄 Trees being populist parties.

2025-10-17 11:23:42 UTC

There was a Tesla parked and charging in Bromarv yacht harbour. It was missing the Tesla logo.
Shame is a superfluid.
https://www.bromarv.fi/bromarv-skargardshamn/gasthamn/

2025-10-16 08:25:47 UTC

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Some footnotes to this metaphor
https://fediscience.org/@martinvermeer/115308512271546099

2025-10-15 19:33:33 UTC

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Nathan Gill got Russian money directly for making pro-Russian statements in the European parliament. Farage was at the same time also an MEP and made similar statements. One wonders if money changed hands also there.

2025-10-15 18:48:42 UTC

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Russia is missing

2025-10-15 07:23:57 UTC

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Hyvä malli etenkin politiikkaan: "Jos ei ole evidenssiä, niin ei kelpaa."

2025-10-04 15:03:01 UTC

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Okay. It always sounded a bit wild that vacuum would be filled to the brim with electrons at negative energies, but it served its purpose to theoretically find positrons... and in semiconductors, those 'holes' are real.

2025-10-04 14:20:29 UTC

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Ah, I didn't know that. But those electrons in a hydrogen atom are pretty fast - should you then use Klein-Gordon rather than Schrödinger (ignoring spin)? And if Klein-Gordon is relativistic, doesn't it then also produce the same anti-particles thing (negative-energy solutions) that Dirac does?

2025-10-04 14:05:08 UTC

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I know only the basics of quantum mechanics. In my physics studies I have actually solved the Schrödinger equation (or was that Klein-Gordon?) for a scalar particle in a block-shaped potential pit, and then in the spherically symmetric field of a proton. Much of that came back working with modelling the Earth's gravity field in terms of spherical-harmonic expansions, at least where the maths is concerned. But my first contact with quantum theory was in secondary school, when my chemistry teacher explained about aromatic substances and the unusual stability of the benzene ring, where there is indeed 1.5 chemical bonds between adjacent carbons - and he told me that that is 'a quantum thing'...
https://users.aalto.fi/~mvermeer/isbn9789526089409.pdf#chapter.2

2025-10-04 13:32:37 UTC

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Yes, I was fooled by the seeming simplicity/naiveté of her question, and neglected to look up her profile. Still, explanations like by @npub1glg…tqzy have merit for the (many?) lurkers here. Not many people know computational chemistry is a thing.

2025-10-04 09:47:07 UTC

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And note that (assuming I understand this correctly) the six sticks between the oxygens and the sodium ion are not 'true' chemical bonds, but just paths of electrostatic attraction. The sodium ion carries really one positive charge as it is lacking the valence electron, but the oxygens are just polarized negative on the side pointing to the sodium. So actually the whole assembly is a one-plus cation...

2025-10-04 09:40:45 UTC

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I don't think so... those wave functions are much more fuzzy around the edges, consisting in spherical co-ordinates of spherical harmonics multiplied by exponential/power functions of the radius going to zero at infinity, as becomes a bound state.

2025-10-04 06:00:37 UTC

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It's not the declaration that matters. You don't even need states. But the minimum number of belligerents for a war to occur is two.

2025-10-03 21:34:07 UTC

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But this is not a war. It is just plain murder.

2025-09-30 05:43:22 UTC

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Not just a feeling. Research backs it up.

2025-09-28 16:42:43 UTC

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It was a diminutive "pool", a small plastic foot bath. Some small things are big.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/115/282/900/812/162/819/original/91d44f0e1f7baea9.png

2025-09-20 19:08:08 UTC

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*reining in (rein = teugel)

2025-09-18 21:08:11 UTC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1AFgQZW0aA

2025-09-17 14:49:24 UTC

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Funny you should mention this... good to see that the Commission is still complying with the 'but do you condemn Hamas?' compelled performative outrage game.
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/115/220/180/597/021/277/original/096b52950b0e6186.png

2025-09-10 15:17:32 UTC

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I wouldn't be quite so pessimistic about renewables. Yes, the loss of federal support will bring down stock prices and slow deployment, but both sun and wind, and grid storage, are already competitive without, and only getting cheaper. And most actors deploying them are not federal.

2025-09-04 20:50:36 UTC

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One of those few situations where telling lies is criminalized.

2025-08-31 07:23:37 UTC

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Except, the military are not actually policing - for now. They are a performative presence with nothing useful to do except loitering around tourist attractions, picking up trash and mulching bushes in the parks.

2025-08-30 07:08:21 UTC

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Pluviovoltaiset kennot.

2025-08-24 12:32:07 UTC

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It would already be a big thing if Americans knew the basics of their own political system - if only as an awareness of what they are losing. They are throwing amendment numbers around like candy but cannot even name the three Montesquieu powers.

2025-08-22 05:32:26 UTC

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> A simple approximation is that for every degree C of warming, the atmosphere holds 7% more water
True. The approximation here is that the atmosphere's mean relative humidity does not change. If it did, we would have a *way* bigger problem on our hands than global warming: global drying, as well as a strongly positive cloud feedback...

2025-08-21 00:23:05 UTC

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyN34sFko9w

2025-08-18 09:07:07 UTC

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Note also that if it were a true paper, based on the title it couldn't possibly have been remotely relevant to Fagen-Lehrer... and, it really stands out in the reference list. Still, nobody reacted. One wonders how many people actually read Fagen-Lehrer?

2025-08-17 00:06:58 UTC

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https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/115/041/183/195/479/543/original/25468dd463ed6994.png

2025-07-27 08:20:45 UTC

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One big difference to get used to is that Linux is an Internet OS, and your help community is almost 100% online. Not the guy in the next cubicle, not a family member. And helping out is in the culture. Got a mystical error message? Search it. Someone got it before you, and figured it out...
And yes, leave installation to someone else. You can even pay for it.

2025-07-26 13:07:24 UTC

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It seems to have become customary to call all this 'unprecedented' or 'this is not who we are' - but remember that this is an optical illusion only seen by standard white mainstream Americans. For Black Americans, the Home of the Brave has always been a police state, and in many ways continues to be. And ask any Palestinian or ally, even a Jewish ally, if there are any American universities, including the lauded-as-heroes Harvard, that have *not* implemented a comprehensive censorship regime with draconic penalties on all things Palestinian. Precisely the kind of regime that is now coming for everybody on all subject matters at Columbia. It would be nice to see some recognition of this history. After all, this is why history is worth studying.

2025-07-24 05:45:11 UTC

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Ilmesti AI-käännös 😬

2025-07-20 12:54:26 UTC

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A better idea is to infiltrate and take notes. And find out names.

2025-07-19 14:07:53 UTC

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Isn't that going to be outlawed now? Or am I being naive?

2025-07-14 14:51:19 UTC

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Or 'woke'. Having your eyes open, seeing injustice, rather than sleepwalking past it. Good thing, right?

2025-07-13 17:17:54 UTC

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More thoughts, more prayers

2025-07-05 12:33:52 UTC

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Idly wishing continental ice sheets were holy.

2025-07-03 06:31:13 UTC

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They are not siding with humanity either.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/la-times-owner-trump-b2665827.html

2025-07-02 21:51:20 UTC

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An ugly trick. Corbyn pointed it out. A government that does this would itself deserve to be proscribed, as they clearly despise democratic ideas. And I watched the debate, and was impressed, and not in a good way, by the transparent bad faith of the government. Eton debating-club performance at its worst.

2025-06-30 12:19:54 UTC

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Most countries still care somewhat about not destroying their tourist industry.

2025-06-25 06:24:29 UTC

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> from now on
Ha ha, funny
https://kolektiva.social/@oatmeal/114739752394916954

2025-06-23 15:48:37 UTC

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Why go even that big? Pleasure yachts. Container ships. Lorries. Yes, borders are a problem, but they leak. Need to bribe the right people.

2025-06-23 15:02:16 UTC

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The enriched uranium is not so hard to hide, if it is in small batches - which it has to be as it has to remain sub-critical. I would certainly not want to share it with Putin.
But there is a pathway around further enrichment...
https://fediscience.org/@martinvermeer/114733098065634159

2025-06-18 07:54:21 UTC

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Countdown to 'we cannot do without fossil fuel burning', 3, 2, 1, ...

2025-06-14 21:59:42 UTC

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Well over the 3.5% line.

2025-06-10 09:43:14 UTC

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In a way I am sorry for the Israeli people. They are so caught in their rally-around-the-flag media bubble. And I have no doubt that many other western nations in the same situation would do the same, up to and including genocide. As in fact many did, in past colonial situations. Thing is, only Israel is in this situation today...

2025-06-09 11:55:26 UTC

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So lost. They used to be a leading example of a public-service broadcaster 😬

2025-06-09 02:40:20 UTC

Following you over the bridge and on your true Mastodon account - which has been quiet. It will come in handy when BlueSky starts enshittifying.

2025-06-04 05:38:03 UTC

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What I am reminded of is 'cold reading'. You know, what stage psychics and fairground astrologers do.

2025-05-30 17:00:21 UTC

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Not even theoretical. A fair while ago I saw a pair of pictures from Amsterdam, of a bike first locked by a wire lock to one of those canal-side poles, and then the same bike to a similar canal-side pole right on the other side of the canal! Some practical joker did the topology exercise...
https://fediscience.org/system/media_attachments/files/114/597/839/177/140/936/original/3185cd5c11ea3098.png

2025-05-28 19:06:35 UTC

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It's the MS-DOS version of ≠

2025-05-26 18:27:02 UTC

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Yes, I agree. I misread your earlier post then.

2025-05-26 17:58:26 UTC

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Perhaps, but playing devil's advocate: European countries - i.e., countries belonging to the Christian traditional cultural sphere - also have centuries of virulent antisemitism. Why the difference?

2025-05-26 17:24:10 UTC

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Not only that, but UNRWA is clearly the organization best positioned to do what it does, and they must know this. I don't get it. Surely Israel cannot have *that* much leverage?

2025-05-23 16:51:07 UTC

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Eräs hiljainen sunnuntaiaamu tulee mieleen. Hyvin hiljainen... piski oli jyrsinyt puhelinlangan poikki. Silloin puhelimet olivat vielä langan päässä. Olen niin vanha.

2025-05-19 14:58:38 UTC

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I still have to find a proof convincing to myself that a magnetic field is frozen in in a superconducting plasma... this could be similar.

2025-05-10 07:47:38 UTC

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As I said before
https://fediscience.org/@martinvermeer/114114378012922535

2025-05-10 05:11:31 UTC

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Another: don't turn pregnancy into russian roulette.

2025-05-06 11:46:58 UTC

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I would rather arrange that a bit differently: the cause was stepping on the toes of moneyed interests. The effect was demonisation, with ideology brought in as its intellectual superstructure justifying it. Yes, this sounds Marxist, but perhaps here he got it right.

2025-05-06 11:03:31 UTC

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It's not so much demonisation as an ideological thing; it's about any meaningful distributional policy having monied interests stacked against it, interests that just so happen to own influential media. I know, not a distinction with any practical consequence.

2025-05-02 17:30:24 UTC

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> trying to protect from the abusive conservatives by trying to make all conservatives feel unwelcome just in case
That is not how this works at all. A 'conservative' server - one run by and for conservatives and with mostly conservative accounts - that moderates in good faith against abusive conservatives will *not* be defederated by the bulk of ordinary, well moderated fediverse servers. Perhaps you should disabuse yourself of the 'woke mind virus' virus...

2025-05-02 14:45:48 UTC

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BTW I would love to see some more conservative voices here. The Bulwark. The Lincoln Project. But they choose to stay on X and YouTube. They really should come here, the water is inviting and the protocol the same for everyone.
The main reason the right is scarce here is, I think, that the left understood better than most, and earlier than most, the problems with corporate social media, and got this started. And even now, having seen what happened to X, most of the non-left is still naively migrating to Bluesky. Sigh...