macarthur_park

joined 2 years ago
[–] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

Also they had to reduce the episode runtimes to make room for more ads. I recall an interview where one of the writers said this made it really hard to have a b-story to accompany the main plot.

[–] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 49 points 3 weeks ago

Nobel Peace Prize? Motherfucker just bombed Iran. Pick a lane you lunatic.

[–] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 6 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

So there’s a strange epilogue to that story. The dress was worn to a wedding by the mother of the bride. A few years ago, the groom was charged with attempted murder of his wife.

[–] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 30 points 1 month ago (4 children)

Zaslav’s new Streaming & Studios outfit will consist of Warner Bros Television, Warner Bros Motion Picture Group, DC Studios, HBO and HBO Max, as well as their film and television libraries. Global Networks, meanwhile, will include premier entertainment, sports and news television brands around the world including CNN, TNT Sports in the U.S., and Discovery, top free-to-air channels across Europe, and digital products such as the profitable Discovery+ streaming service and Bleacher Report.

So basically it sounds like they’re going to remove CNN, Discovery shows, and live sports from HBO Max. They’re effectively undoing the merger that they did just a few years ago, which is great because it was clearly a terrible idea. Add in the fact that they’re also reverting the name of “Max” to “HBO Max” and it’s a complete surrender of this shitty merger.

Now the only thing left is to get rid of Zaslav, the originator of all these bad ideas.

[–] macarthur_park@lemmy.world -4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

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

[–] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 19 points 1 month ago

“You first.”

[–] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 14 points 3 months ago

“Thank you for your answer to my first question. Could you please also address questions 2 and 3?”

At least by numbering the questions you make it easier to re-ask them.

[–] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago

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.

[–] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 24 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (6 children)

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.

[–] macarthur_park@lemmy.world 23 points 3 months ago

Definitely an accurate prediction for Collins - she already called in sick so she didn’t have to attend the hearings.

 

President Donald Trump says he’d like to see Arab nations increase the number of Palestinian refugees they are accepting from the Gaza Strip — potentially moving out enough of the population to “clean out” the area to create a virtual clean slate.

“Something has to happen,” Trump said. “But it’s literally a demolition site right now. Almost everything’s demolished, and people are dying there.” He added: “So, I’d rather get involved with some of the Arab nations, and build housing in a different location, where they can maybe live in peace for a change.”

 

Non-paywalled link

[The Biden administration] assigned itself a larger mission than full-throated solidarity in the aftermath of the attack. It wanted to avert a regional war that might ensnare the United States. It aspired to broker an end to the conflict, and to liberate the estimated 251 hostages that Hamas had kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip. It sought a Gaza free from Hamas’s rule, and the dismantlement of the group’s military capabilities. And despite the scale of those tasks, it accelerated its pursuit of the Saudi normalization deal.

What follows is a history of those efforts: a reconstruction of 11 months of earnest, energetic diplomacy, based on interviews with two dozen participants at the highest levels of government, both in America and across the Middle East.

 

Congress on Thursday sent legislation to avert a partial government shutdown to President Biden, racing to fund federal agencies through early March one day before money was to run out.

Over the strenuous opposition of far-right Republicans, the House voted 314 to 108 to approve the stopgap funding just hours after the Senate provided overwhelming bipartisan backing for the measure in a 77-to-18 vote, allowing lawmakers to narrowly beat a Friday deadline.

In the end, Mr. Johnson was only able to cobble together a bare majority of Republicans voting on the bill, with 107 backing it and 106 opposed. Democrats supplied the bulk of the support.

Alternative non-paywalled source: ABC News

 

Gay’s resignation — just six months and two days into the presidency — comes amid growing allegations of plagiarism and lasting doubts over her ability to respond to antisemitism on campus after her disastrous congressional testimony Dec. 5.

Gay weathered scandal after scandal over her brief tenure, facing national backlash for her administration’s response to Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and allegations of plagiarism in her scholarly work.

 

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday night put on hold a judge’s ruling that approved an abortion for a pregnant woman whose fetus has a fatal diagnosis, throwing into limbo an unprecedented challenge to one of the most restrictive bans in the U.S.

The order by the all-Republican court came more than 30 hours after Kate Cox, a 31-year-old mother of two from the Dallas area, received a temporary restraining order from a lower court judge that prevents Texas from enforcing the state’s ban in her case.

In a one-page order, the court said it was temporarily staying Thursday’s ruling “without regard to the merits.” The case is still pending.

 

Edit: AlertCarolina issued an all clear message at 4:15pm local time.

From WRAL

One person, a UNC faculty member, has died in the shooting.

One person was taken into police custody as of 3:15 p.m.

Police at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill are responding to an “armed and dangerous person on or near campus,” according to an alert from the university on Monday.

“Remain sheltered in place. This is an ongoing situation. Suspect at large,” the university said in an alert sent just before 2:30 p.m., about 90 minutes after the first alert was sent.

According to the student paper The Daily Tar Heel, at least one person has been wounded.

University police are advising students, faculty and staff to:

Go inside immediately. Close windows and doors. Stay until further notice. Follow directions from emergency responders or University officials.

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