CIRCLE WITH A DOT

@coreyspowell How big would the crater have been if it had hit the Earth instead? The article doesn't say, but I guess presumably nearly the same size?

Dear hive mind,

I would like to buy a docking station that works perfectly with Mac, but can also easily and quickly switch between my MacBook and a desktop windows computer. If you have had good experience with a product that does that, please let me know.

@diazona @_thegeoff I remember "strange particles", but I don't remember ever hearing an explanation for where "charm" came from.

I just looked it up on Wikipedia, and

Since up and down are also arbitrary, "strange" is the only name of the six that I think is reasonable

@diazona @_thegeoff "Strange" is at least understandable given the history.

This is great from @davidzipper

(Link to the article in the post above.)

#CarCrash #RoadSafety #ReframeRoadSafety

I'd love for a journalist to ask the following question to one of the Prime Ministers, Chancellors, or Presidents who say they think what the US is doing is right (even if they don't want their country to join the war):

"If a civil war results from the bombings and elimination of leadership in Iran, how many Iranian refugees are you planning to welcome?"

#Iran #Refugees #Carney #Merz

@glasspusher @jameshowell Yes, walking slowly and feeling the ground your feet is very important in such a situation.

@glasspusher @jameshowell There's a path through the woods in Brandenburg that I've walked several kilometers along on starlit nights without a moon. I couldn't actually see the ground because of the foliage, but I could follow the path because of the lighter areas between the trees.

This isn't a great idea, though - if someone had dug a big hole in the ground I would likely have fallen in. But it shows what's possible when you know the area and the pathway is flat.

@HootenHaller

@vik @jameshowell I don't have much experience with caves (or access to them), but I've had similar experiences in indoor spaces with strong light shielding.

@jeff @jameshowell @siracusa You can still see the Milky Way outside of the small town where I grew up, but it's a lot more washed out than it was when I was a child, and the glow from Edmonton that used to be contained towards one horizon has stretched to the Zenith.

@jameshowell Very Issac Asimov "Nightfall"

@jameshowell Got it. Man, what a scene, I can imagine why that stuck with you as a memory.

@GeoffWozniak @reay @jameshowell ‍️

@reay @jameshowell @GeoffWozniak You are right that you often don't have to go so far to get a hint of the Milky Way. In fact, I've seen it (and photographed it) from the city center of Potsdam, Germany (population ~180,000).

But catching a fuzzy glimpse of the Milky Way and "seeing the Milky Way in a natural setting" (as I said above) are completely different experiences.

When you see the Milky Way in an area with some degree of light pollution, it's a nice experience and it looks kind of interesting. When you see it in a place with no or next to no light pollution you are CONFRONTED WITH THE COSMOS.

Algonquin National Park is 250 km from Toronto and still has a zenith sky brightness that's ~1% brighter than natural - and the horizon will be far brighter than that. You have to get 350 km from Toronto until the zenith is natural, and even then the horizon in most directions is going to be bright rather than dark.

That being said, getting to ANY place that's not lit by directly artificial lights, even an urban rooftop or park, will allow you to see far more than you would guess.

@jameshowell Oh no, sorry to hear that.

The Adler Teens program has taken Chicago teenagers to a park outside of the city and had the experience that some of the kids were terrified of getting off the bus, because "going out in the dark is dangerous" has been so deeply drilled into them by (well meaning) adults.

I think if I've remembered right they've generally had success getting everyone to see the stars, but it's a scary process for some people.

@reay @jameshowell @GeoffWozniak These days seeing the Milky Way in a natural setting is something that is experienced mainly by only the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich.

@jameshowell @venya What happened next? Did they calm down? And how did they describe the experience afterwards?

@venya @jameshowell Glad you had a chance to enjoy that (despite the rest of the experience).

I remember @SaraBPritchard quoting from women's experience of seeing the stars while held in a Nazi concentration camps. I can't remember the exact details, but my recollection is that seeing the stars provided a similar sublime experience despite being caged in a place designed to destroy your humanity.

We all lose something by not regularly having that experience.

@jameshowell Yup. If I won the lottery, one of the studies I would love to fund would be to see whether adults who grew up in rural settings have superior night vision to those who grew up in the city.

If you never train your visual system to see with rods only, does it still develop normally?