Snowflake's Forum

I hope to be back on a limited basis.  Getting better.  I miss all yuz!  Full "injury" story to follow. So, what is this little "filled baggie" thing? Answer coming soon (maybe tomorrow). (by PrimalSoup) Answer: A tiny piece of grapefruit flesh! Fun guesses. Thanks all!! 🥰

  Books, TV programs, movie franchises.  You enjoyed them, but at some point you soured on them. Bunny enjoyed the books of Clive Cussler, _Raise The Titanic fame.  Mindless fun, adventure, and some historical treasure found.  But, he started writing himself into the stories.  First just an encounter, and later, entire chapters with him in it.  Takes you out of the story. Happy Days.  Not the shark.  It was when the studio audience would wildly cheer the actors when they first appeared on screen.  The mother would glide in, arms spread, acknowledging the applause.  That killed the image of it not being something staged. What, if anything killed it for you? J.P. Bunny

The few top notch math people on planet Earth, maybe 0.00001% of us (1 in 10 million), can see and think about things that most people, including me, cannot even articulate. I need experts to translate opaque math into American. SciAm reports about a major breakthrough in uniting math with physics (mildly edited): Mathematicians Crack 125-Year-Old Problem,  Unite Three Physics Theories A breakthrough in Hilbert’s sixth problem is a major step in grounding physics in math At the International Congress of Mathematicians at Sorbonne University in Paris, legendary mathematician David Hilbert presented 10 unsolved problems as ambitious guideposts for the 20th century. He later expanded his list to include 23 problems , and their influence on mathematical thought over the past 125 years cannot be overstated. Hilbert’s sixth problem was one of the loftiest. He called for “axiomatizing” physics, or determining the bare minimum of mathematical assumptions behind all its theories. Broadly...

  A follow-up of the previous post.  This is what Hollywood and writers didn’t get right.  Bunny has a few, but will start off with Issac Asimov.  Computers were to become massive things, taking up hollowed out mountains.  Technicians were needed to ask the questions.  Massive and not for the common person. What can you think of? J.P. Bunny

  People actively trying to copy the technology or messages of entertainment.  People are trying to make hoverboards and invisibility cloaks a reality. Anything you can come up with? J.P. Bunny

What happened to Snowflake and Susan? They seem to have bugged out. Did I miss the memo?  By Germaine: Probably out of the loop

  This may not be for everyone, but there are some really minor things that can change history.  Bunny enjoys such.  The history of England and face of religion could have been completely different if Henry VIII`s first son didn’t die as an infant.  A few aspirin or simple common hygiene could have changed the course of history. Any such things that interest you or find interesting? J.P. Bunny

Physicists have done some stuff, very, very small stuff, in the lab. They now believe the upper mass limit of the nearly massless neutrino is almost 50% less that prior data allowed. Science News reports : Neutrinos are known to have tiny masses. A new result proclaims the subatomic particles to be even tinier still. The electrically neutral particles, produced in radioactive decays and in reactions in the sun and elsewhere in the cosmos, have a mass of less than 0.45 electron volts , physicists report in the April 11 Science. The result, from the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino, or KATRIN, experiment slashes the experiment’s previous upper limit for neutrino mass by nearly half . Neutrinos are the only class of fundamental particle for which the mass, one of the most basic attributes of any particle, is unknown. The particles are so much lighter than others that they were long thought to have no mass at all. The KATRIN instrument -- it weighs about 200 tons or about 440,924 lb GADZOOKS!! O...

  Maternal Unit wants Bunny to sign up for the rewards program for an airline.  The application site does not work. MU keeps at it, Bunny says leave it alone.  Don’t bother.  For Bunny, turn it on, and if it doesn’t do what it is supposed to…screw it.  The damn things are supposed to make things easier or more convenient.  If they are not going to do what they are supposed to do…can’t be bothered with it. Your thoughts? J.P. Bunny

Contstant online kvetching  has convinced me that "Debbie Downer" movies are a bad thing. Movies that take life way too seriously. Ergo, I want us all to go back to our younger days, when feel-good flicks were the thing! Like... 1970's Midnight Cowboy --the jolly tale of an incompetent male prostitute and his buddy, a street scammer who pisses himself to death on a bus. And One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , where a happy-go-lucky criminal cons his way into an insane asylum, gets lobotomized and then his best friend suffocates him. Not to mention Titanic -- young woman cheats on her fiancé, watches her lover die and talks about it about a century later. Meanwhile, several hundred people drown. Now THAT'S entertainment! And what about The Deer Hunter ? Wonderful and frigging endless wedding scene, then some time in Viet Nam, where our hero blows his head off in a game of Russian Roulette. How...inspiring. Gosh, all those feel good movies of the past. ...

There's a lot of buzz about artificial intelligence. It's great, it's awful, it's whatever. I have some deep reservations. The harm done by deepfakes. The resource intensity. The prospect of people relying on it for "relationship," at the expense of real relationships. The disruption to people's employment. But I've also found it to be genuinely useful. I'm having it teach me about relativity at a level I can comprehend. I asked it some tax questions. (Always verify of course, but it has been really helpful.) I've gravitated toward Perplexity--initially because it provided citations, and now just because it's what I use. What is your relationship with AI? Do you have a favorite source? How has it helped or harmed you? What are your hopes and fears? post by Dan T. (Not sure why my carriage returns aren't working. Maybe I can ask AI.)

  A bit of a Part II  post. Bunny still in the Disunited States helping out Maternal Unit.  Of course Bunny remembers tipping, but not to the crazy extent it is going on now.  Most TV commercials seem to be for medicine with side effects that can kill you.  Too many tattoos and huge people squished into stretchy clothes that are crying out in pain.   Can’t say curmudgeony things aloud as can be understood, and the people have guns. Not really asking a question.  Maybe, what habits of daily life throw you off? J.P. Bunny

  When I was a tad in the 1950s , conformity was the norm.  "Being normal" was the norm.  We were living in an era of normalcy that's never been repeated.  Everyone had two or three kids.  Everyone was married.  You had four grandparents, and dad came home for dinner of an evening.  The world was nice, sane and predictable. Well, that's what we were all told. This was held universally.  The TV told us so, with every "normal family" sitcom.  Even the cartoons were normal nuclear families -- the Flintstones and the Jetsons were just like us. Except that they weren't.  As I aged, I began to notice things like... I had only one grandparent, an Orthodox rabbi. Dad was a mob lawyer, and didn't live with us. We saw him every Sunday night, when he'd take us kids out to dinner. On the night the first telecommunications satellite was launched, m y father's car was blown up in our driveway. My mother was arrested for unpaid parking tickets, end...

  Bunny is now back in the Disunited States for a few weeks.  Monster sized cars and trucks.  Single sized snacks large enough to feed four.  Horrid TV.  No way to go shopping or do anything outside of the house without a car.  The weird and complicated medical system. Bunny has been away too long and could not live here.  Now, too strange and uncomfortable.  Well, that is just Bunny.   Has a long span of time away from something made it too difficult to go back? J.P. Bunny 

Techspot reports : Coin-sized nuclear 3V battery with 50-year lifespan enters mass production A Chinese battery manufacturer has developed a breakthrough, sparking a worldwide race for compact nuclear energy. The innovation is a small coin-sized battery powered by a radioactive nickel isotope that decays into stable copper. While the initial cell is relatively weak, it can easily be layered to provide more power for up to 50 years. Energy storage technology has reached a transformative milestone as the BV100, a miniature atomic energy battery, enters mass production. Popular Mechanic notes that the coin-sized cell from Beijing Betavolt New Energy Technology can provide juice lasting up to 50 years without charging or maintenance. The BV100 harnesses energy from the radioactive decay of its nickel-63 core. The two-micron thick core, sandwiched between two 10-micron thick diamond semiconductors, efficiently converts the isotope's decay into electricity. Its modular structure allows ...